Big Lychee, Various Sectors

From Unherd: the useful idiots are back, and supporting the CCP. 

But the Soviet Union has been gone for almost 30 years, and today’s Cuba is mainly of kitsch value, its youthful revolutionary heroes preserved as a piece of sixties nostalgie; its diminishing achievements — education (Fidelista indoctrination) and internationalist healthcare (Cuban doctors sent overseas have been likened to indentured labour) — implausibly trotted out to justify over half a century of dictatorship.

And so a new generation of political “seekers” have turned to China for their ideological sustenance.

And a reminder of what’s in store for the Hong Kong legal system. Bitter Winter on Xi Jinping’s new definition of ‘rule of law’. According to state media…

Xi Jinping’s thought on the rule of law is a major theoretical innovation that has come into being in line with the requirements of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the latest achievement of the Sinicization of Marxist theory of the rule of law, an important part of Xi Jinping’s thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and a fundamental guide to follow.

Re-read it if you think it’ll help you understand – it’s still painful. In plain language…

Building on Marx, Xi regards the rule of law as the principle that all should respect the laws, but the laws should respect the CCP, and be interpreted according to the CCP’s orders, directives, and interests. 

A recent comment is worth a response. Basically…

What are the rebuttals to the following facts: (1) China has sovereignty over HK and (2) It will *never* allow independence.

Expanded democracy is in the Basic Law, but in what way were the actions last year going to promote that?

HK has enjoyed wide freedoms. In what way were the actions last year going to protect them? Was not the current outcome — less freedom, more Beijing repression — inevitable and foreseeable?

This line of thinking crops up in some international media commentary, and among some moderate pro-establishment types. But it is essentially blaming the victim.

The questions focus on Beijing’s reaction to the 2019 uprising (which followed on from the previous protests in 2014), as if the protest movement was the cause of a problem rather than a symptom of one. 

Responsibility must ultimately lie with whoever holds power. The Hong Kong people had no input into the way Beijing and its locally appointed administrations ran Hong Kong since 1997. Beijing must take responsibility for pushing up housing prices, for flooding Hong Kong with Mainland tourists and migrants, for prioritizing spending on white-elephant projects, and other cronyism and policies that harmed local people’s livelihoods. 

These policies led to discontent and spurred demands for representative government. Beijing could have ordered the local administration to mend its ways, but didn’t. And of course Beijing finally rejected any chance of a more democratic model in 2014. As in Thailand or Belarus, if a regime treats its people with contempt for long enough, things will blow up. It’s not the ‘fault’ of the populace (or the CIA, or whatever). 

Few people dispute China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong, or seriously believe independence is a possibility. To the extent that some do, it is a reaction to Beijing’s handling of the city. Even the descent of 2019’s protests into violence was largely a reaction to police tactics and the refusal of the regime to find a political solution (see Clifford Stott).

To say “today’s outcome – less freedom, more Beijing repression – was inevitable and foreseeable” is getting it backwards. It was the leaderless and unplanned uprising that was inevitable and foreseeable. All Beijing’s fault. And nowhere near over yet.

Another image that won’t be forgotten soon – Jimmy Lai in manacles for allegedly Tweeting his opinions. Simply using trumped-up charges to keep him in jail isn’t good enough. Will they also send him to the Mainland for trial? 

The CCP seems obsessed with the idea that Lai is a mastermind/funder/leader of Hong Kong’s protest movement, and the sight of him in chains will cow everyone into silence and submission. They have a big shock coming.

More from the weekend: 19-year-old Tony Chung is convicted of insulting the Chinese flag, and activist Baggio Leung seeks asylum in the US, where he advises officials to block Chinese banks from using the SWIFT settlements network. 

Banks are in danger of retaliation for freezing dissidents’ accounts. But can we expect companies – with their duty to shareholders – to invite business-wrecking retribution from Beijing by acting otherwise?

Which leads us to the Hong Kong government’s Employment Support Scheme. Which companies claimed the most Covid non-layoffs handouts? David Webb has compiled (no thanks to the government’s opaque and clunky approach to making data public) a list of the beneficiaries. The top 5,000 are here. Top recipient is Dairy Farm (ie Wellcome, 7-Eleven, etc); other supermarkets are prominent, as are private hospitals (Baptist came 31st by claiming HK$129mn) and cake shops.

Elsewhere, while we wait for this week’s horrors to unfold, former Governor Chris Patten again accuses Beijing of breaking its handover promises to Hong Kong.

