Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Trying to look on the bright side, the SCMP Business section asks whether this is a good time to go bargain-hunting for undervalued stocks. While it may not be in the best of taste to talk about it during a deadly disease outbreak, there is nothing ghoulish about attending to your long-term retirement needs. Those of us who bought during SARS and the 2008 crash did OK and hurt no-one. Just don’t be silly…

Lockdowns have created a pent-up demand for travel, Tam argues, which will also eventually help battered Macau casino stocks, of which she especially likes Galaxy Entertainment.

Over in the Op-Ed pages, however, they are being more philosophical.

Mild-mannered and innocuous Mike Rowse drifts towards raving pan-dem sloganizing, calling for economic restructuring away from vested interests and, most of all, fundamental political reform. He doesn’t say what that means, but he contrasts Carrie Lam’s dismal leadership with the sensible, capable working-mom style of New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. Moderate commentators of this sort are supposed to mumble politely about having to be realistic, accommodate Beijing, gradual and orderly, blah blah.

And with all the vehemence of Bernie Sanders, Andy Xie blasts the ruling Davos elites who ‘should go to jail for criminal negligence’ for focusing on asset-bubble-creating bailouts rather than the health and well-being of the people. Hong Kong’s real-estate scam comes in for special attention…

Hong Kong’s property market is a small but extremely egregious example of screwing people over for the benefit of the rich … [It] is at best a screw-the-poor and rob-the-middle-class plot to benefit the rich and powerful, often in the guise of an everybody-can-get-rich casino. This crisis has exposed it as a bloodsucking conspiracy against the people. Is a revolution avoidable?

So far, even a serious correction in Hong Kong’s gravity-oblivious property market seems ‘avoidable’. But it will take an exceptionally strong stomach to scoop up apparently cheap stocks this time round.

In a reminder that normal life continues, Luckin Coffee – China’s always-unconvincing Starbucks wannabe – goes down the tubes. Hong Kong (ie Beijing) delays granting a visa to Australia’s new Consul-General owing to some Panda-tantrum or other. Hong Kong’s courts rule that, under some circumstances, police can access phones without a warrant.

In its latest make-it-up-as-we-go-along anti-virus measure, the Hong Kong government shuts all bars for two weeks. The city’s bartenders tell Carrie Lam what they think of her in a video – it’s not pretty…

The government also issues a CCP-tinged statement condemning RTHK for its WHO interview…

It is common knowledge that the WHO membership is based on sovereign states. RTHK, as a government department and a public service broadcaster, should have [a] proper understanding of the above without any deviation

The station – proudly intent on going to the chopping block with its head held high – responds with a polite ‘Rubbish’.

‘In a move likely to anger China’, I declare the weekend open with a round-up of the best examples (after weeding out dozens) of the Great 2020 WHO/CCP-Mutilation Frenzy…

Reuters wins Headline of the Week Award for: Non-Existent Country Run by Cat-Owning Spinster Gives WHO Massive Kicking (cont’d).

(A reminder that Taiwan’s success in keeping the Wuhan virus at bay is not due to Confucianism, not to democracy, but to… this. Also, perhaps more prosaically, while we’re at it, this.)

From French think-tank Institut Montaigne, a fairly even-handed but ultimately damning account of the WHO’s Panda-pandering, including a less-than-flattering assessment of Hong Kong’s Margaret Chan (if you’re in a hurry, summary here).

Less even-handed, perhaps: Sky News Oz lays into the WHO’s puke-inducing sycophancy and servitude.

Bloomberg on US intelligence’s report on China’s cover-up, quoting Senator Ben Sasse…

“…this much is painfully obvious: The Chinese Communist Party has lied, is lying, and will continue to lie about coronavirus to protect the regime.”

SCMP/Politico report that US Senator Martha ‘never trusted a Communist’ McSally calls for WHO boss Tedros to resign, and proposes that China write off all its loans to the US.

