Big Lychee, Various Sectors

After a smear campaign in Beijing’s propaganda sheets (hurriedly endorsed by local officials), the Professional Teachers Union disbands. The sudden move is presumably to pre-empt police raids, arrests, asset seizures and other Jimmy Lai-style lawfare bombardment. In snuffing out Hong Kong’s biggest independent union – founded 49 years ago – the CCP is dismantling an extensive social/retail/health network employing some 200 staff. Vandalizing civil society. (Quick thread on the pros and cons of disbanding.)

This comes soon after the Progressive Lawyers Association and other pan-dem groups have shut down. (If only the prima donnas at the Democratic Party would get the message and vanish – these guys will still be bickering with each other after they’ve been rounded up at bayonet-point and sent down to the countryside to clean out pigs.)

For all their newfound overt patriotism, our bureaucrats seem nervous about what a Leninist regime headed by an apparently devout Marxist might do to the local markets. Hence uncertainty about whether Beijing’s anti-sanctions law should be applied in Hong Kong delicately via the rubber-stamp legislature or bluntly via a Basic Law annex/imperial edict. The real issue is whether the CCP ever wants to actually use this device to penalize companies (like HSBC) that simply cannot refuse to comply with US sanctions. Carrie Lam, apparently feeling no ill-will at being a sanctions target herself, says it will be an ‘inactive law’.

An RTHK TV channel will go Full CCTV, with patriotic Mainland shows galore. More here if you’re addicted to binge-watching CCP historical dramas. 

Is China using the BNO migrant system to infiltrate the UK with CCP spies? Some fear pro-Beijing folks sneaking into the lifeboats and intimidating pan-dem sympathizers in the UK; others fear tabloids stirring up suspicions about all Hong Kong migrants. The thing is, more than a few ‘blue’ households are probably getting out of Hong Kong for the same reasons as anyone else. Hypocritical, but toadies don’t want their kids brainwashed either. 

There is, of course, a long history of sleeper agents from despotic regimes infiltrating free societies and deciding they rather like it, going native, and living the good life while sending meaningless reports back to HQ for decades. Don’t be surprised when a Yuen Long white-shirt thug ends up joining a fox hunt in Shropshire.

If you like seeing garbage about RMB internationalization being torn (politely) to shreds – a Michael Pettis thread.

Beijing semi-breaks diplomatic relations with Lithuania as the latter hosts a Taiwan office that uses the name ‘Taiwan’. Globular Times goes gloriously, deliciously nuts.

In case you’re wondering what he’s doing all day – new Chief Secretary John Lee says all hopeful Election Committee candidates will have their past words, deeds and interviews scrutinized. He and his Vetting Committee will thus make sure only sincere patriots take part (even though they don’t have enough time to do thoughts). 

This will worry hundreds of businessmen and other ‘secular’ pro-Beijing shoe-shiners who want to win seats on the (essentially) rubber-stamp body. They want to do this for the same reason they have sucked up to the CCP since becoming ‘instant-noodle patriots’ in the 1980s: it served their personal interests (not to mention their vanity). The pre-Xi national leadership was happy with that, but it is no longer good enough. Chances are that no big names will find themselves rejected, but they will understand the message – and realize that they are in a trap.

By contrast, the devout and faithful can face the inquisition with a clear conscience. A CCP-friendly union boss talks of getting on the Election Committee as a way to fix the problems caused in Hong Kong by ‘capitalists’, including housing – the main source of profits for the tycoon shoe-shiners.

Meanwhile the Justice Dept decides that Frederic Choi – NatSec cop found at an illicit ‘massage’ place in Wanchai – is innocent of any crime. (“Is he a speech therapist?” “No, Mr Prosecutor SC, he’s a Senior Assistant Deputy Chief Vice [wink] Sub-Inspector.” “Oh well, that’s OK then!”) The really cool thing: he’s made HK Police director of personnel and training – which (you know it’s going to get better) covers discipline.

