Big Lychee, Various Sectors

A mysterious killer-plague virus spread from wombat-to-human is on the loose out of Wuhan. Hong Kong undergoes a sudden outbreak of face-masks. It will be interesting to see how much Chinese officialdom has learned since SARS. (When they tried to cover it up: a reminder of how the CCP killed nearly 300 Hongkongers in 2003.)

In theory, Mainland bureaucrats today should understand the need for transparency. But the reality is that China now has tighter censorship and greater rule-by-fear under an Emperor-for-Life screwing up one thing after another (swine flu, Hong Kong, Taiwan). For the sake of the personality cult, things cannot get nasty. If the disease does turn out to be seriously deadly and spreads overseas, the regime will need someone to blame or something to distract attention, big time.

Don’t panic! It would be nice to think that Hong Kong too is better prepared than 17 years ago. But the intervening period, we joyously recall, has been all about ‘integration’. We now have a convenient high-speed rail connection to – yippee – Wuhan. We have a government that was last seen trying to convince the courts to let it ban face-masks (for public safety, yes). And then there’s the little matter of credibility. When Tung Chee-hwa spoke, you knew you were going to hear something stupid; with Carrie Lam, you know it’s probably going to be a lie.

Update: not wombats, but bamboo rats.

Update: not bamboo rats, but snakes.

Just as you thought Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam couldn’t get any more out of touch, she goes off to Davos. Her arrival at the stale annual self-parody bore-fest coincides with a Moody’s kick in the teeth. It says…

The downgrade principally reflects Moody’s view that Hong Kong’s Institutions and Governance Strength is lower than previously estimated. The absence of tangible plans to address either the political or economic and social concerns of the Hong Kong population that have come to the fore in the past nine months may reflect weaker inherent institutional capacity than Moody’s had previously assessed. It may also point to more significant constraints on the autonomy of the Special Administrative Region’s (SAR) institutions than previously thought.

Put less diplomatically: it’s totally nuts that, after seven months’ civil unrest, the government of the world’s third-biggest international financial centre is sitting and doing nothing, and it seems obvious that these clowns are not really in charge. Even more nuts than previously thought.

In addition to the inevitable way-too-lengthy-and-whiny press release, we get a statement from Carrie’s deputy Matthew Cheung. He complains that Moody’s is focusing on ‘politics’ (you mean ‘stunningly incompetent leadership’, surely), and cites reduced bus fares for the elderly as proof of ‘the will to govern’.

Back in Davos, stock exchange chair Laura Cha maintains that Beijing is leaving it up to Hong Kong to solve the crisis – in other words, the local administration alone has chosen to do nothing throughout the seven months of crisis. As a former National People’s Congress member, she can hardly tell the truth.

Asked about the evil foreign forces supposedly masterminding Hong Kong’s protests, Carrie hits out at ‘disproportionate reporting’ of the city, which she says suggests ‘perhaps there is something at work’. (She is alluding to a leftist media-watchdog survey showing that Hong Kong protests get more coverage than mayhem in third-world backwaters. You are supposed to blame CIA influence rather than the fact that Haiti is not the world’s third largest financial centre.)

To cheer us all up as we prepare to greet Rat Year, Reuters’ disproportionate reporters on Davos quote an analyst at a (Hong Kong-based) consultancy…

“By summer we shall witness deeper political conflict within society, coinciding with crippling economic actions and feeding of growing disenfranchisement of working and middle classes,” said Phill Hynes, head of political risk and analysis at ISS Risk.

“2020 is not going to be the year Hong Kong heals, it will be the year it festers and becomes inflamed.”

Will Luo Huining, Beijing’s new Party Secretary in Hong Kong, be nice or nasty? No sooner is the question asked than we get the answer.

Writing in People’s Daily – the party organ that makes China Daily look edgy, zippy and fun – Luo warns that ‘national-security loopholes’ in Hong Kong open the door to ‘infiltration and sabotage’; he also mentions ‘stronger enforcement’, plus ‘learn from Macau’ and ‘strengthen patriotic education’.

With zero exposure to the world outside the Mainland, Luo must be encountering some serious culture shock in Hong Kong. Foreigners roam at will, and their evil ideas circulate unrestricted online, in print and in classrooms. The local population seem to regard this as normal, and many have little interest in Mainland ways and are actually hostile to the CCP. Unfathomably, some do not even seem to accept that they are Chinese. People and media are free to criticize the local and central governments. The legal system is rooted in a perverse notion that one of its core functions is to limit government power over the population. This is no way to run a major city. It’s creepy.