And (don’t say we don’t look far and wide) the Madras Courier (founded 1785, no less): How China and the WHO Orchestrated A Global Genocide.

Plus, Inappropriately Annoying Jaunty and Happy Audio Track of the Month Award goes to the Hong Kong Consumer Council.

On more general matters…

Reuters on the ‘new hawks’ taking over China’s foreign affairs. (Bill Bishop of Sinocism points out that mouth-frothing foreign affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian has support among the Mainland public and from Xi Jinping – and asks whether the younger generation of PLA officers are also anti-American hawks.)

It hardly needs to be said, but a reminder from HKFP that the virus isn’t doing much to boost China’s fantasy about annexing Taiwan. Reuters (again) looks at the country’s identity/branding challenge.

Clive Hamilton, author of Silent Invasion, sees CCP infiltration of the UK.

From SupChina, authorities in Qingdao demolish an illegal structure – not your everyday Hong Kong-style rooftop hut, but a whole development of tacky villas covering a small peninsula.

SupChina also offers a dummy’s guide to Lei Feng.

And something completely irrelevant, for those in quarantine. According to photographer Félix Nadar (it says here), the Paris Catacombs is “one of those places that everyone wants to see and no one wants to see again.” He never met my mother, who first visited the gruesome tunnels when a schoolgirl in the 1930s (on a trip to the French capital that also involved a chance meeting with King Zog), and insisted I took her back for her 75th birthday. For newbies. or people who can stomach it a second time, a vivid virtual tour.

Finally, thoughts involving retail-industry jargon on the sad demise of the 1881 Heritage branch of Tiffany’s, leaving Hong Kong with but 12 others…

Following an outbreak of COVID-19 at one, the Hong Kong government closes karaoke places – plus nightclubs and mahjong parlours – as it has already with gyms and cinemas. Massage and beauty salons will be subject to similar precautions as cafés, restaurants and bars. The announcement was sudden and muddled. People are curious about why the sleaze-dens weren’t included in the original round of restrictions.

Could it be that they are associated with patriotic triads and/or widely assumed to be fronts for ‘pillar industry’ money-laundering and/or frequented by off-duty cops? Or is it that Chief Executive Carrie Lam, tormented by visions of plague-ridden drunken Westerners rutting in Lan Kwai Fong gutters, overlooked down-market local entertainment venues? Or perhaps, in her Catholic-schoolgirl innocence, she never realized such a demi-monde exists. Or she equated singing with godly wholesomeness.

Another mystery involves the crash two days ago of a PLA helicopter in foggy and hilly Tai Lam Country Park. The aircraft flew into a power line. As the SCMP puts it, ‘no injuries were reported’. RTHK tells us the official statement didn’t mention the crew but said ‘no local resident was injured’. RFA mentions a report that four crew died (as do Apple Daily and others).

A resident of a country park notes that PLA exercises involving helicopters landing troops – apparently from over the border – have been common over the last year. We can only guess what they are training for. Perhaps pre-emptive abduction of pro-dem hikers and picnickers? Or maybe reinforcement of Tai Mo Shan when it is the last, Dien Bien Phu-type holdout of the occupying colonizers, surrounded by yellow-ribbon guerilla forces?

A retired cop quotes one of the historic figures commemorated in Escalator-Land and asks why the Hong Kong Police are further damaging their standing in the community by pulling such stunts as a late-night arrest of a pro-democrat politician. (Aside from archaic sedition laws, the cops are also using new anti-crowding rules against protesters and to harass restaurants linked to pro-dems.)

Simple answer: the HKPF is not concerned with its ‘standing in the community’ – it is very obviously not even under the control of the civilian government of Hong Kong. It is answerable only to Beijing’s officials. Which is why, as the rest of the city fights a disease outbreak, the cops are continuing their relentless campaign to suppress the CCP’s perceived enemies. From the ground in Hong Kong, it looks absurd, incongruous and plain witless. To the knuckle-draggers up in the hierarchy of the HK and Macau Affairs Office, there’s a vulnerable one-party state to protect.