Some recommended reading for the next day or two…

Steve Vines in the Guardian on why he left Hong Kong. (Democratic Party leader Lee Wing-tat has also gone.)

SCMP op-ed: increasingly ‘uninvestible’ Hang Seng Index (ie Tracker Fund) as metaphor for Hong Kong as it is absorbed into Bay Area concept and Mainland governance.

The Globe and Mail on the decline of Hong Kong’s anti-corruption service…

…“the perversion of institutions is now so blatant that there are no longer any respectable excuses to pretend otherwise.”

A few HKFP pieces: an interview with film director Kiwi Chow; former district council members try to stay active as the NatSec regime squeezes out civil society; and how the government disregards the law in that process.

On Mainland affairs, an SCMP article on household debt in China: a Shenzhen couple struggling to pay mortgages on apparently three or four unsellable investment properties, while (presumably male) migrant workers are borrowing to pay big wedding dowries.

“Everyone’s loans and leverage are piling up. If you don’t increase yours, you will lag behind in wealth. Of course the risks are growing like crazy, but no one dares to lower leverage, neither the rich nor the government.”

Plus comment by Michael Pettis.

Willy Wo-lap Lam on Xi’s struggle to keep himself at the top (the second half has the meat)…

In the run-up to next year’s 20th Party Congress, Xi and his supporters are tipped to promulgate more internal and public regulations affirming the imperative of the leadership core staying in power as long as his health permits. 

Project Syndicate on Beijing’s apparent fiddling of its population stats…

…an analysis of the country’s age structure suggests that it has far fewer citizens than the census reported and that its population is already declining…

Western leaders are overestimating [China’s] economic and geopolitical prospects. They see a fire-breathing dragon when what stands before them is really a sick lizard. This raises the risk of strategic miscalculation on both sides.

Kevin Caricco’s latest on…

…a toxic bottom-up nationalism masquerading as official, while at the same time being intertwined with top-down official nationalism’s targeting of “foreign media.”

A Spectator column by a former UK diplomat on Chinese Olympic cyclists wearing Mao badges, and the IOC’s kowtowing to Beijing. Worth reading for the final para.

Obviously, the young Hong Kong woman who can hurl you to the ground and kick you senseless barefoot is called Grace.

By the same token, the guys running Hong Kong’s Justice Dept must be called Dick. Prosecutors change their minds and let Anthony Wong go (conditions apply, and alleged accomplice Au Nok-hin is in jail for various other spurious reasons). 

Why arrest Wong and drag him into court in the first place? Is there a scriptwriter/choreographer masterminding things behind the scenes, who thought this charge was too ludicrous to bother with? Specifically, did the overseer realize that far more pro-Beijing election candidates are guilty of having singers help with campaigning? Is the US$1 billion-a-year NatSec enforcement force running ahead of itself and becoming (by authoritarian-regime standards) an embarrassment? Will they drop broadly similar charges (buying ads) against Benny Tai? Should the once-independent ICAC investigate itself for becoming corrupted as a tool of political oppression?

In other shocking we-might-still-have-rule-of-law news, Chow Hang-tung is released on bail (HK$100,000, but better than months in jail).

Whenever there seems to be a tiny sign of a return to sanity, it’s tempting to think we’ve reached peak NatSec malevolence. But more likely, the NatSec beast is choking as it gorges itself on people with the wrong opinions. 

You can try and be nice, but good luck: a lame-sounding ‘centrist’ party wants to join in Hong Kong’s rigged all-patriot elections, but finds it’s not well-connected enough to find people to nominate its candidates. If you want to be a quisling, you’ve got to earn it.

Canada warns citizens that Hong Kong’s NatSec regime can trap you here. Ask the two Michaels how much help Ottawa will offer.

Weekend reading…

Hong Kong’s car-centric urban planning philosophy rushes headlong into the 1970s.

A HKFP explainer on a BBC explainer that annoyed the Chinese embassy.

Hyper-nationalist curses against the US. (Can we send Grace to sort her out?)

