Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Regina in LegCo quizzing officials on their reluctance to change the taxi licensing system and enable ride-hailing services to operate legally. How, she asks, can the authorities still allow speculators to hold and trade the colonial-era permits for perpetuity?

Some might be puzzled that Reg is displaying a slightly maverick view. She does occasionally have one – such as support for gay rights. And, judging from some other lawmakers’ comments, it’s not unpatriotic, seditious or whatever to criticize the official (and wishy-washy) line on this particular issue. Public opinion clearly welcomes ride-hailing services. 

So she is not proclaiming herself an authentic radical and woman of the people here. Nor is she ‘jeopardizing’ her chances of ever getting to be CE. Leaving her age (73) aside, neither the office of CE nor the sort of people Beijing will pick, are what they were – and she must know that. I would guess she clings on to legislative and other positions out of self-regard more than anything else. 

But we can surmise something quite specific about her. And that is that the extended Ip – or at least Lau – clan are not among those establishment families that invested in the 18,100 taxi licenses back in the old days. Those people, who have probably never touched a Toyota steering wheel in their lives, are classic rent-seekers enjoying yields perhaps comparable to those of long-term landlords sitting on multiple small properties bought decades ago. 

Unlike apartments, new permits for public vehicles could be created overnight by the thousands. And that would happen, in effect, if and when Uber etc are legalized. Which might be why the bureaucrats are so desperate not to make a decision, because some – perhaps well-connected – investors are then certain to see a sharp fall in asset value and income. (The income comes from the drivers who rent the vehicles, typically on a per-half-day basis. No-one in this saga gives a damn about them.) 

The officials’ big idea is to allow existing cab owners to combine and form branded ‘taxi fleets’ that would accept online booking. Net result: some current red/green taxis become cosplay ride-hailing services. Uber etc remain at best in a legal gray zone. RTHK adds…

Transport minister Lam Sai-hung said on Sunday …the administration’s study does not take the price of taxi licences into consideration, adding that officials have the overall public interest in mind…

For those of us fortunate enough to be able to huddle up next to an air-conditioner all day – HKFP talks to people working outdoors in Hong Kong’s recent heat.

More HK47 mitigation pleas – Winnie Yu, founder of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance in 2019 – has her statement cut short…

She cited the Hong Kong government’s failure to contain community outbreaks during the Covid-19 pandemic as one the reasons she had hoped to stand for election, adding that it was “unheard of in other democratic countries” to be accused of subverting state power for attempting to run in legislative elections.

…“Even now, I am still of the view that there is nothing wrong in bringing changes to the established order through voting in the legislature. Perhaps the only wrong I have committed was that I love Hong Kong too much,” Shek read from Yu’s mitigation letter, before he was cut off by judge Andrew Chan.

The judge said Yu’s statement was “not a mitigation letter at all,” bearing no indication of remorse from the former unionist.

From the Standard…

“This is not a mitigating letter, it’s a political speech…do not say so in my court,” [NatSec judge Andrew] Chan said.

[Yu’s lawyer, barrister Randy] Shek argued that when one expresses regret for something that has been done, people may question their motives or sincerity.But Chan dismissed him, saying: “Then don’t mitigate! You don’t have to mitigate. You see? That’s fine.”

Looking through the full list of names, you see a number of people including Yu, Chu Hoi-dick, Lam Cheuk-ting, Jeremy Tam, Gwyneth Ho and others, who could have been impressive political figures contributing to policymaking if Hong Kong had been allowed to have a representative system of government. Eddie Chu, for example, knew (and thought) more about land policy than any of the usual officials who never manage to address the housing issue.

Hong Kong’s numerous talent-attraction schemes have drawn some 300,000 applicants so far, with 200,000 approved. This must come close to matching the outflow of (mainly) middle-class expatriate and local residents during the Covid/Nat-Sec era. A partially effective way of trying to keep the population numbers (or at least property prices) up.

One slightly surprising piece of news: Hong Kong’s inequality has declined. Not (it seems) that anyone has become less poor – just that the better off have suffered a decline in net wealth, or emigrated.

Some weekend reading…From Made in China – another look at Beijing’s version of Qing-era history…

[British Museum exhibition] ‘China’s Hidden Century’ drew a wave of harsh, combative criticism from Chinese academics … hey wrote that the primary issue with the exhibition was its ‘wrong’ historiography and distorted interpretation of Chinese history. They argued that, instead of portraying the Qing as a Chinese dynasty defined by unambiguously Chinese characters, the display presented it as a multinational polity under Manchu rule that conquered and colonised diverse territories, including both Han-inhabited China proper and non-Han areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. The exhibition’s biggest historiographic mistake, according to Xia and Cui, was framing China as part of the multinational Qing Empire, rather than viewing the Qing as a transient historical period of China. They alleged that this distorted view could have serious political implications—undermining China’s territorial unity, separating ethnic minority territories from the rest of China, and legitimising efforts by anti-China forces to divide the country.