If pepper-spraying reporters at Prince Edward Station doesn’t work, here’s an even more eye-watering method to encourage social-distancing: a ‘Yikes!’-inducing diagram showing how far back they put those enormous Q-tips to take a swab.

The Hong Kong government’s latest round of anti-virus measures have closed swimming pools, gyms and cinemas entirely. Seating in restaurants and coffee shops has been reduced by at least 50% to give patrons (rather pleasant) space. Officials have also seen fit to take public barbecue pits and kids’ playing-ground equipment out of service. Thus we are encouraged to do social-distancing, not mingle and preferably stay home. During leisure time.

But then the morning comes around, and half the Hong Kong population board buses and MTR trains and walk along narrow, crowded sidewalks and squeeze into cramped elevators. The ‘no groups of more than four’ and ‘keep 1.5m apart’ rules suddenly don’t apply. It’s commute-to-the-office time, so such precautions are somehow unnecessary. (Except for civil servants who are ‘working from home’ ha ha.)

What is the official logic for this inconsistency? ‘We must strike a balance’? ‘We are monitoring the situation and may consider additional precautions in due course and are hoping to achieve consensus with various sectors’? ‘The Li Ka-shing effect that keeps typhoons at bay during daytime Mon-Fri works on viruses too’? ‘Well [shrug] it’s better than nothing’? (This last one is actually honest and makes some sense.)

Just as you thought you can’t stomach another article/post on face masks – here’s an interesting one about the legal and other pitfalls of sourcing the things…

China would prefer to see its good quality PPE go to countries it likes and not  to countries it doesn’t like. 

And, because we can’t resist, some more details on how the WHO snubs Taiwan, even when the country offers to share important info.

First, a clarification from the Hong Kong Police: they have not, as previously announced, uncovered terrorists building a hydrogen bomb. It was a ‘chlorine bomb’. This is the same police force that is now presuming the right to take down and arrest admins of websites for carrying ‘seditious’ material. (Do they mean ‘bottle of bleach’, perhaps?)

While the HKPF are fighting imaginary terror plots, two real global wars are taking place: one is between humanity and the Wuhan virus pandemic; the other pits truth against lies.

The World Health Organization is a major participant in both conflicts. And the UN body magnificently wins Cringe-Inducing Video Clip of the Week Award as one of its top Beijing-coddling officials pretends not to hear an RTHK journalist’s question about the Country that Must Not Be Mentioned. The doctor then cuts the Skype connection in a valiant attempt to feign invisibility. Inspired by this approach, the WHO promptly erases the guy from its website.

Oddly, a dash of public-relations sanity suddenly appears. Out with the silence and even with the mumbled ‘China’s Taipei and environs Province of China’ references. In what could almost be ‘a move certain to anger China’, a WHO press release gingerly acknowledges that Taiwan exists and has a (rather enviable) record of its own so far in handling the virus. But not before millions of people have watched the video and relished with glee the horrifyingly embarrassing performance. They don’t often come this juicy.

Although the WHO can’t openly address its quandary, the justification for flattering the Chinese leadership and promoting its fictions is presumably that it’s the lesser of two evils. The alternative is that China refuses to cooperate at all, and the world is even less equipped to fight the disease. But the planet’s taxpayers can be forgiven for wondering how the CCP managed to convince Mr Tedros and colleagues to submit to the CCP’s exceptionalism so enthusiastically – and how/why the bureaucrats imagined the rest of us wouldn’t notice/mind.

And people are noticing. Mild-mannered Scandinavian dignitary Carl Bildt blasts the CCP/WHO for the cover-up. Italians are seriously pissed with Beijing. And (even if it is the Daily Mail) – could the UK government be waking up to the true nature of the CCP?