Will China adapt to Covid, since it can’t seal itself off from the planet, and its vaccines are kind of crummy?

“It may take them forever to reopen the border. They have no self-confidence and they don’t trust others. They know that their vaccines are not doing a good job in preventing infection,” Jin said. “They should have opened the border to Hong Kong [a long time ago] … However, they did not do anything even when we had zero cases for 50 days.”

Academic treatise on how Vitasoy became a national (or whatever) icon of Hong Kong.

How Xi Jinping became God.

Like trying to be accepted to an exclusive religious order – young Chinese people’s efforts to join the CCP. 

Why would you invest in a country run by a Marxist-Leninist?

It’s hard not to conclude that Xi has decided capitalism just isn’t for China. The country’s leadership is effectively nationalizing certain thriving sectors—or leaping in that direction—and dictating what can be done with profits. Adam Smith has left the building when Xi’s team are telling Alibaba Group and Tencent how to reinvest their earnings. Or, strong-arming food-delivery giant Meituan to hike wages.

It’s over. The best stock investment I ever made was Petrochina at HK$1.46 – sold it for above HK$15. No more.

Why does Shenzhen have (by China standards) San Francisco-level housing prices? (Clue: they borrowed Hong Kong land policy.) Instead of ‘fishing village’, we get ‘sleepy swamp once populated by farmers’ for a change.

Another contribution to the debate on where Covid-19 came from. Mojiang. Phylogeographic. Something to do with bats. (For enthusiasts only.)

Some totally off-topic YouTube stuff…

Japanese TV show Wall of Boxes – probably the stupidest thing you’ve seen for ages, or at least since the HK Justice Dept last prosecuted an activist. I was riveted.

One of Ronald Reagan’s last TV roles – Kraft (yes, it’s cheesy) Suspense Theatre, from 1964. Reagan plays a judge held hostage by a prisoner he convicted and sentenced to death. 

A bit more highbrow – a documentary on the intriguing Brendan Bracken.

And that time Prince Charles appeared as guest vocalist (‘Hong Kong people know best what is good for Hong Kong’) on a My Little Airport song.

RTHK English News Twitter gets rectified. Comments are no longer allowed, and all previous tweets – long universally adored for their high-quality and finely-gauged snark – deleted. Judging from one response, it seems someone new has moved in to handle media inquiries…

As HKFP puts it…

It is unclear if the broadcaster is aware that users may still screenshot their tweets or use the “quote” function to comment on them.

Someone has set up an alternative RTHK Twitter account that automatically posts all the headlines, just like the original – except readers are free to comment. (Until the site gets taken down for copyright infringement in – let’s guess – the next three working days. Of course, there is also a way to prevent people from using the screenshot/’quote’ fixes to comment on Twitter: imprison them for inciting hatred of the government, or blocking the whole Twitter website. Easy.)

The deleted tweets should all be archived here. RTHK Snark Greatest Hits compilations are already being compiled.

Enjoy things before they disappear.

On the subject of things vanishing, must-read of the week: Howard French on the ‘asphyxiation’ of China’s most cosmopolitan city as part of Xi Jinping’s vision of a nation that can live without foreign people and ideas.

Time for a quick horrors update… Having cleansed Hong Kong of the deadly speech therapists/cartoon sheep menace, police arrest pro-democracy activists for releasing a balloon. And, in what looks like an overly elaborate performance to reassure NatSec enforcement forces, HK University bars students who attended a union meeting from the campus. Apparently this will help preserve the institution’s reputation, or something.

A couple of good reads on the verdict in the Tong Ying-kit national security trial: Aaron Mc Nicholas and, in the SCMP, Michael Davis…

Pursuing the easier charge of causing grievous bodily harm by dangerous driving would have been supported by the court’s findings in this case and would not have caused grave concerns over the security of human rights in Hong Kong. We can only hope these issues will be addressed in the coming appeal.