Singaporean boss of Sino Land Robert Ng applies for a non-Chinese cross-border travel permit. Especially useful if you go to the Mainland frequently and are a citizen of a country whose citizens don’t get long-term multiple-entry visas or visa-free entry. 

The new system looks like a post-Covid/NatSec attempt to help bolster Hong Kong’s attraction as an international hub for Mainland business and location for expats. For a couple of decades now, I recall people wondering why you can’t just use a permanent resident’s HKID to go up to Shenzhen, if not Shanghai or Beijing. 

If you’re interested, see Tripperhead’s ‘somewhat helpful’ (certainly better than anything else) guide to applying for the new permit. It’s a surprisingly – or maybe unsurprisingly – tedious process. Presumably, Chinese officials still want to have some advance warning of who’s coming. (Maybe some applicants will be rejected. I know one non-Chinese Hong Kong permanent resident who gets turned away from Macau.)

My last multiple-entry visa expired a few years back. I haven’t checked whether my passport allows me to do a 72-hour visa-free visit or something. Frankly, not having a visa is a wonderful excuse for not going to the Mainland.

Claudia Mo gets a supporting letter from Abraham Shek to help her mitigation in the HK47 case.

SCMP reports on the ‘Dragon Slaying’ bomb plot trial…

An alleged core member of the “Dragon Slaying Brigade” has accused Hong Kong police of using threats to force him into giving false statements after his arrest over a thwarted bomb plot targeting officers during the anti-government protests in 2019.

Christian Lee Ka-tin told the High Court on Tuesday that following his arrest in 2020, some officers had instructed him to give false evidence against other suspects believed to have tested firearms and explosives in preparation for the planting of two bombs in Wan Chai on December 8, 2019….Lee said he complied because he was scared of being waterboarded or violently interrogated after he was allegedly abused following his arrest.

The police sergeant threatened to harm him and his mother, Lee alleged.

“[Fung] pulled out his service weapon and put it in my hand, and said he could use it to kill me as he could accuse me of attempting to grab his gun,” he added.

The defendant claimed that another officer had grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, before using a wet towel and shower head to waterboard him.

“The feeling was like drowning, I could not breathe and I felt like I’d almost die from asphyxiation,” Lee said.

NATO gets the wolf-warrior treatment, as the organization criticizes Beijing’s support for Russia over Ukraine. The lady doth protest too much – or at least uses the word ‘smear’ to excess.

China Media Project explains the dynamics of ‘commercial’ deals between Xinhua and media companies like AP and Reuters…

The deal between Xinhua and AP, which involved cooperation on the distribution of photos, videos and press releases, was finalized with a handshake and the exchange of signed copies. It was covered enthusiastically by Xinhua. For AP, meanwhile, the story was apparently not news — no reporting was available. The same pattern held for Reuters and PA Media Group: enthusiastic coverage from Xinhua, silence from its partners. 

These deals with Xinhua should invite tougher questions about how international media companies with a stated commitment to professional standards should deal with Chinese media giants whose sole commitment — crystal clear in the country’s domestic political discourse— is to strengthen the global impact of Party-state propaganda. 

Politico looks at Taiwan’s intensive ‘retail diplomacy’ in the US, winning friends among state governors and legislatures…

There are pro-Taiwan caucuses in more than a dozen state legislatures, in left-leaning territory like Connecticut and in MAGA bastions like West Virginia and Kentucky. Pro-Taiwan resolutions have passed in states as conservative as Utah and as progressive as Hawaii.

How many state legislatures have a Lithuania friendship caucus?

Michael Pettis on why some countries – notably China, but also Germany, Japan and others – consistently export more manufactures than they import…

Surplus economies tend to export a much wider set of manufacturing products, and they import less than they export largely because domestic demand is insufficient to convert export revenues into an equivalent amount of imports. A trade surplus, in other words, simply means that domestic demand is too weak to allow the economy to absorb the equivalent of what it produces. 

And it is almost always too weak because of the low share workers in these economies—compared to their counterparts in deficit countries—directly and indirectly retain of what they produce. This is why these economies must run surpluses to sustain employment and growth: their citizens cannot consume in line with what they produce.