Meanwhile, the ‘soft power’ goes on giving. Beijing encourages racism to facilitate its instant rewriting of history to portray the pandemic as a foreign imported threat. And don’t forget that you can drive the virus out of the body by rubbing your belly button (in the right direction).

Not for the first time, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam abandons a dumb idea after everyone points out it’s stupid. But instead of waiting months while everything blows out of control, she has made her U-turn within days.

The ‘rethink’ is over the matter of whether banning bars and restaurants from selling alcohol would help counter the spread of the Wuhan Virus.

To Carrie and her advisors, there was some sort of compelling and intuitive logic to the idea – but it was hard for them to spell it out as it concerned icky people doing the sort of icky things that they apparently do. Skeptics doubted that preventing the icky things was practicable or very effective, or if there was even any connection. It could have been very confusing, but fortunately vested interests who would have lost money waded into the argument, and an instant climbdown ensues.

I declare the weekend open with some virus-laden links to browse through over a pint at your local pub…

Human Rights Watch blasts Cheng Lai-king’s arrest for ‘seditious intent’: “Arresting a pro-democracy politician for seeking police accountability is political persecution, not legitimate policing,” The Atlantic sees a gloomy future for rule of law and independent courts in Hong Kong.

On the other hand, the US magazine is wowed by Hong Kong’s response to the Xi virus. Singapore’s education minister explains why there’s no need to shut schools.

Reuters describes the virus’s impact on China’s economy as ‘eye-popping’. And Foreign Policy explains why Xi Jinping is desperate to get the economy back on its feet.

A quick article from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs on how the CCP’s insecurity is feeding into China’s foreign and domestic policy.

Many calm and thoughtful people tell us that, with a deadly pandemic sweeping the world, this is not the time for finger-pointing. But common sense surely says it’s never too early to lay blame where it’s due and makes the bastards responsible squirm. The Hill gives both Beijing and the WHO a swift but well-aimed kicking. And War on the Rocks ponders how we could sue China for trillions for unleashing the virus on the world.  

China Media Project delves into officials’ warnings to Wuhan hospital staff to ‘speak politics’ as a way of silencing them in the early days of the outbreak. In HKFP, Reporters Without Borders look at how China’s censorship contributed to the pandemic. ProPublica on how China uses Twitter to push propaganda on Hong Kong and the coronavirus. Republican senators are calling for a US counter-offensive against Chinese disinformation.

And there’s more! National Review wags (rather than points) its finger at China’s mask-hoarding habits. And here’s an interesting thread on how a United Front creepo in the Czech Republic seems to have been profiteering from face masks and other medical equipment, and diverting supplies intended to be humanitarian aid and other classic murky sordid patriotic businessman overseas stuff.

On a lighter note – from HKFP, play a game of ‘Spot the Illegal Structures’ with some soothing aerial views of Hong Kong.

The dead-of–night arrest of pro-dem District Councillor Cheng Lai-king for resending a Facebook post looks like vindictiveness on the part of Asia’s Bitterest. But the possibility that the cops will try to charge her with ‘seditious intent’ suggests a more sinister and calculated step in the long march to Mainlandization. Good commentary on this here and here.

As you might gather from the wording…

…the ‘seditious intent’ law is a tad out of date. It is one of the old and (we were told in 2003) no longer usable offences that would have been modernized and absorbed into the National Security Law required under Article 23.

Some of the more odious among the pro-Beijing crowd have of course been calling for work on an Article 23 law to be speeded up. However, the Article 23 brand is toxic, and after the Extradition Bill fiasco and the 2019 uprising the government would have to be insane to exhume the thing. Then again, to Hong Kong’s new knuckle-draggers in the HK and Macau Affairs/Liaison Office, it might be insane not to.

Alternatively, Beijing could issue imperial edicts – Basic Law ‘interpretations’ – to conjure into being whatever new meanings to existing laws it wishes. The next Chief Justice is reputedly laid back (or maybe just fatalistic) about this rule-by-law device.