“They’ve broken their word to Hong Kong and internationally and they’re destroying a great city,” he said.

And the Chickeeduck security grille gets a paint job.

Massively Overwrought Panty-Wetting of the Day Award goes to the Hong Kong government’s press release strongly deploring and objecting to a senior UK government official’s meeting with political refugee Nathan Law. The statement includes special-bonus no-extra-charge mouth-frothing about the presence of a Hong Kong flag next to the British one at the gathering’s photo-op. 

Regina Ip spots the diplomatic-vexillological outrage and patriotically leaps into action on Twitter, accusing Home Secretary Priti Patel of insulting China. (Worth it for the warm and constructive replies from her fellow Twitter users.)   

Was this clear breach of protocol just a screw-up, or are the Brits learning Beijing-style trolling? The event was convened by a candidate for London mayor, and seems to have taken place in the Houses of Parliament, so was not as official as it might seem. Still, the pic has unmistakable government-in-exile vibes…

…and as long as we get a nice Panda-Tantrum out of it – that’s the main thing.

More on Regina below – but first, you have to go through the recommended reading for the weekend…

An HKFP column considers Joshua Wong’s treatment at the remand centre – X-rays and solitary confinement. 

While we’re on the subject, Kafka gets a name-check in Antony Dapiran’s review of Aftershock: Essays From Hong Kong.

The Diplomat looks forward to 2022 and the 20th CCP Congress. Either Xi stays for a third term as CCP General Secretary and Emperor-for-Life, or the elite are sick enough of him that they kick him out. Interesting look at various scenarios.

China Digital Times on how Chinese pharma companies’ past corruption is affecting the rollout of Covid vaccines.

Thought Switzerland was a sensible, conservative, cautious sort of place? The Guardian on how the government there gives Chinese security goons the run of the country, and even pays their airfares and hotel accommodation. And probably chucks in some free cuckoo clocks and chocolate as well.  

American Prospect offers a War and Peace-length saga of how US companies sold out to China for decades.

…this isn’t actually the story of China incentivizing U.S. companies into helping improve their missiles. That’s nothing. This is the story of how, 25 years later, in the midst of a global pandemic, America woke up and realized that it is completely dependent on Chinese manufacturing for everything.

From Reuters, a special report on Beijing’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan.

Nine Dash Line urges everyone to stop seeing Taiwan as a thorny China-related problem, and more as a – well, a country…

…the more the Communist Party of China articulates an exclusionary Chinese identity, the more eager the Taiwanese are to distance themselves from the label and Taiwanese politicians invoking it.

Some critical observers warn that Taipei will inevitably have to deal with the unyielding demands of Chinese nationalism. But that is not the only reality that has to be faced. Beijing must also face the reality of the Taiwanese nation.

And for the pervs out there, a thread of rather fetching Regina Ip photos, including one of her carrying buckets of fish (or maybe copies of Xi Jinping’s book) on a yoke at a wet market, and another of her smiling serenely while having a post-natal massage (or something) – and of course those renowned legs.

Michael Chugani in the SCMP provides a list of reasons why Hong Kong’s international reputation is beyond repair. And within hours, another one crops up: the government wants to find a way to extend censorship by banning ‘misinformation’. Because of ‘loopholes’.

Officials cite Germany’s ban on certain types of fake news on social media, to make the idea sound palatable. Also – less convincingly – Singapore. Russia and Malaysia also have such laws. In freer countries, the rules specifically target things like hate speech, but in more authoritarian regimes it is simply a way to criminalize anti-government views.

This proposal probably owes something to the HK Police, who have been embarrassed by rumours and allegations about cover-ups, for example over their never-explained rampage in Prince Edward MTR station in August 2019. But it’s easy to see how any statement the government disagrees with could become a ‘falsehood’, and next thing you know one Facebook post lands you in jail without bail for months.

Ever since the imposition of the CCP’s NatSec Regime, it has always been a matter of when rather than if the authorities start to clamp down on the Internet. Ultimately, the CCP will be happy only when Hong Kong has a Mainland-style intranet, with Facebook and Twitter inaccessible, and compulsory real-name registration of all social media users.

The line between despotic and demented narrows as the HK Police give the Good Neighbour North District Church the frozen-bank-account treatment. Does anyone pause to ask how this extreme overreach/overkill might look? Or is the entire CCP-Security Bureau-Police chain of command made up of zombies? 