Luo’s comments suggest that he intends to ‘do’ Article 23 or something like it, to clamp down on opposition activity and opinions through broader laws that weaken individual rights, and by introducing more politicized and compliant policing, prosecutions and judicial systems. Plus things like brainwashing kids in schools.

As the reports mention, however, these comments largely echo what Xi Jinping and other senior leaders have been saying for some time. The system now requires total loyalty to Xi, so Luo wouldn’t say anything else even if he had a mind of his own. Essentially, the new Liaison Office director will be channeling the Chairman-for-life himself.

Luo wouldn’t have climbed this far up the ladder without certain other qualities, like cunning and ruthlessness. He won’t personally seem very involved – it will be arms-length thuggishness. Local minions will have to do the dirty work, preferably without looking as wretchedly abysmal as Carrie Lam.

Obviously, the answer to the question was never going to be ‘nice’. The best way of putting it is ‘nasty with zombie-Leninist characteristics’.

Yesterday’s gathering in Central was – by the standards of ‘approved anti-communist rallies’ these days – neither especially huge in size, nor threatening to civilization. But the Hong Kong Police managed to contrive 10 times more mayhem than would have been the case had they stayed away.

This thread asks how and why the police authorize assemblies and then swiftly declare them illegal. It is clearly a pretext to tear-gas and arrest as many people as possible. But what are they expecting to achieve from that? Is it simply to gain approval from Beijing’s officials who demand resolute merciless tough crushing? Or does someone in the local command structure really believe this will convince the public to stay at home? (And if the latter, what will that achieve if it ever works?)

Suggested question for a reporter at the next police press conference: “You have been tear-gassing, pepper-spraying, clubbing, arresting for seven months now – what are you trying to accomplish?”

Suggested answer from a government spokesman: “We have also sent SWAT teams to peel Post-It notes from walls, surrounded university campuses with razor wire, turned pedestrian footbridges into cages, made menacing comments to school principals, tried to ban face-masks, and given a guy a HK$1.7mn six-month contract to run a Dialogue Office. In the circumstances, we feel the police tactics are quite sensible.”

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam does not have a lot of credibility to lose, so blankly denying police brutality in the Legislative Council probably doesn’t make much difference to her as a political liability. Her claim that out-of-control cops are not real but a smear campaign is echoed by the Police Commissioner and in a government video relaying ‘the facts’ – that the protesters are violent barbarians and the police are using minimum force. (Interesting that Brand Hong Kong is being ordered to help promote it. The film is a classic example of a PR effort designed to please the boss rather than convince the wider audience for which it is intended.)

The Independent (hmmm) Police Complaints Council is delaying its first report on early clashes in the protests because of a judicial review. We will have to wait to see how far the body will stick to the line that all the police violence you’ve seen reported didn’t happen.

To put all this in context, the Lowy Institute interprets the message from Beijing contained in the appointment of Luo Huining as director of the Liaison Office. The posting…

is about stability and steadiness, not negotiation or rapprochement … the party is not about to consider reshaping to fit Hong Kong’s demands … the moves from Beijing are intended to highlight the fact that nothing will change in Hong Kong…

Perhaps not so much that ‘nothing will change’, as the only changes will be towards greater Mainlandization.

One curious sight in LegCo yesterday was one or two pro-Beijing lawmakers showing slight signs of impatience with Carrie. Even they must realize the CE and her fantasy-land statements do not augur well at the elections later in the year.

I declare the weekend open with the usual…

How banning the Human Rights Watch boss from Hong Kong breaks the Basic Law. Or at least reminds us that the Basic Law means whatever the CCP finds expedient.

Watercolours by Kin Fan Fung, plus other protest art.

Atlantic does the Taiwan election…

[Xi] saw that Tsai was politically vulnerable and sought to increase pressure, but it had the opposite effect. Xi has decades of experience in dealing with Taiwan and sees himself as the expert in chief. Now … his judgment has been revealed to be fallible…

Better late than never, and like a growing number of commentators, Foreign Policy is asking whether we should see Taiwan as (shock!) a normal country…

Yet little by little, as with its internet domain, Taiwan is giving up any pretense of being Chinese. The vestigial mainland seats were removed from its legislature in 1991. Its maps and tourism posters show only the island of Taiwan … Slowly but inexorably, Taiwan is going its own way.

The SCMP reports that over on the Mainland, the middle class are hurting. These are the well-off minority in the big cities whose ability to buy fancy schooling for kids and other luxuries rests on ever-rising valuations of all their empty apartments. Cue a slowing economy (and long-term demographics) and there’s trouble coming.