Not the first late-night knock on an opposition politician’s door, of course. Certainly not the last.

(More here on the cops’ duplicitous communications on this case, which even by current standards seems to stink.)

Most Pitiful-but-Funny Event of the Month for last September, we will recall, was the leaking of the Hong Kong government’s failure to convince any public relations agency to help try to reverse the drastic decline in the city’s international reputation. (Flashbacks here, here and of course here.)

HK Free Press reports that the Carrie Lam administration is not be deterred, and will do the job itself via a 50% boost in spending on the Information Services Dept for overseas promotional work.

As is readily apparent to anyone who looks at ISD communications material, the department comprises civil servants whose main target audience is the boss. Hence such sophisticated and persuasive messaging as Don’t Do Drugs Because They’re Not Nice – Let’s All Not Do Drugs! Sure enough, HKFP digs around the small print of the 2020-21 Budget and finds the ISD mission focusing on buzzwords our superiors will approve, like ‘Belt and Road’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘quality living’.

As the PR agencies no doubt explained to Carrie last year: this is not an image problem – it’s a substance problem.

Hong Kong is suffering a serious lack of government legitimacy. Rather than fix that (which the CCP refuses to allow), the authorities are trying to eliminate the main symptom, namely the protest movement, by bludgeoning it out of existence. The wider world sees this on its TV screens – and Hong Kong’s reputation as a stable, free city collapses.

The ISD’s strategy will be to transpose the government’s same inappropriate, counterproductive and heavy-handed response onto the field of communications. Rather than concede there is a problem, the PR campaign will insist that everything is fine, blaring out the same old slogans about rule of law and hubs. We can bludgeon the audience into believing!

McLuhan’s ‘medium is the message’ happening before our eyes.

A little morale-boost for the ISD spin-doctors as they start their work: the cruelest part of the September leak was that PR agencies refused to pitch for the Hong Kong account because it would harm their reputations. Ouch.

…some outfit at the Science Park. 

Today’s question is: can Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam find a way to use the Wuhan Virus to make herself look more ridiculous? And the answer is that she certainly can, proposing a ban on the sale of alcohol at bars and restaurants.

This was no doubt prompted by sensational tabloid exposes of a virus-carrying Westerner frequenting Lan Kwai Fong and having multiple/frequent/frenzied one-night stands. To add to the tabloids’ prurient freaking-out, it was a female. For extra added frisson, she was of an advanced age (well, 50) when she should have been knitting socks for cats or running Taiwan or something.

Critics accuse our cloistered bureaucrats of being puritanical or at least pandering to some ‘boozy rutting aging gwaipo’ stereotype. But in fact something else is going on.

What we are seeing here is the Hong Kong civil service’s obsessive-compulsive hyper-specificity – zeroing in on a high-profile but minuscule and barely relevant aspect of a problem, while of course missing the bigger picture.

Recent examples would include the (pre-pestilence) attempt to ban face masks on the assumption that these caused anti-government protests, and the subsequent bizarre (COVID-19-era) ban on charities buying yellow or black masks (on similar grounds).

This is a long tradition. Years ago, after a spate of trees falling and killing people, officials decided to attach a unique personal identity tag to every large-ish plant in Hong Kong. Another example was the shotcreting of every slope after one fatal landslide.

Perhaps the finest example came after a distraught man went nuts with flammable liquid at an Immigration Department office and burnt a staff member to death. Presumably, officials reviewed security in general, but their Big Idea was to issue personnel special vests with built-in fire extinguishers – as if this freakish and tragic scenario would become a regular event.

To the extent that ‘Westerners drinking and becoming intimate’ pose a public health risk, the government should consider blanket shut-downs of all restaurants and bars plus other non-essential gatherings like weddings for a few weeks. But it’s perhaps more palatable/cheaper to focus on specific, easily identifiable sub-groups and activities. The administration is (I hear) currently pondering how to stop domestic helpers from congregating on Sundays.