I went to my first NatSec-era ‘leaving party’ a couple of weeks back – a farewell gathering for someone who had decided to get out of Hong Kong sooner rather than later. A small sign at the door stressed that the proceedings would remain confidential, but let’s say that among topics of conversation were: Are we being paranoid? Are we being paranoid enough?

Everyone has their own red lines. For some it is obviously personal or family safety. For many (maybe the majority of emigres so far?) it is kids – their education and their long-term happiness. For a fair number of us, it might be creeping Internet censorship and surveillance, or the nagging possibility of asset-seizure or a summary exit-ban. For some, maybe a fall in rents, or lack of an attractive alternative location, might tilt the balance in favour of staying in the only place they call home. At least until things get worse.

Online news outfit Initium is moving to Singapore, which is an odd, but maybe telling, choice. It is not a rabid anti-CCP operation.

Veteran journalist Steve Vines is moving to the UK after reportedly receiving threats – probably as a result of outspoken hosting of RTHK TV current affairs shows.

And artist Kacey Wong is off to Taichung (probably the coolest city in Taiwan, though I’d be tempted by Tainan). This time last year, he was optimistic about the future. Things are changing fast.

For context – Simon Cartledge’s diary in LRB…

Beijing knows it doesn’t have the support of most of the population and that the only way forward is coercion…

Trust between the government and the population is in tatters. This will take decades to play out. It’s too early to say who’s fucked.

When speech therapists were being led away for creating seditious cartoon sheep, you might have imagined that things can’t get any more stupid. But you would be wrong. The NatSec regime’s once-respected ICAC charges singer Anthony Wong and activist Au Nok-hin with an electoral offence. By singing at a 2018 campaign rally, the former Tat Ming Pair star ‘induced’ others to vote for Au. Electoral law forbids bribing someone to vote a particular way by providing ‘food, drink or entertainment’. 

You can witness the dastardly crime taking place here (singing starts at 2 mins). That thread  goes on to show numerous examples of celebrities and others singing for pro-Beijing candidates.

As with Benny Tai’s ICAC charge – buying newspaper ads urging the public to vote a particular way – Wong’s performance took place years ago, and no-one in law enforcement thought anything of it. That’s because buying ads and appearing at campaign rallies are perfectly legal and unexceptional ways for people to show support for parties or candidates. Activists in the pro-Beijing camp have long ‘induced’ voters with T-shirts, lunch-boxes, transport to polling stations and so on.

Up to now, it has seemed that the CCP’s aim is to use whatever means it can to persecute opposition figures, and the shredding of the ICAC’s, police and courts’ reputations has been a tragic side-effect. Now, it almost looks more the other way round: the plan is to destroy any integrity that remains in the law-enforcement, prosecutions and judicial systems through the bringing of almost-joke charges – and it’s the speech therapists and politically active Cantopop stars who are the collateral damage. 

Hong Kong’s hapless officials must keep a straight face as the CCP starts to look not just determined and ruthless, but nuts.

For decades, the Professional Teachers Union has been the biggest, indeed mainstream, body representing educators. Then, People’s Daily and Xinhua publish articles accusing it of being an ‘anti-China tumour’. Within just hours, the Hong Kong government announces that…

…it will no longer hold meetings with the union and its representatives, nor will they consult the group regarding education topics. Concerns and cases forwarded by the group will not be dealt with, teacher training courses held by the union will not be recognised, and PTU representatives may lose their seats in different government consultation groups, officials said.

Who makes Hong Kong government policy?

For a clue, consider that Benny Tai (already in jail) is now being pursued for supposed electoral malpractices committed in – but overlooked since – 2016. The ICAC thus joins the HK Police, Justice Dept prosecutors and others as…  

…previously respected – even admired – institutions … pressed into service and discredited in the eyes of the public by their efforts to display a becoming level of enthusiasm for reform, stability and one-party rule.

Other recent horrors: police arrest a man on suspicion of booing during the national anthem, and another one for ‘intimidation’ – namely urging a boycott of pro-Beijing businesses.

In the midst of this ongoing collapse of a once-free society, the SCMP turns increasingly desperate in its attempts to paint a brighter picture. 