Freedom House on the CCP’s growing media influence worldwide. And Lowy again on whether CGTN (CCTV’s international arm) can be effective in spreading CCP propaganda – interesting stuff on corporate culture, use of foreign staff, etc.

The CCP’s Five-Year Plan for Islam, translated into English. And they haven’t forgotten the Tibetans either.

If you have lots of empty red packets lying around, and no-one to give laisee to after next weekend – street-cleaner appreciation.

So it seems the concessionary fares for the over-65s – soon to be over-60s – apply on ferry routes. Nice. Also, expensive. (And it seems the perk encourages laziness.)

The government denies that its sudden announcement of tons of cash for unwashed rabble grassroots (and rich oldies who visit the islands) was aimed at somehow pacifying Hong Kong’s ongoing uprising. This is believable in that such handouts clearly don’t address the administration’s core legitimacy problem. But once you consider that our leaders are too stupid to realize that, the denial rings hollow. They, or their Beijing minders, really think this will make people happier again.

What’s more interesting is that officials have – presumably under pressure from Beijing – had to suppress their instinctive urges to treat the poor with contempt and to kowtow to the tycoons. Maybe not a lot, but enough to be noticeable.

One of the government’s proposals is to force employers of (typically) unskilled workers to give their employees 17 paid holidays a year rather than just the 12 statutory ones (once known as ‘factory holidays’). The plan is to do this gradually (one extra day per year until 2026?), but the bosses are very, very grumpy. Having to pay people to stay at home will inflict mental agony on them.

Could this mean the bureaucrats aren’t their buddies anymore? Businessmen and fiscal conservatives in general are also alarmed by the spending implications of all these extra handouts – a HK$10 billion boost in annual recurrent expenditure, apparently on a whim. Over the last couple of decades, the government has typically recorded annual budget surpluses well in excess of this. But to the traditionalists, the accumulation of reserves is minimally prudent and needed for a ‘rainy day’ (otherwise known as civil service pay hikes and pensions, plus major white-elephant infrastructure projects).

The shoe-shiners have had years to suggest to officials that Hong Kong could, perhaps, be more stable in the long run if it had a more representative political structure. But their snouts were buried too deep in the trough. Now they are saying things like ‘Carrie Lam, stop inflicting new harm on Hong Kong’. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Checking bus schedules to plan ultra-long HK$2 trips when I hit 60…

Brand Hong Kong (taxpayer-funded exponent of etiquette to visiting barbarians) declares that ‘Hong Kong is On’ and launches its new hit video, explaining that…

After a difficult time last year, #HongKong is fully switched-on to the opportunities ahead as a free, open and welcoming society … with a raft of freedoms intact.

(Why does ‘raft’ make me think of ‘sinking ship’? Anyway, do be sure to scroll down the link for a multitude of delightful comments from Hong Kong taxpayers expressing fulsome and warm appreciation of the PR office’s creative efforts.)

With exquisite timing, Hong Kong Immigration turn away the head of Human Rights Watch at the airport. Beijing promptly declares that it makes the decisions on these things. (Here is a quick and incomplete list of other people denied entry.)

Wait! There’s more! One of the SCMP’s once miss-able but recently amusingly irritable columnists suggests that we trash the ‘Asia’s World City’ branding as redundant. His suggested alternative approach would leverage the ‘energetic, chanting crowd’ as a symbol. Which sounds clever. Then we recall that the government is determined to keep the populace ‘energetic and chanting’ by trying to push through the National Anthem (Compulsory Standing-Up in Adoration) Ordinance. So maybe not.

Readers’ Poll

The media need to decide on a pithy description for Luo Huining, the new director of Beijing’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong. Should it be:

A) ‘a capable administrator’

B) ‘a trouble shooter’

C) ‘a veteran troubleshooter’ with yes really uncanny parallels to Chris Patten

D) ‘a knuckle dragger’

All right-thinking decent people in this part of the world are experiencing a glow of satisfaction following the results of Taiwan’s election on Saturday. It is hard to choose which commentary on Tsai Ing Wen’s victory gives greatest pleasure.

I rather like this…

Some western officials showed their eagerness of continuing using “Taiwan card” as a way of containing the rise of the mainland by praising the elections “as vibrant democracy,” and even lauded Tsai for seeking so-called stability with the mainland … [Pompeo, etc] UK Foreign Office also lauded that the elections “are testament to Taiwan’s vibrant democracy.” … The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday expressed strong opposition to Western officials congratulating the reelected regional leader, saying such behavior violated the one-China principle.

