Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Undaunted by the HK government’s wrathful response to its coverage of the History Museum’s NatSec exhibit, the New York Times has a go at local education officials’ advice that hormone-crazed teens play badminton when they feel carnal desires stirring within them…

A 15-year-old girl and her boyfriend are studying alone together on a hot summer day when she removes her jacket and clings to his shoulder. What should he do?

In Hong Kong, the authorities advise the young man to continue studying or to seek a diversion, including badminton, to avoid premarital sex and other “intimate behaviors.”

Critics, including lawmakers and sex educators, say that the Chinese territory’s new sex education materials are regressive. But top officials are not backing down, and the standoff is getting kind of awkward.

“Is badminton the Hong Kong answer to sexual impulses in schoolchildren?” the South China Morning Post newspaper asked in a headline over the weekend.

Hong Kong teenagers find it all pretty amusing. A few said on social media that the officials behind the policy have their “heads in the clouds.” Others have worked it into sexual slang, talking about “friends with badminton” instead of “friends with benefits.”

…“It is normal for people to have sexual fantasies and desires, but we must recognize that we are the masters of our desires and should think twice before acting, and control our desires instead of being controlled by them,” the document says.

This is perhaps more enlightened than the advice we received as little kiddies at my convent school many years ago: don’t look at yourself when you’re having a bath. But…

It also recommends exercise and other activities that “draw attention away from undesirable activities,” and warns students to dress appropriately and avoid wearing “sexy clothing” that could lead to “visual stimulation.”

(I thought the standard government recommendation on ‘drawing attention from undesirable activities’ was ‘focus on the economy’.)

Young people in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan often use slang to talk about sex, just like their peers around the world. If your date asks if you want to go back to their place to “watch my cat do back-flips,” don’t say you weren’t warned.

Now, thanks to Hong Kong’s Education Bureau, new slang is in play. The sentence “I want to play badminton with you” will never be the same again.

HKFP story here…

The document advises students to avoid premarital sex, describing it as “one form of improper handling of intimate relationships,” and says that society “still considers pre-marital sex as a deviant act and that young people should not have sexual behaviours with others at will.”

There was a time in Hong Kong when people wouldn’t even raise the subject of teen pregnancy out of extreme Confucian-Puritan embarrassment. We could also – with some trepidation – recall that there is a ‘rumour’ that a senior government official back in his student days got his, let’s say youthful, girlfriend in the family way. Circumstantial evidence being vagueness about his now-wife’s date of birth, and we will leave it at that. 

Education authorities find another way to take kids’ minds off deviant unwholesomeness. 

The (paywalled) NYT visits the HK Museum of History’s National Security Exhibition…

The Hong Kong Museum of History was the place to go to understand the city’s transformation from fishing village to a glittering metropolis. It housed a life-size replica of a traditional fishing boat and a recreation of a 19th-century street lined with shops.

That exhibit, known as “The Hong Kong Story,” is being revamped. [A] splashy new permanent gallery in the museum … tells a different, more ominous story about the city — that Hong Kong is constantly at risk of being subverted by hostile foreign forces. The exhibit features displays about spies being everywhere and footage of antigovernment street protests in the city that were described as instigated by the West.

…In the government’s telling, the protests were not organic expressions of the residents’ democratic aspirations, as the city’s opposition activists have said, but part of an ongoing plot by Western forces to destabilize China.

The national security exhibit opens with a short video highlighting the unfair treaties of the 19th century that forced China to cede Hong Kong to the British, as well as the Japanese occupation of the city during World War II. Describing the protests in 2019, the video highlighted footage of protesters hurling Molotov cocktails. “Law and order vanished,” the narrator said. Then it credited new national security laws imposed by Beijing in the crackdown that followed, for turning the tide “from chaos to order.”

…It listed the casualties and damage purportedly inflicted by the protesters: 629 police officers injured and more than 5,000 Molotov cocktails thrown by violent protesters.

There was no mention of the tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds and pepper spray deployed by the police. The display did not mention the attack on protesters at a subway station by a mob armed with sticks and poles, and the police’s slow response to that violence.

…the … exhibit appeared to take a page out of the Chinese government’s playbook after the Chinese military’s brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement left widespread disillusionment. 

…Some of the new displays at the national security exhibit closely resemble that which would be found in similarly themed museum exhibits on the mainland. A floor-to-ceiling Chinese flag hung on crimson walls. Next to it was a 13-foot long replica of an oil painting depicting Mao Zedong as he proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 at Tiananmen Square.

Link to the museum’s page here.