More HK47 pre-sentencing mitigation, including endorsements from former government officials Anthony Cheung and Law Chi-kwong. Both had once been members of the Democratic Party. Hard to believe in these all-patriots/jailed opposition days that Beijing once allowed the local administration to dabble in co-opting pan-dems. 

SCMP headline for the story: ‘Ex-Democratic Party chair seeks leniency over plan to topple Hong Kong government’.

HKFP op-ed on the HK Education Bureau’s obsession with the volume when kids – including in special needs schools – sing the national anthem…

…complaints about the volume of the singing seem ill-advised. Different halls have different acoustics. Primary school kids are not opera singers and a common reaction to uncertainty about the tune or the words is to drop the volume. As we cannot switch to an easier song we will probably have to put up with this.

Anyway students will survive a few extra singing lessons. Whether the March of the Volunteers can stand this sort of treatment is another matter. Somewhere around the 30th repetition it will cease to embody the “courage and indomitable fighting spirit of the Chinese nation” and come to embody only the Education Bureau’s enthusiasm for repetitive and boring patriotic performances… by other people. Do you think school inspectors start the week by singing the national anthem together?

For graphics/demographics fans, a vivid chart showing Hong Kong’s population divided into one-year age groups, showing the fall in fertility rates and increase in emigration among younger people. In terms simply of visual effect, it looks like around half the population aged under 20 are missing. Median age in the city is 47.

Nice photo of the UK’s first China-born Member of Parliament at her new workplace.

The ‘Inflatable Wonders’ exhibition takes a nasty turn as Armenian artist Joann weighs in (Standard story here)…

The team behind a Hong Kong art installation mocked by some online users has said it will press ahead with the exhibition despite the artist who inspired the inflatable works saying she wanted the “very ugly” pieces to be removed.

Armenian artist Joann … on Saturday said the “Inflatable Wonders” exhibition was “very ugly”, “not well proportionated” and looked “like an inflatable graveyard”.

“They also did not send me anything for approval, before the exhibition [started],” she told local media. “I don’t like that they launched it without showing the works to me…”

…Joann had told local media that if she had seen the works, she would have helped to make them “more appealing because these ugly lights are making it even worse”.

“I don’t like my name on this ugly exhibition,” she said. “The concept is mine. So I would love it to be [stopped].”

Central Venue Management, which won a government tender in 2016 to organize such events in the location, contradicts her account, saying she had been happy with the arrangements. So – innocent artist mistreated by commercial enterprise in cahoots with bureaucrats, right? But the SCMP story concludes…

Joann is known for her collaborations with luxury brands such as Gucci, Versace, Marc Jacobs, Valentino and BMW.

We all have to eat. We are all prostitutes. But if you hire yourself out to tacky clients with lots of cash to throw around, maybe don’t complain too much about how it looks to everyone else. (Some more of her work – sort of Christo-meets-people-who-put-knitting-on-railings.)

Mitigation as self-criticism continues in the HK47 case, with Joshua Wong and others. I guess after the verdict has been delivered and the next step is sentencing, there’s no point in stating the obvious like ‘they were just trying to win an election’. 

The NatSec Police promise to continue looking for threats…

“Soft confrontation” behaviors have been deterred by the two important national security laws in Hong Kong, but they have gone underground and are waiting for the right moment to resurface, said Andrew Kan Kai-yan, deputy police commissioner for national security.

Kan said that confrontations were deterred by the Beijing-drafted National Security Law and the domestically enacted Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which was legislated under Article 23 of the Basic Law.

“Street violence and mass demonstrations have nearly vanished, but national security risks will not disappear so easily. We currently face three major national security threats – American and Western intervention, soft confrontation and local terrorism,” Kan said.

…people engaging in soft confrontation will still flirt with the line – using fake news or misinformation to confuse the public, infiltrate their daily lives and engage in subtle confrontation,” Kan warned.

“They will spread their ideology subtly, and once they find the right time, they will start inciting people to stir up trouble.”

Does ‘soft’ or ‘subtle’ mean ‘legal’? What are some examples of it, or of Western ‘intervention’, or ‘local terrorism’? Otherwise, the public have no idea what the NatSec Police are actually referring to. (Surprised no-one has declared people spending money outside Hong Kong to be a form of ‘soft resistance’)

More on the ‘Inflatable Wonders’ at Central waterfront… 

The team behind a Hong Kong art installation of inflatables that was mocked online for one of the exhibit’s resemblance to gravestones has defended its decisions on how to display the works.

…some internet users have joked that the white Stonehenge installation look like gravestones, while others took potshots at the green-lit Pyramids of Giza display, saying they resembled police tents used at crime scenes.