There’s the from-a-different-planet view…

The one-China principle is widely known to the world and has a strong moral foundation.

…and the ever-popular ranting mouth-froth diatribe…

As people of insight and the media on the island have said, this is obviously not a normal election. Tsai and the DPP used dirty tactics such as cheating, repression and intimidation to get votes, fully exposing their selfish, greedy and evil nature … This temporary counter-current is just a bubble under the tide of the times.

There’s this…

Zhu Songling, a professor at Beijing Union University’s Institute of Taiwan Studies, said the DPP had done a lot in the election campaign to create cross-Straits tensions …. [he] said the violence by protesters in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in recent months was also used by the DPP as a weapon against the mainland for political benefit in the election.

And the really heart-warming Panda-tantrum-as-veiled-threat-by-whiny-sore-loser stuff, like this…

“The ball is always in our court,” Song [Luzheng, expert at the China Institute of Fudan University in Shanghai] said, noting that Taiwan regional leader and politicians should thoroughly take into consideration potential risks before brazenly provoking the mainland. 

…and this…

“The fact that the Chinese mainland is getting increasingly stronger and the Taiwan island is getting weaker is an inevitable reality,” added the Global Times.

Perhaps best of all is the Hong Kong Cat Society, which congratulates Taiwan’s felines and urges the local ones to follow their example and put their human ‘slaves’ in power via universal suffrage.

I declare the weekend open with the usual exquisitely curated artisanal links…

Trade mag Holmes Report on Hong Kong’s San Francisco trade office inviting PR companies to ‘inspire and enhance confidence’.

Sebastian Veg tries to find cause for optimism in the recent District Council elections…

…to some extent, there is still an expectation that the narrow path opened up by universal suffrage can offer a way toward further de-escalation, even though a full return to civil peace may not yet be within reach.

This presumes Beijing sees representative government as a solution. Asia Sentinel’s more realistic wrap-up of the crisis describes Hong Kong as ‘now trapped in a Communist-colonization nightmare’…

Beijing has singularly failed to win the ‘hearts-and-minds’ of its Hong Kong citizens since 1997. A one-party police state, ruling top-down through fear since 1949, preserving power for its party elite, cannot adjust to transparent, accountable governance.

Human Rights Watch joins in the criticism of the Hong Kong Police.

Mark O’Neil thinks the Chinese government will keep Carrie Lam in office for the rest of the year in order to rush Article 23 national security laws through. All the signs have been that even Beijing isn’t stupid enough to try that – but what a gift to the protest movement it would be!

A measure of how the world is watching Hong Kong: Burma’s Catholics are concerned.

On an entertaining note, M+ looks at Hong Kong in computer games over the years.

Over to Renegade Province: a reminder to mind your language when discussing Taiwan; Tsai Ing Wen cat manga; and you might just have time to read this big article from the Lowy Institute on the country’s election before it takes place tomorrow.

A great account from Claremont Review of Books of how Dengism replaced old Stalinist ways, and how Xi has taken it from there…

Under Xi, corruption remains instrumental – not only in steering the economy in the direction the party wants it to go, but also in ensuring that high-level civilian and military officials have a stake in preserving the system. It is not a matter of one audacious embezzler here or there. Rather, it is the entire Mafia-like system itself, wherein each of the lower-downs kicks up to his boss until the money finally reaches the most powerful body in the system—the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China.

…a tiny Manchu elite held on to power for 270 years. The comparably tiny Communist elite is unlikely to equal that record.

China Media Project on the return of Mao’s adulatory title – ‘possibly the start of a new round of worshipful praise for China’s top leader’ (because you can never have enough, can you?)

Evan Osnos’s magnum New Yorker opus on the future of the US relationship with China.

On a related note, Slate asks Why is Harvard training the next generation of CCP leaders?

A Sydney Morning Herald correspondent, after her kid’s globe is confiscated, looks back at changes in China in last few years.

And a long read from Echo Wall on how China manages to complete massive complex infrastructure projects so unbelievably quickly.

My gargantuan challenge for tomorrow is to go back to the HSBC Platinum-Jade-Premier Valued Customer service centre and insist they replace my battery-exhausted online-banking ‘security device’ without forcing me to go through the horrifyingly traumatic and fruitless button-pushing, waiting-on-hold phone system, which – by the time I slam the phone down in despair – turns me borderline homicidal. Just in case you never hear from me again.