It seems the ‘hostile foreign forces’ theory is even less convincing in a museum setting than in officials’ speeches. If the West were genuinely trying to destabilize China, you would expect more serious evidence of external subversion than an outbreak of civil unrest easily explained by local factors. Beijing would suspend diplomatic ties with the foreign power(s) concerned. Both the Mainland and Hong Kong would restrict, if not expel, those countries’ businesses and residents. And policymakers would be asking big questions – for example, whether Hong Kong’s dollar peg represents a security risk. 

But that’s not what we get. Instead, while some Hong Kong officials warn of national security threats lurking everywhere, others earnestly plead with overseas governments, businesses and media to improve ties, increase investment and show the city a bit of love. (Has anyone else noticed a flurry of tedious overseas influencer-bores doing ‘dimsum in Kowloon’ on YouTube in the last few months? I smell taxpayers’ money.)

It seems little in the HK History Museum exhibit is about actual national security – military and other strategic threats. Perhaps the greatest threat facing China today (give or take climate change) would be large-scale overseas trade protectionism, as Beijing attempts to further increase China’s share (already a third) of global manufacturing, thus endangering jobs not just in developed but also developing countries. 

The government’s response…

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government on August 23 strongly disapproves and rejects the biased reporting of a New York Times article titled “A History Museum Shows How China Wants to Remake Hong Kong” which carries false and misleading narratives against the National Security Exhibition Gallery of the HKSAR.

….The spokesperson for the HKSAR Government stressed, “The article of the New York Times has completely ignored the large-scale and incessant riots that occurred in 2019 and the very fact of the failed attempt to stage the Hong Kong version of ‘colour-revolution’, which have continuously devastated society, livelihood and economy of Hong Kong. It has also deliberately neglected the fact that the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law has enabled the livelihood and economic activities of the Hong Kong community, and the business environment as well, to return to normalcy. The New York Times has demonstrated hypocrisy with double standards.

The Hong Kong government issues a press statement complaining that a Bloomberg article on a proposed cybersecurity law selectively quoted consultation submissions…

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) today (August 20) opposed Bloomberg’s biased report on the submissions made by some organisations on the proposed legislative framework to enhance protection of computer systems of critical infrastructures, taking the views of the submissions out of context.

HKFP story here.

Surely, the fears that the new law might infringe on privacy and confidentiality are the story? If they reflect distrust of the government among the business community, why blame Bloomberg for reporting it?

Also in HKFP, China’s foreign ministry tells Hong Kong-based consuls to get permission to travel to Macau (which many of them cover) and Greater Bay Area locations like Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Consular officials wonder whether applications for such travel could be refused, and are concerned that parties they are visiting might not want their details passed to Chinese authorities…

HKFP reached out to the Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong for comment, but received no response to multiple emails and calls. HKFP also reached out to the Protocol Division and Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau, but a spokesperson referred HKFP back to the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong.

Some weekend reading and viewing…

A short video in which Transit Jam has a word with Kowloon Tong traffic wardens.

Reuters looks at the ‘rotten-tail’ kids…

After spending years climbing China’s ultra-competitive academic ladder, “rotten-tail kids” are discovering that their qualifications are failing to secure them jobs in a bleak economy.

Their options are limited. Either they cut their expectations for top-paying jobs or find any job to make ends meet. Some have also turned to crime.

…Amada Chen, a recent graduate from Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, quit her sales job at a state-owned enterprise last week after just one month.

She blamed her decision on the toxic work culture and her boss’s unrealistic expectations. For the first 15 days of her probation, she was also getting just 60 yuan ($8.40) a day despite having to work 12 hours daily.

“I cried every day for a week,” she said.

Chen had wanted to become a quality inspector or a researcher, jobs she thought would match her skills as a traditional Chinese medicine major.

But over 130 job application letters later, she was offered mostly sales or e-commerce related positions.

Chen said she was reconsidering her career path altogether and might turn to modelling.

For fans of the ongoing Trump debate…

Vladimir Putin exploited Donald Trump’s “ego and insecurities” to exert an almost mesmeric hold over the former US president, who refused to entertain any negative evaluation of the autocratic Russian leader from his own staff, and ultimately fired his national security adviser, HR McMaster, over it.

In reality, McMaster says, Putin’s apparent simpering over Trump was a calculated effort by the Russian leader to exploit the president and drive a wedge between him and hawkish advisers in Washington DC such as McMaster urging the US to take a harder line with the Kremlin.

“Putin, a ruthless former KGB operator, played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery,” McMaster writes.

In India, scientists and academics are protesting fake history and pseudoscience being pushed by Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist BJP party…

…“They want people to believe Vedic India was far advanced compared to all other civilizations in the world and that other civilizations emanated from the ancient Hindu civilization. Such claims without evidence are dangerous for society,” said Banerjee, who is a professor at the Department of Physical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER-Kolkata).