Some mid-week links…

With more and more people being thrown in jail: HKFP on how those on the outside keep in touch with imprisoned protesters.

The Diplomat interviews a Hong Kong civil servant about how the bureaucrats are bearing up under the NatSec Regime. (Their remuneration is – rough guess – around double what equivalent jobs in the private sector would pay, and treble or quadruple what the private sector would pay for the same quality of work. Imagine what ‘morale’ there would be like if their pay and conditions were in line with the test of the community.)

In Covid-19 news: China Digital Times on the Mainland pharmaceutical sector’s reputational and other issues; and Beijing’s latest attempt to blame someone else for the virus – Australian beef; and AP reports on how corruption in the disease-control system made the Wuhan outbreak far worse than it could have been…

China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention gave test kit designs and distribution rights exclusively to three then-obscure Shanghai companies with which officials had personal ties…

In the meantime, the CDC and its parent agency, the National Health Commission, tried to prevent other scientists and organizations from testing for the virus with their own homemade kits … These measures contributed to not a single new case being reported by Chinese authorities between Jan. 5 and 17, even though retrospective infection data shows that hundreds were infected. The apparent lull in cases meant officials were slow to take early actions such as warning the public, barring large gatherings and curbing travel.

A thread of anti-Australian vitriol from followers of a Chinese patriotic commentator. In a similar vein, mass-panty-wetting about a Korean TV show featuring a glimpse of a Taiwan flag.

Reuters on how Chinese money-brokers help Latin American drug cartels launder their proceeds (basically using a hawala type of system).

CSIS article and video on why China’s new commercial aircraft – supposedly a rival to the A320/B737 – is a heap of junk.

And credit where it’s due, since we’re a bit heavy on the China-bashing today: China Daily does a cartoon that’s possibly around 30% funny. Strange times.

At the other end of the comic spectrum, here’s Justin Wong’s ‘That City’.

Also on an aviation theme, Tom Wolfe explains why elite test pilots and wannabes affect a West Virginian accent.

Monday was brought to you by a whole load of arrests after the CUHK assembly (people inciting secession aka shouting slogans). The freezing of Ted Hui’s bank accounts stops and then starts again (complete with ‘international front’ scare, and colluding with foreign forces by Facebook). And it seems HSBC (or at least the HK Police, or at least the CCP) have frozen a charitable church’s account.

For lack of anything new to say on this incessant ‘lawfare’ overload, let’s look at an SCMP report, ‘Mainland-born, Hong Kong-based financiers launch new Bauhinia Party’. The paper quotes James Tien and Regina Ip, who sound amusingly condescending to what they no doubt see as a rival.

First thing to remember: ‘political parties’ in Hong Kong have no role to play in competing for power in a representative system. Before being squeezed out, pan-dem parties took part in the charade even though they had no chance of forming an administration or having any input into policy. The main pro-Beijing groups, on the other hand, have always been United Front operations – designed to absorb, co-opt and unify parts of the populace in a top-down system of control. 

So what is this new ‘party’ about? It could be a semi-altruistic vanity project – but why would these high-powered financiers take an interest in fanciful political-sounding matters like reform of the legislature or creating a ‘democratic political system best suited to Hong Kong’? Maybe one of these figures fancies being Chief Executive and wants to prove his worth. But don’t bankers have better things to do? Or it could be a convoluted attempt to win public backing for their own agendas – but why bother when they can do all their lobbying behind closed doors.

Assuming the new group in fact has Liaison Office support, it looks like Beijing wants a more disciplined and loyal business community. The existing pro-business/establishment parties (Liberals and the spin-off Business and Professionals Association) are splintered, self-serving and unreliable – like the old-style local tycoons they basically represent. 

Since the Legislative Council is henceforth to be no more than a Mainland-style rubber-stamp, the newly formed party is probably not really aimed at building a voting bloc in the assembly. The idea would be to use LegCo, quasi-elections and the rest of the (mainly ceremonial) ‘political’ structure as a pretext for a new umbrella organization that tightens and deepens CCP control over the main business sectors. 

With Mainland or Mainland-connected businessmen as figureheads, such a group could, in theory, attract local business leaders eager to network and shoe-shine, or at least to avoid missing out or appearing insufficiently loyal. The long-term plan would be for local and Mainland business interests to merge and develop a common identity – with correct guidance, of course.