David Rule, managing director of Central Venue Management that organised the exhibition, called the comments “rather short-sighted”.

“I think that the artist’s intention was to create known icons from around the world and they were originally designed in white, so we recreated them in white.”

I don’t think I could put it more underwhelmingly.

Some weekend reading (much probably paywalled)…

Reuters on the impact of Beijing’s threatened death penalty for Taiwan ‘separatists’…

Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, said the guidelines would force foreign companies to “either move their operations out entirely to keep Taiwanese talent or they stop hiring Taiwanese talent.”

That would mean that “even fewer Taiwanese will be working or living in China, thereby making Beijing’s attempts to win over their hearts and minds even harder,” Sung said.

China Media Project on another policy contradiction – Beijing’s attempts to stir nationalism while eliminating extreme xenophobia online…

In what Chinese state media portrayed as a full-scale effort to grapple with the problem of violent xenophobia, several platforms issued statements last week condemning the “extreme nationalist” comments users had left under news stories about the Suzhou attack. They included Weibo, Tencent, Phoenix Media, Baidu, and others. But this moment of supposed reflection ignored the deeper roots of extreme nationalism in the public discourse of the Chinese party-state, which for years has nurtured a sense of nationalist outrage over the imagined slights of foreign countries, including Japan in the United States, and has turned the blind eye to extreme nationalist sentiment online. 

Foreign Policy reviews At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning With China, by Edward Wong…

Wong presents the People’s Republic of China as the successor to the Qing empire and frames many of the leading controversies about China today as those of imperial periphery. These controversies include the genocide in Xinjiang, the occupation of Tibet, the imposition of authoritarianism on Hong Kong, and Beijing’s threats to take Taiwan by force.

…Modern scholarship in China presents the Manchu rulers as following in the footsteps of previous conquering barbarians, who soon assimilated with the majority Han and thus became “Chinese,” leaving little mark on the civilization they adopted.

But Wong presents the Manchus’ impact as substantial, even definitive, in creating China as we know it today. He outlines how the Manchus expanded China’s borders larger than ever before, establishing various forms of imperial oversight over vast swaths of territory from Manchuria in the north to the Central Asian Uyghur heartland in China’s far west to Tibet in the far southwest. “The Qing conquests were the culmination of a centuries-old pattern of history in the Asian heartland: cycles of invasion, subjugation, and assimilation that defined what many people call China,” Wong writes.

I recently watched the whole 76-part Qing extravaganza Empresses in the Palace (not in one four-days-and-nights binge-sitting). Mostly concubines’ ritualisitc bowing and scraping, interspersed with occasional horrific sadism and violence, plus a mention of donkey skin as medicine, which boosted sales when first broadcast. It’s all on YouTube – if you want.

How the charming Regina Ip we know and love today overcame (it says here) her antisocial personality in the 1970s. (Note that she had already been recruited to the civil service at the time.)

A 70-year-old man jailed for playing Glory to Hong Kong faces another six charges of ‘performing a musical instrument without a permit’…

Li was sentenced to 30 days in prison last October for unlicensed performance and fundraising after playing the protest anthem Glory to Hong Kong in public, with Magistrate Amy Chan saying that his offences amounted to “soft resistance”.

Between September 27 and October 4, Li allegedly played the erhu, a traditional Chinese two-stringed instrument, in public without lawful authority or excuse and without a permit issued by the Commissioner of Police.

On September 27, he played in pedestrian subways in Kwun Tong and Kwai Chung. On September 30, he played on a footbridge outside Fanling MTR station, a subway outside Tai Po Hui station, and outside Yuen Long station.

He played at the pedestrian subway in Kwun Tong again on October 4.

How does a magistrate know what ‘soft resistance’ is, when no-one else can define it? And, leaving aside the apparent injustice of it all and the reputational damage to Hong Kong – is this a good use of taxpayers’ money?

Tasked with creating mega-buzz events to show how Hong Kong is back to normal, civil servants use their great creative powers and come up with Inflatable Wonders – blow-up historic landmarks on Central waterfront. Photos here to deflate your expectations, complete with pointy Stonehenge megaliths. Could be worth checking out the day after a huge typhoon hits.

Global Times picks up on the Security Secretary’s denunciation of the HKJA…

The infamous Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) recently elected its new executive committee. The new committee, unsurprisingly similar to the association’s previous leadership, is mainly composed of journalists from foreign media outlets and freelancers, making it more like a group representing foreign journalists in Hong Kong.