Among the ideas: Modi’s claim that ancient Indians developed plastic surgery (citing Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu deity, as evidence); a state chief minister’s claim that ancient India had the internet and satellites; incorporation of reincarnation and astrology in academic courses; blaming non-vegetarianism for landslides in the Himalayas; ‘cow science’ (the belief that bovine products contain magic ingredients); and a government ministry devoted to Ayurveda, Unani and Homoeopathic medicine. 

Sounds somewhat like some Chinese academics’ claims that the Chinese are descended from a different strain of hominid than other homo sapiens and only Han technology could have built Egypt’s pyramids, or Hong Kong’s insistence on treating regional folk superstition as equal to evidence-based medicine. From RTHK today – pro-Beijing politicians call on patients to consult both science-based and ‘Chinese medicine’ practitioners.

A few Trump fans in the comments section. If Kamala Harris inspires some voters, it is because of the contrast between her and any visibly elderly white guy – be it a Joe or a Donald. She is on the left, with half-baked ideas about price controls, and she will probably spend more. It’s understandable that not everyone is a fan. But then look at the alternative. Harris will not sell out the free world to dictators, or let a bunch of white supermacists, misogynists, ultra-Christians, wacko tech gurus and Project 2025 creeps and weirdos overthrow the constitution. So you just hold your nose, vote Democrat, subsidize some kids’ breakfasts, and trust that sane grown-ups reclaim the GOP in the next four years.

It’s that stark. Which leads us to some Taiwan stories…

BBC report about China’s new judiciary guidelines to criminalize pro-Taiwan independence activity…

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office was quick to assure the 23 million Taiwanese that this is not targeted at them, but at an “extremely small number of hard-line independence activists”. The “vast majority of Taiwanese compatriots have nothing to fear,” the office said.

But wary Taiwanese say they don’t want to test that claim. The BBC has spoken to several Taiwanese who live and work in China who said they were either planning to leave soon or had already left. Few were willing to be interviewed on record; none wanted to be named.

…[Last week] Chinese authorities launched a website identifying Taiwanese public figures deemed “die hard” separatists. The site included an email address where people could send “clues and crimes” about those who had been named, or anyone else they suspected.

… [UMC founder Robert] Tsao was not always hostile to China. He was one of the first Taiwanese investors to set up advanced chip-making factories in China. But he says the crackdown in Hong Kong changed his mind: “It was so free and vibrant and now it’s gone. And they want to do the same to us here.”

…“They say the new law will only affect a few hard-line independence supporters like me, but so many Taiwanese people either support independence or the status quo [keep things as they are], which is the same thing, so we have all become criminals.”

The new guidelines threaten the death penalty and apply to anyone, including foreigners…

[They] make a criminal offense anything related to Taiwanese independence, including “establishing a ‘Taiwan Independence’ separatist organization,” “promoting Taiwan’s entrance into international organizations,” and deviating from the Chinese narrative of Taiwan “in fields such as education, culture, history, or news media.” Other overly broad offenses include “conduct seeking to separate Taiwan from China” and “otherwise actively participat[ing]” in Taiwanese “separatist organizations.”

The guidelines threaten in absentia trials with no statute of limitations for those who evade being tried. They also do not differentiate between Taiwanese and foreign nationals.

A Hudson Institute paper asks Why is China so obsessed with Taiwan? A pithy survey worth a few minutes that completely avoids anything pre-1949…

Third, the CCP remains deeply paranoid that Taiwan’s success in democratizing will have a destabilizing effect on the mainland Chinese populace. Taipei’s advocacy for artistic freedom, its environmental activism, and its spirit of innovation exert an enormous pull on the millions of ordinary Chinese living under Beijing’s stultifying rule. A Taiwan subdued by unrelenting bullying and pressure would prove much less attractive worldwide than a thriving, vibrant democracy among the Chinese diaspora. A Hong Kong-style takeover would eliminate Taiwan’s inspirational power — and its potential to undermine the appeal of Beijing’s hard sell.

And via CSIS, a short paper – now deleted – from researchers at the Cross-Strait Institute of Urban Planning at Xiamen University on how China should prepare to govern Taiwan.It recommends establishment of a shadow government, calls for a committee to prepare ‘currency conversion, education systems, and military integration’, and proposes a ‘Taiwan Governance Experimental Zone’ to test post-reunification regime-building…

3. Demonstration of governing. The model for post-“reunification” governance in Taiwan was originally Hong Kong’s “One Country, Two Systems.” After the previous “disruption,” however, Hong Kong as a model has little persuasive power on the island. This requires the establishment of a new model. When the Communist Party took over Nationalist-controlled areas on a large scale in a short time during the War of Liberation, things may have looked overwhelming, but in fact the Communist Party had already had a lot of regime-building experience in its base areas. Now, although our Party has a lot of experience in governing, the generation that took over and established the regime is long gone. This requires us to begin again.