It seems the Bauhinia Party’s leaders are in finance. This might reflect Beijing’s view of Hong Kong primarily as a capital-raising/money-laundering hub where Chinese state-linked companies (and CCP elites) can dollarize Mainland assets. It’s also a sector where the worlds of Beijing, Mainland tycoons and the Hong Kong business community overlap.

The group’s ambitious membership target, if serious, suggests it might even be aiming to strengthen United Front influence throughout the business, professional and establishment-friendly middle-class parts of the population. By offering perceived opportunities and connections – or just prestige – it could evolve into something like a Hong Kong bourgeois-friendly equivalent of the Communist Party on the Mainland. The DAB/FTU would still perform that role in the public-housing estates. James and Regina would be nowhere to be seen. 

And now back to today’s latest arrests.

Tip of the day: if you’re feeling old, read the dates of birth of the NPC Standing Committee vice-chairmen just sanctioned by the US. You’ll feel so much younger.

We start the week with Ted Hui, now in the UK, on people’s minds. This is partly because of his record as a lawmaker and activist – described in this tribute, and this one. (While we’re at it, a Vice bio of Agnes Chow.) It is also partly because CCP/Police retaliation against him and his family has struck a raw nerve.

The NatSec Regime is succeeding in stimulating ever more chatter about leaving Hong Kong. A few months back, the talk was about where and when to go, but the conversations are getting more detailed about preparations and precautions. 

Should we sell our apartment sooner, and rent a place, rather than wait until we’re definitely leaving? Do we make a pre-emptive move now or risk having to pull the kids from school at a bad time a year or two ahead? How exactly do middle-class households move their savings out of the CCP’s grasp? Seriously – what is the alternative to HSBC, which has frozen (and partially unfrozen) Ted Hui’s family’s accounts? Would the local branch of Citibank say no to the NatSec Gestapo? If jailing activists on trumped-up charges doesn’t stir you, how does losing all your money sound?

In Foreign Affairs, former CCP insider and academic Cai Xia – who called Xi Jinping a ‘mafia boss’ – writes on the failure of the party. Interesting account of her growing disillusionment in the post-Cultural Revolution era, for example with the dogmatic distortions used to align Marxist ideology with Jiang Zemin’s capitalist-friendly ‘Three Represents’. 

Once a loyal member of the CCP, I was secretly harboring doubts about the sincerity of its beliefs and its concern for the Chinese people.

I felt for the first time that the system I had long considered sacred was in fact unbearably absurd.

I saw that the highly centralized, oppressive version of Marxism promoted by the CCP owed more to Stalin than to Marx himself. I increasingly recognized it as an ideology formed to serve a self-interested dictatorship. 

And, as with Ted Hui’s family, the CCP thinks nothing of just grabbing her savings…  

Soon, I was expelled from the party. The school stripped me of my retirement benefits. My bank account was frozen.

Pamela Ho, aged 12, makes an official complaint about the valiant HK Police dragging her to the ground when she was out shopping for art supplies in Mongkok. My prediction: next week, 30 cops will raid her home and arrest her for incitement to seditiously possess a furry Hello Kitty dangling from her school bag.

She will then be denied bail and put in jail until a trial in April. At least, that’s what has happened to Jimmy Lai, following his arrest on suspicion of breaching the lease terms of an office. (HK Watch statement on the case.) Tam Tak-chi will be in jail until May awaiting trial in a NatSec Court for things like ‘uttering seditious words’. Ted Hui is well out of it.

Some links for the weekend…

Much of Beijing officials’ argument justifying the NatSec Law, arrests, purges and attacking 12-year-old girls draw on Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt. ‘Class struggle’ just doesn’t cut it these days. Atlantic explains.

District Council member Michael Mo’s op-ed for DW on what the imprisonment of Joshua Wong means. (Also in Chinese.)

The SCMP is now pushing the CCP fake news that Covid originated outside China. Could this be the same SCMP that reported last March that the virus was first documented in the Mainland as early as November 2019? Yes it could!

In the paper itself, legal academics propose a de facto amnesty for people arrested during protests. They are right in saying that the arrests and trials are breeding resentment when the community needs reconciliation (you could argue the politicized nature of the arrests and prosecutions – often with little evidence – is bringing government agencies into disrepute). But they miss the fact that the CCP is behind this, and control through fear is all that matters.

Most right-thinking people instinctively know that pro-Beijing lawmaker Holden Chow is a waste of space. But he has asked a legislator’s question about a noble and selfless bunch we’ve all seen on TV and wondered about. All you want to know about the Dead Removal Teams.