Their democracy-hating columnist who emigrated to Canada sneers at other emigres and predicts that they will go scuttling back to Hong Kong. Hypocrisy aside, this refrain (heard also from Regina Ip and others) ignores some major differences between the pre-1997 flight from Hong Kong and today’s when the worst fears of that time are coming to pass. 

It also tends to exaggerate how awful things will be in the UK compared with Hong Kong. YouTube posts of delighted Hong Kong kids running around 1,200 sq ft HK$5 mn new-build semi-detached houses in UK suburbs suggest that not even a full restoration of Hong Kong’s autonomy would entice them back to their old rabbit hutch in Shatin. (Uncle Bob’s Escape from the Commies series meanwhile explores boat-hire options.)

The SCMP also produces a not-very-convincing feel-good story about ‘expats who think Hong Kong has a great future’. Obviously, no-one cares what a handful of older, wealthier, apparently establishment-friendly gwailos think: they have foreign passports and – blissfully – little idea of other people’s problems outside their homes on the Peak and in Clearwater Bay.

The real issue is several million Hongkongers, especially with young children, who face a crummy enough quality of life in tiny flats. who now see a future of brainwashing in schools and the crushing of civil society, rule of law and people with a conscience. Idea for the next SCMP article: how compelling do ‘Greater Bay Opportunities’ and 16.5% salaries tax sound to them?

More fun to watch than badminton: pro-Beijing ‘politician’ Starry Lee backtracks on her previous criticism of colleague Nicholas ‘Diu Lei Lo’ Muk, who freaked out about a black-shirted – thus evil, unpatriotic – member of the Hong Kong Olympic team.

If anyone thought for a brief moment that the Olympics might heal the rift between the Hong Kong people and the pro-Beijing camps/government, they can relax.

Starry originally distanced herself from Muk’s embarrassing outburst when a public backlash accused Muk of putting the athlete off his game. Now she reverses her stance after ultra-loyalist pro-CCP knuckle-draggers attack her. Meanwhile, police (paid by your taxes) are examining video footage of people at APM Mall allegedly failing to respect the national anthem during the screening of fencer Cheung Ka-long’s gold-medal ceremony. 

Some weekend links…

Bloomberg op-ed on Hong Kong’s Olympics effect…

For a few short days, it has been socially and politically acceptable once again to celebrate Hong Kong’s separate identity as part of the People’s Republic. 

HKFP on the weakening of Hong Kong’s civil society under the NatSec regime.

A long ProPublica story on Beijing’s Operation Fox Hunt, pursuing and intimidating fugitives anywhere in the world.

In the ‘it could be worse’ department, North Korea soldiers are mugging civilians for food. (Apparently not a new problem, but it’s getting worse – even after the country has shortened military service from 13 years to a mere eight.)

Your handy, illustrated guide to Xi Jinping Thought Research Centres.

The photos of Xinjiang that Kodak deleted.

I’ve noticed it, but never realized what it was: ‘Prison Gothic’ – the wonky hand-painted/stencilled Chinese characters found on older Hong Kong road signs.

For politico-historical-urban geography fans, Hong Kong, China: The Border as Palimpsest (cool title or what?) from the Made in China Journal. If you like that, you’ll probably also enjoy Embodied Borders: The Sino-British Maritime Frontier, 1950–1957 in the same publication. Indeed, geeky types who use words like ‘liminal’ will be in heaven reading Made in China Journal’s numerous articles on this broad theme – Narrating Mobility as an Achievement on the Shenzhen–Hong Kong Border (about the various travel-permit arrangements across the ‘boundary’); Border at the Centre of Myth: Fishing Village, Caiwuwei, Shenzhen (about the SEZ’s independent urban villages); Politically Correct Masks: Navigating the China Hong Kong Border During COVID-19; and The Enduring Importance of Space Within a Virtual Border: The Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s Trading Hall (about the trading hall, no less). 