‘Project 2028’, perhaps.

From NPR, former students recall their English teacher at Foshan Number 1 Middle School in the late 1980s.

More on Lord Neuberger from HK Watch (blocked by the ISP without irony for me in Hong Kong)… 

45 civil society organisations from around the world sent a letter to Lord Neuberger, a former president of the British Supreme Court, urging him to seriously reconsider his position on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. 

The letter follows Lord Neuberger being one of five judges who unanimously upheld the convictions of Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Margaret Ng, Albert Ho, Lee Cheuk-yan, “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung and Cyd Ho for “participating in an unauthorised demonstration” on 18 August 2019. The alleged unauthorised demonstration involved a peaceful march against the Hong Kong police’s use of force, which involved 1.7 million people marching without violent incident from Causeway Bay to Central.

In the letter, the civil society organisations emphasise that the “seven democrats would not be found guilty under other common law systems, including in Britain”, as the right to assemble is “guaranteed under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, and Hong Kong’s obligations under international law”.

The organisations also call attention to how in the 76-page judgement, Lord Neuberger was “not eager to provide any dissenting opinion to emphasise the importance of free peaceful assembly and free speech in Hong Kong”. Lord Neuberger also failed to warn against the Public Order Ordinance, the local criminal law centred in this case, which has been widely weaponised by the authorities to crack down on free peaceful assembly and thousands of protestors in 2019. Both of these actions contradict Lord Neuberger’s previous effort in advocating free speech in his book, Freedom of Speech in International Law.

Given that Lord Neuberger’s involvement in the Hong Kong Court opens him to credible charges of sponsoring a systematic repression of human rights against peaceful activists in the city, the organisations implore Lord Neuberger “to immediately follow the example of your British and other foreign colleagues who have decided to step down from the Hong Kong courts”.

The civil society organisations await a reply. 

A Foreign Policy piece (probably paywalled) by Robert E Kelly dismisses the idea that Donald Trump can be taken seriously as a proponent of ‘realist’, let alone serious, international relations thinking…

A second Trump term may well take an entirely different tack on China from the hawks—and even if he wants to move against Beijing, he lacks the discipline and ability to do so.

There is far more in Trump’s first term to suggest indiscipline, showboating, and influence-peddling than the clear-eyed, bloodless calculation of national interest that realists aspire to.

…Trump also undercut any ostensible focus on China by picking unnecessary fights with the United States’ regional partners. U.S.-South Korea and U.S.-Australia relations, for example, sank to their lowest point in years as Trump picked fights with their leaders because he wanted a payoff for the U.S. alliance guarantees.

Realism values allies for their ability to share burdens, project power, and generate global coalitions. Trump does not seem to grasp that at all. When Trump backed off his criticism of Japan, the turning point was apparently then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s relentless flattery, including giving Trump a gold-plated golf club, rather than any strategic reevaluation by Trump or his team.

…Trump’s admiration for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s autocracy was blatant, and Trump has once again recently praised Xi as his “good friend.” The former U.S. president has spoken approvingly of China’s crackdowns in Tiananmen Square, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. He solicited Chinese help in the 2020 election, and China happily channeled money to Trump’s family and his properties during his presidency.

Trump clearly craves authoritarian powers at home and is happy to take China’s money.

…Trump’s supposed policy positions emerge on the fly as he speaks. He is lazy. He is not capable of the strategic thinking that realists want to attribute to him; one must only listen to his campaign speeches this year to see this. He routinely lies, makes up stories, and speaks in indecipherable word-salads. When Trump has spoken on Taiwan, he makes it clear that he sees it as just another free-riding ally that owes the U.S. protection money.

…Trump is lazy, unread, venal, easily bought, susceptible to autocrats’ flattery, captive to the ideological fixations of his domestic coalition, ignorant of U.S. strategic interests, and dismissive of alliances that amplify U.S. power. Vance is ostensibly more clear-eyed, but he is a foreign-policy neophyte in the pocket of Silicon Valley donors

Hard to see much upside for Trump after yesterday’s Democratic Party national convention. (One highlight here – a Texas representative called Crockett, no less. Click on pic for a musical one.) As a narcissist, he can only get more erratic and crazy if he is sidelined, humiliated, or just plain losing. The key thing to remember about narcissists is that they’re not trying to convince others that they are superior; they care only about constantly reassuring themselves of that – regardless of how absurd it looks to everyone else. It probably won’t get to this, but if the polls really massively turned against him, it would be in keeping with his toxic personality disorder to just storm out from the whole thing – ‘you have all betrayed me, you don’t deserve me’.