Leftists are dismayed at Hongkongers’ insistence on fighting the CCP without prioritizing the need for workers’ solidarity against evil capitalism. Meanwhile, some anti-CCP activists in Hong Kong – eg nativists – are getting caught up in far-right conspiracy theories (happens in Taiwan too). Lausan tries to figure it all out. If in doubt, blame colonialism.

While we’re blaming colonialism: fascinating thread on how defunct 19th Century Cantonese pronunciation lives on in Hong Kong’s romanized place names.

Bitter Winter on Xi Jinping’s new blockbuster On the Party’s Propaganda and Ideological Work, which includes such gems as…

…we must continue to accept the nourishment of Marxist philosophical wisdom, and more consciously adhere to and apply the dialectical materialist world outlook and methodology.

If that’s not enough, here’s China Media Project on a faux pas by state media. Someone at Xinhua mentioned ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’ alongside ‘Xi Jinping Thought on a Strong Military’ as if they are of the same status. But the former is supposed to evolve over time into plain ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, which will be an umbrella for – guiding – all the sub-Xi Jinping Thoughts (on the Military, Diplomacy, Jelly Beans, etc), and ultimately on a par with ‘Mao Zedong Thought’. So, big slap on wrist for a news editor. Phew.

From Nikkei Asia, more and more countries are rejecting China’s claims in the South China Sea.

In a rare display of common sense, Beijing will not make it illegal to point out that ‘traditional Chinese medicine’ is unscientific voodoo-crap. 

The Diplomat asks whether Taiwan has always been part of China. (Answer: occasionally, when it wasn’t Japanese or Dutch.)

Wednesday’s list of Signs the CCP is Turning Your City Into a Police State…

Yesterday morning, Baptist University student union leader Keith Fong was arrested in connection with various inane offenses relating to laser pointers. Over 20 cops turned up at his home. (How big is his apartment?)

More inane offenses yesterday afternoon, when Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam were sentenced for ‘unauthorized assembly’ and incitement. The magistrate handed out prison sentences of seven to 13 months, along with some tough law-and-order/deterrence language. 

Looks like a determined balancing act by a magistrate who knows the charges are borderline absurd, but also knows her career is at stake if she doesn’t put people behind bars. The three were bit-players in the protest, but to the CCP – obsessed with getting certain individuals in prison – the sentences probably seem too light.

This attracts considerable overseas attention. Behold the mass ranks of Agnes’s Japanese fans in anger.

And yesterday evening, Jimmy Lai and two of his managers were detained on charges of ‘fraud’. A flimsy thing about breaking lease conditions at Next Media’s Tseung Kwan O industrial estate premises, plus the recurrent theme of Beijing’s obsession with jailing prominent figures.

Also yesterday evening, pan-dem lawmaker Ted Hui’s parents, wife and children left Hong Kong, after Hui himself made a trip to Denmark. Looks like a one-way ticket.

A designated NatSec judge is to decide whether the sedition trial of People Power’s Tam Tak-chi should be heard by a NatSec judge, even though the pro-democracy activist has not been charged under the new legislation. (See Prof Simon Young’s comments below*** on why he doesn’t have to be.) The move was requested by the government, and the non-NatSec judge didn’t want to make the decision himself. The new parallel NatSec-authorized courts will of course obey CCP orders, because why else would they have been created?

More details about how Better-Red-Than-Expert managers at i-Cable tried to interfere with Mainland-related news stories.

Where the NatSec Regime is concerned, vindictiveness can be so petty it’s almost microscopic: the Correctional Services Dept is thinking of forcing female prisoners to have their hair cut when entering prison. This follows a court ruling that cutting only men’s hair broke anti-discrimination laws – and obviously officials can’t let Long Hair, who brought the case, win. (Actually an important point of principle for the CCP: an enemy of the regime must not be allowed to dictate government policy.)

***Interesting summary of Prof Simon Young’s discussion on the NatSec Law at the US Asia Law Institute forum.

From AFP, a timechart of repression in Hong Kong since the NatSec Law came into force (the ink’s not yet dry, but the graphic already needs updating).

And the cool, calm, unflappable, measured and moderate Hong Kong government takes a break from wetting itself about haircuts for prisoners and issues an epic 1,614-word press release whining about an Interfering-in-Internal-Affairs statement by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.