Also on history: another interesting illustrated thread. Were Romans in Gansu 2,000 years ago? And did modern-day local governments use horribly tacky ways to claim they did in order to promote tourism? The answers won’t surprise you.

As well as a modest but still impressive haul of medals, the Olympics gives Hong Kong cause for celebration in the form of minor pro-Beijing politician Nicholas Muk, who manages to humiliate himself rather nicely over badminton shirts. Yet again we see: he who lives by the shoe-shine dies by the shoe-shine.

More on the Tong Ying-kit NatSec trial from Quartz… 

…the standard for criminalizing speech is now the possibility that a given word or phrase has multiple meanings, among which is at least one that authorities deem illegal, and not that the speaker specifically intended to make an unlawful expression. It also means that the onus is now on the speaker to prove that they did not mean something—an undeniably harder challenge than the prosecutor’s task of sketching out multiple interpretations.

Also Atlantic (for ‘home affairs’ here, read ‘security’).

David Webb comments on Financial Secretary Paul Chan’s appointment of a Financial Investigator into Next Digital. He points out that the role of FI has been superseded by other regulatory measures, so the move has no practical purpose (but it serves to persecute the CCP’s enemies, rather like weaponizing archaic conspiracy/incitement sedition laws against speech therapists).

Webb also wonders if the FS’s ‘political grandstanding’ could be aimed at impressing Beijing with a view to being in the running to be the next Chief Executive. Not that it makes much difference who occupies the post, but is Paul Chan – whatever else we might think of him – really that deranged? Maybe his intention is exactly the opposite: perhaps, by overtly kowtowing to Beijing, Chan is hoping the CCP will let him quit this hellish puppet administration and retire in peace somewhere far far away.

To no-one’s surprise, Hong Kong’s first ‘national security’ trial, with hand-picked judges and no jury, ends with a guilty verdict for Tong Ying-kit. Some discussion on the judgement, on what it means, and (in case you didn’t catch that) what it really means, bluntly. HK Watch’s reaction.

Essentially, if you were hoping that judges might protect freedom of speech, or the court show some independence, you were wrong. (But did anyone?) Tong is now liable for life in prison; whoever makes these decisions will probably order a sentence of 10 years or so, to balance ‘his first offense’ with ‘need to send serious message/gravity of crime’ blah blah. Judgement here if you can face it. When it comes to waving a flag, the defence lawyers might as well not show up.

Another fencing meme for you (or a piano version if you like).

Thomas Piketty and Li Yang’s paper analyzing the significant rise in inequality in Hong Kong since 1997 is pretty damning. The main paper is here. Not an especially easy read (non-native English-speakers and economists), but tons of comparative data showing Hong Kong as a real outlier in terms of inequality. Plus it coins a nice phrase – ‘pluto-communism’.

The research predates the 2019-onwards protests and NatSec regime, and focuses on effects rather than policy or other causes. It notes rising female participation, rising education levels, the fall of manufacturing/rise of services, and thus the rising role (and wages) of professionals and managers (all found in many economies since the 1980s). But it does not examine such specifics as the impact of a million low-skilled Mainland immigrants, the role of Hong Kong in storing/processing Mainland wealth, or the city’s perverse land/housing policies. Needless to say, housing prices have been a major contributor to wealth inequality…

Hong Kong’s ?? ℎ?????? started in quite low level compared to other economies in 1980s. Driven by the soaring of the assets price, it then raised to 363% national income in 1997. During the Asia Financial Crisis, it fell badly to 122% of national income in 2002; ever since it has raised phenomenally, in 2018 ?? ℎ?????? reach to 450%, which is unparalleled by any other economies since 1980. 

On the subject of Hong Kong’s financial-services sector’s focus on Mainland opportunities…

A good dummy’s guide to Evergrande, plus Anne Stevenson-Yang on the repercussions of Beijing’s clampdown on China’s tech companies…

We are now witnessing the roll-up of the Chinese reform experiment. There is only one direction for this to go, and it’s not pleasant for foreign investors.