A man in his early 20s is sentenced to eight weeks in prison for ‘insulting the Chinese national anthem’ at an international volleyball game last year… 

Chan filed an appeal against his conviction and sentence immediately after Magistrate Kestrel Lam meted out his prison term. Considering that the length of Chan’s imprisonment was relatively short, Lam agreed to release him on bail pending appeal to avoid causing “grave injustice” to the defendant in case his conviction and sentence were overturned. 

Chan … was said to have covered his ears and remained seated when the March of the Volunteers was played before a FIVB Volleyball Women’s Nations League match on June 16, 2023. He also sang Do You Hear the People Sing, a song from the musical Les Miserables that was popular during the pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019.

Chan had pleaded not guilty to the charge and stood trial in April. Lam found him guilty last month after rejecting his defence that he had autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

What about covering your eyes so you don’t have to see baby pandas?

The Economist (paywalled) reports on a problem Beijing has in common with Donald Trump – coming to terms with the Harris-Walz ticket…

For China’s rulers the ascent of the Harris-Walz ticket creates two difficulties. It challenges China’s nihilistic interpretation of American politics as racist and decrepit. And it has triggered a scramble to assess how a Harris administration might approach China relations…

…Cynicism about American politics abounds in China. The shake-up in the presidential race since June illuminates the limitations of China’s understanding of its superpower rival. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, his appeal upset the widely held belief in China, reinforced by relentless official propaganda, that America was so profoundly racist that a black person could not become president. China’s latest report on human rights in America, published in May, says racism is getting worse, while gender discrimination is “rampant”. But America could elect its second black president, and its first female one.

…By bowing out Mr Biden has … encouraged some Chinese to wonder about their own system, in which [Xi Jinping], 71, appears set on remaining leader for life. Last month a blogger on Netease, a Chinese internet platform, wrote “for some people, the greatest contribution they can make to the party, the country and the people is to hand over power, step down from the stage and go home to play with their grandchildren”. 

…For China the Harris-Walz ticket is unexpected but the best guess is that it promises continuity on defence and trade and, possibly, more emphasis on human rights. Faced with this prospect some in China yearn for another Trump administration which might bring chaos but also, they hope, strain America’s alliances and undermine its global image. 

CE John Lee says the Hong Kong economy will improve next year, thanks in part to the arrival of two baby panda bears. The Standard report also mentions the possibility of a ‘giant panda economy’. (We must now accommodate no fewer than six of the lumbering, dull-witted beasts. And the babies look nightmarishly repulsive, like the thing in Eraserhead.)

HKFP op-ed on the way forward for Hong Kong’s economy identifies some problems…

…Hong Kong has relied on a civil service operating on auto-pilot, a finance industry cosily protected by the Hong Kong dollar, elites happy to dine out on high property prices, and a government squeezing every last dollar out of its land bank for tax revenue. One of the main reasons for Hong Kong’s privileged position over the mainland – the rule of law – is rapidly eroding, leading global businesses to quietly skirt it for more stable climes.

…The potentially long-term structural decline in China’s fortunes will make it more difficult for Hong Kong to rely on the mainland. It will also force Hong Kong to reinvent itself.

…Hong Kong needs to find new sources of economic growth. It must differentiate itself from the mainland in order to fashion itself as an international city, rather than as a glossy and expensive part of the Greater Bay Area.

The author (a capital markets guy) suggests encouraging fund management, trade in renminbi-denominated derivatives and promotion as a base for MNCs to manage Asian supply chains. Obviously not as depressing as cramming dozens of millions more tourists in and declaring chunks of land hub-zones. But it’s still grasping at straws, partly because it’s limited in scope, but especially as it’s contingent on Hong Kong independently improving relations with the West when (as he says) the Beijing officials in charge worry mainly about foreign forces.

(As the panda desperation shows, straws are all we really have. If pushed, I’d suggest enabling smaller local entrepreneurs, who – after decades of being squeezed out by rent-seeking skim-based parasitism – could in theory be reintroduced into the wild. A major drop in rents would be a start.) 

…All of these strategies will require creative thinking by the government, and a willingness to carve a path forward through healthy negotiations with Beijing. It’s not clear that the government has the political skills, global understanding, or nerve to engage in blue-sky thinking. But the alternative – chasing quick fixes through ad campaigns and bright and shiny policies with little content – will not work over the long term. Hong Kong must reinvent itself with verve and imagination.

Short RFA video interview with film director Kiwi Chow, who contributed to 2015’s Ten Years, on his brushes with the NatSec Law and why he stays in Hong Kong. He hasn’t been arrested, but shooting and screenings of his movies have been suddenly cancelled. 

HKFP story on the Hong Kong government’s declining support for gay NGOs…

“I don’t think the government is targeting sexual minorities, but we’re definitely not what the government wants to support…”

An elderly widow in Beijing and Stanford University in the US are in a legal battle to determine rightful ownership of the diaries of Mao’s former secretary Li Rui…

For several years before his death, Li’s daughter Li Nanyang, who lives in the US, had been scanning, transcribing and cataloguing her father’s papers, and ultimately transferred them to the Hoover Institution, the leading archive for CCP history in the US. 

…“By all indications … the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is running this litigation behind the scenes,” lawyers for Stanford have argued. “To put it simply, Ms Zhang lacks the financial ability to pay the attorneys’ fees being incurred on her behalf.” Zhang’s lawyers deny there has been any interference from the Chinese government.

“It’s simply about control,” says Ian Johnson, author of a book about China’s unofficial historians, such as Li. Under Xi Jinping, China’s leader, the party has made it clear that it “can’t allow competing narratives of what happened in the past”.

…“The detail is mind-boggling,” says Frank Dikötter, a historian. Insights into elite politics are buried among notes about how many laps he swam in the pool, and how many times he got up to use the bathroom at night.

CSIS Interpret:China does ‘Fully Implement the Spirit of the 20th Party Congress to Vigorously Advance New Industrialization’ by Jin Zhuanglong, head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It comprises 7,880 words in 31 paragraphs – some of them giants. Here’s the first (after the preface)…

Promotion of  new industrialization is a major strategic plan, made by the CCP Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, to coordinate the major deployments being made  for the overall national rejuvenation strategy in the context of changes unseen in a century taking place in the world. Since the 18th Party Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has raised the flag, taken the helm, and navigated the ship, making important expositions on a series of major theoretical and practical issues of promoting new industrialization, and has put forward a series of new ideas, new views, and new assertions, which have greatly enriched and developed the Party’s understanding of the underlying regularities of industrialization, and provide fundamental principles and guidelines for action in the promotion of new industrialization. To study and understand General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important exposition on new industrialization, it is necessary to grasp the essence of the thinking and the core meaning, which can be summarized in six aspects.

And here’s the last…

When strong winds come, we will break through the waves, hang our sail high, and bravely cross the sea. In promoting new industrialization, the prospects are promising, the mission is glorious, and the responsibility is great. Let us unite more closely around the CCP Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, take Xi Jinping’s thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era as the guide, deeply comprehend the decisive significance of the “two establishes,” enhance and firmly establish the “four matters of confidence” and achieve the “two upholds,” be pioneering and innovative, shoulder responsibilities and take action, and work hard to comprehensively advance the building of China into a superpower and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation using Chinese-style modernization.

CSIS provides a summary.

An interesting scoop from Transit Jam on lousy security measures at the HK-Zhuhai bridge border crossing…

Contractors at the “restricted area” bridging the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao use an elaborate system of discarded or outdated passes and messaging codewords to move dozens of people invisibly around the border zones every day, according to a whistleblower who worked at the border.

Globe and Mail (paywalled) editorial titled ‘Hong Kong has courts, but no justice’…

In explaining his decision to resign, Mr. Sumption wrote that Hong Kong is “slowly becoming a totalitarian state” and that the rule of law in the territory has been “profoundly compromised” under the security law.

That was nine weeks ago. This week, Hong Kong took yet another step toward the totalitarian, with the territory’s Court of Final Appeal unanimously upholding the conviction of billionaire Jimmy Lai on organizing and participating in an unauthorized assembly, when pro-democracy protests roiled Hong Kong in the summer of 2019.

…seven foreign judges still sit on the Court of Final Appeal, including David Neuberger, the former president of Britain’s Supreme Court. He was part of the unanimous ruling against Mr. Lai.

And, in a you-can’t-make-this-up touch, Mr. Neuberger is also the chair of a panel of legal experts on media freedom for the Media Freedom Coalition, made up of 51 countries, including Canada.

One immediate consequence of the Court of Final Appeal’s decision on Mr. Lai should be for Canada and the other member countries of the Media Freedom Coalition to present Mr. Neuberger with a choice. He can either continue to be a fig leaf for Beijing’s repression, or he can be an adviser on media freedom. The two are fundamentally at odds.

More broadly, the other foreign non-permanent judges on the Court of Final Appeal need to follow Mr. Sumption’s example and resign. A resignation en masse would tell the world that Beijing has co-opted the legal system in Hong Kong and that courts in the territory are, for any politically tinged matter, an extension of the Communist Party.

Thanks to Mainland immigration, Hong Kong is barely keeping its population up, with a 0.1% year-on-year fall just reported, A Twitter thread looks at some underlying demographics…

By ‘international’ media – as in coverage of Hong Kong – we tend to mean ‘Anglo’. For a change, here’s a story on the ‘silent invasion’ of the city – in Basque…

Hori hala, Patrick Kar-wai Poon akademiko eta kazetaria bat dator Hong Kongeko hainbat bizilagunen ustearekin; hau da, uste du agintariak eginahalean ari direla biztanle liberalagoak kontinentetik etorritakoekin ordezkatzeko: «Txinako Gobernuak Hong Kongeko kultura urardotu gogo du, Txinako gero eta jende gehiago bulkatuz…

Spot the non-Indo-European language. Google translate does a pretty good job, it seems…

However, the academic and journalist Patrick Kar-wai Poon agrees with the belief of many residents of Hong Kong; in other words, he believes that the authorities are trying to replace the more liberal population with those from the mainland: “The Chinese government wants to destroy the culture of Hong Kong, pushing more and more Chinese people to take over Hong Kong”, he said. “In exchange for attracting people, the Hong Kong Government itself implements policies that make it increasingly dependent on the mainland economy…

How well would the wolf-warrior tone of Hong Kong’s press releases translate into Basque? Here’s a milder one on National Ecology Day 2024 Launching Ceremony cum Symposium.

If officials put together an ‘ejaculate and festive citrus fruit’ themed event, they could call it the ‘Cum cum Cumquat Symposium’.

Owen Chow gets a three-day sentence for unauthorized removal of a complaint form – to the Ombudsman about prison officers’ interception of books – from the jail in which he is currently held. His lawyer gets a small fine. Magistrate Ivy Chui… 

…cited Chow’s mitigation letter, saying that she had taken into consideration his “loss of faith” in the prison system after repeated incidents, and said she had found no illegal or improper content in the books that were intercepted.

Doesn’t look like the magistrate was hugely impressed with the prosecution. Which makes you wonder whether the government will appeal for a tougher penalty – say 10 days. Chow is serving five years for a riot charge, and faces up to life for participation in the pan-dems’ 2020 primary election.

Non-permanent CFA judge Lord Neuberger considers standing down – from his role at the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute…

Neuberger told the group: “In view of my continuing role as an Overseas Non-Permanent Judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, I am in the process of considering my position as Chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, in consultation with my Deputy Chairs. I will issue a statement with my decision as soon as practicable…”

Article 19 on the case…

ARTICLE 19 is alarmed at Lord Neuberger’s ongoing presence on the Hong Kong court, which lends credibility to a system actively dismantling the rule of law. We reiterate our call for him to resign. Jimmy Lai, and other pro-democracy campaigners must be immediately and unconditionally released. Hong Kong must protect the freedoms of expression and peaceful protest.

The HK government condemns Chris Patten’s comments about the CFA ruling on Jimmy Lai et al…

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) today (August 14) strongly condemned and vehemently opposed Chris Patten’s malicious slandering against the judgment of the Court of Final Appeal (CFA) in the case of Lai Chee Ying and others participating in an unauthorised assembly, and his wanton personal vilifications against Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, an overseas Non-Permanent Judge (NPJ) involved in the adjudication of the relevant appeal.

The HKSAR Government spokesperson said, “Patten’s slandering remarks were made in blatant disregard of the detailed legal analysis by the CFA in its 76-page judgment and the factual background of the relevant case. Such remarks were made for the sole purpose of exerting political pressure on the judges of the CFA who adjudicated the case independently in strict accordance with the law, in an attempt to influence the judicial system of the HKSAR, and were nothing but a despicable political manoeuvre.

“Patten’s criticisms against Lord Neuberger NPJ who handled the relevant case were completely groundless and unjustified personal attacks aiming to smear and slander the NPJ’s reputation, which fully exposed Patten’s malicious attempt to undermine the system of NPJ…

…etc. 

Statement by UK charity Prisoners Abroad on Lord Neuberger (subject of above headline). The group seems surprisingly (charitably?) supportive of his role on Hong Kong’s CFA.

David Webb looks at the ever-rising proportion of unconvicted people in Hong Kong jails…

…the number and percentage of people on remand (presumed innocent) in HK jails reached new highs of 3700 and 38.6% at 30-Jun-2024. 

If we exclude immigration detainees, the percentage is 40.0%.

The Standard reports that it’s not just up-market F&B outlets – the junk-hire trade is losing out to trips to Shenzhen.

Foreign Affairs on the lessons China is learning from the war in Ukraine…

…Chinese analysts were especially startled by the West’s coordinated push to sanction the Russian economy. That effort offered a “vivid demonstration of the tools of economic power” that the United States could muster, Li wrote. Not all Chinese experts agreed on the sanctions’ likely efficacy. Some, such as Huang Jing, argued that the West’s “world war without gunpowder” would fail because sanctions on the energy and financial sectors are notoriously “leaky” and because, he contended, disagreements would emerge between the United States and Europe.

…others concluded that the United States still wields unrivaled power over the international financial system. Zhang Bei, an analyst at the People’s Bank of China, predicted that the United States’ leverage over key payment and settlement mechanisms, including the SWIFT system, which handles interbank messaging, would allow it to threaten Russia’s “national financial security.” The economist Wang Da went further, likening the expulsion of Russia from SWIFT to a nuclear attack. The United States’ capacity to devastate a rival financially would have stark implications for China: in October 2022, one researcher at China’s central bank warned that China must be ready to defend against a U.S. effort “replicating this financial sanction model against China” in the “context of the intensified Sino-U.S. strategic game and the Taiwan Strait conflict.”

…missing from the public-facing discussion in China is a true recognition of the costs Beijing has assumed as a result of its support for Putin’s war. Experts’ early assessments lingered on dramatic potential damage to China; now, they tend to ignore or underappreciate the serious costs Beijing has incurred. China’s relations with most European countries have degenerated, probably irrevocably. In the declaration following its July summit, NATO included an unprecedentedly sharp denunciation of Beijing’s behavior, calling China a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war effort—language that would have been unthinkable prior to February 2022.

Frustration with China is not limited to European policymakers. Europeans who were recently very bullish on Chinese-European relations—especially those with business interests in China—now hold a much dimmer view. A May survey of European CEOs by the European Round Table for Industry found that only seven percent believed that Europe’s relations with China would improve in the next three years. More than 50 percent saw future deterioration. In a July survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations that polled nearly 20,000 people, 65 percent of respondents in 15 European countries agreed that China has played a “rather negative” or “very negative” role in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Also in FA – why post-Covid China’s economy is struggling. It’s more than demographics, a property correction or growing friction with the West…

…there is a more enduring driver of the present stasis, one that runs deeper than Xi’s growing authoritarianism or the effects of a crashing property market: a decades-old economic strategy that privileges industrial production over all else, an approach that, over time, has resulted in enormous structural overcapacity. For years, Beijing’s industrial policies have led to overinvestment in production facilities in sectors from raw materials to emerging technologies such as batteries and robots, often saddling Chinese cities and firms with huge debt burdens in the process.

Simply put, in many crucial economic sectors, China is producing far more output than it, or foreign markets, can sustainably absorb. As a result, the Chinese economy runs the risk of getting caught in a doom loop of falling prices, insolvency, factory closures, and, ultimately, job losses. Shrinking profits have forced producers to further increase output and more heavily discount their wares in order to generate cash to service their debts.

…As the party sees it, consumption is an individualistic distraction that threatens to divert resources away from China’s core economic strength: its industrial base. According to party orthodoxy, China’s economic advantage derives from its low consumption and high savings rates, which generate capital that the state-controlled banking system can funnel into industrial enterprises. This system also reinforces political stability by embedding the party hierarchy into every economic sector. Because China’s bloated industrial base is dependent on cheap financing to survive—financing that the Chinese leadership can restrict at any time—the business elite is tightly bound, and even subservient, to the interests of the party. 

…The Chinese economy clearly needs to strike a new balance between investment and consumption, but Beijing is unlikely to make this shift because it depends on the political control it gets from production-intensive economic policy.

A Twitter thread on the same subject…

China’s state-directed investment in ‘high-quality, productive’ forces is leading to massive overproduction that will reverberate in global markets for manufactured goods.

As China’s manufacturing exports exploded in the 2000s (to 19% of world total by 2013), aided by protectionism/subsidies, the US lost one million manufacturing jobs.

A second China shock is rapidly unfolding, this time in the EU’s key sectors. And the shock is much larger. 

After China’s property bubble burst in late 2023, China directed the country’s savings toward making cars, chemicals, machinery, and chips (hi Germany).

And China has been selling the resulting overproduction on global markets to avoid unemployment at home.

The EU is poised to potentially lose many more jobs than the U.S. did during the first shock.

For one, the bloc currently has around 30 million manufacturing jobs compared to the 17 million the U.S. had in 2000.

India and Vietnam have been the new China for 10 years now. MSCI pulls more China companies from its indexes…

The index provider said it will remove 60 stocks from the MSCI China Index this month, following 56 deletions in May and 66 in February, the highest tally in at least two years. At the end of July, China represented 22.33% of the Emerging Markets gauge.

The changes, effective after the close on Aug. 30, will also apply to the MSCI All Country World Index. Stocks slated for removal include airline operator Air China Ltd., Sany Heavy Equipment International Holding Co. and Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group.

MSCI’s changes underscore the increasingly grim prospects for the world’s second-largest economy, as Chinese shares risk losing their outsized presence in emerging market portfolios to peers such as India and Taiwan. The deletions may further increase the downside for China’s already battered market, with index-tracking funds forced to sell these shares.