Indeed, the HKJA, with its spotty history of colluding with separatist politicians and instigating riots in Hong Kong, is by no means a professional organization representing the Hong Kong media. It instead serves as a base for anti-China separatist forces to disrupt Hong Kong, and a malignant tumor that harms the city’s safety and stability, said analysts. 

The piece goes on to name office-holders and their anti-China stances, with reference to ‘so-called “freelancers”’, ‘black hands’, the National Endowment for Democracy, ‘color revolutions’, Jimmy Lai, and some history…

The HKJA was established in 1968 by Jack and Margaret Spackman. Over the years, the number of association members has been fewer than 10 percent of the local media industry, with quite a few being non-media personnel. It has never been an independent, professional media organization, but “a weird mix of dragons and fishes,” commented observers reached by the Global Times.

Criticism in state media suggests that the ‘unprofessional, unwelcome’ Association’s days are numbered.

Talking of evil foreign media smearing Hong Kong, Reuters has more on the departures of non-permanent CFA judges…

Six senior commercial lawyers with over a century’s combined experience said the resignations exacerbated long-standing concerns about Hong Kong’s future as a legal centre.

They noted firms drafting commercial contracts, joint ventures, or deciding where to arbitrate complex cases, are now increasingly opting the likes of Singapore, Dubai or Delaware in the U.S., rather than Hong Kong, in contractual jurisdiction clauses, because they are seen as more neutral.

“Sumption and Collins leaving is devastating for Hong Kong, in terms of the CFA’s powers as a commercial appellate court,” a commercial lawyer with three decades experience told Reuters, declining to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

…The debate over the robustness of Hong Kong’s rule of law could also exacerbate difficulties in recruiting new judges to Hong Kong courts, lawyers say.

Of the city’s 211 designated judicial posts, only 163 are currently filled according to judiciary figures. Average wait times were 171 days for civil cases in the High Court and 111 days for the District Court in March 2024, both up from 2019.

The staffing crunch has been severe enough for the judiciary to now recruit private lawyers as deputy judges for short stints of up to several months, according to a government report, noting the number of such external deputy judges had almost doubled from 23 in 2018 to 45 in 2022.

“The recent criticism is likely to have a reputational impact and make it even more difficult to replenish judges from the private sector,” said a fourth commercial lawyer with over 40 years’ experience, referring to Sumption’s remarks.

After the HKJA is dispatched, how long before Reuters, Bloomberg, the WSJ and FT come under greater struggle-session scrutiny from Beijing’s supporters and newspapers?

Handover Day video from Chris Patten. Not mincing his words.

A 6,600-word written message from CE John Lee here.  Merciful HKFP summary.

A holiday concert by Denise Ho disrupted by the police. A dentist gets taken away for questioning.

HKFP op-ed asks why Security Secretary Chris Tang has such a thing about the HK Journalists Association. (There isn’t really a clear answer. Maybe he was bitten by one when he was a child. Maybe he thinks the media should all be controlled by the Security Bureau.)…

Tang has resoundingly condemned the association and all its works on several occasions, questioning who it represents, who it gets its money from and whether it should be invited to press conferences on relevant matters. He has accused it of “infiltrating schools” and defending people who swore at policewomen…

…a day ahead of elections for new HKJA leadership, and Tang rose to the occasion with: “Looking at [the list of candidates], it looks more like a foreign journalist association to me. Most of them are journalists from foreign media, some are freelancers, some are not even journalists and their organisations have engaged in political activities.”

…two members of the executive put in their resignations between the end of nominations and the counting of the votes.

Statement of mitigation by Gordon Ng (scroll down for English version), one of the HK47…

I believe that the holding of fair and regular elections provides the best counter balance against a power potentially becoming tyrannical.

It is for these reasons that I support the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, as I believe their cause of striving for democracy a noble one, and also a sensible one for the continued development of this city.

Bloomberg on the resignation of non-permanent CFA judges…

The unprecedented number of departures over such a short period of time — including three announced this month — adds to worries among foreign companies over the future of the rule of law in Hong Kong. With the court likely to decide on a number of key security law cases over the next year, scrutiny is set to increase on the seven remaining foreign judges — and Hong Kong’s status as a global financial hub that provides better protection for companies than across the border in the mainland.

For investors, the worry is that the government’s preoccupation with national security could increasingly spill over into commercial interests. Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube blocked videos of a Hong Kong protest song in the city last month after a local court approved an injunction order to ban the song, generating concerns that the city is creeping toward mainland-style censorship.

Members of the business community are increasingly cautious about speaking out on anything deemed political, even while privately expressing concerns about the departure of overseas judges and judicial independence. Although business disputes typically don’t touch on national security, the fear is that it will become harder to separate money and politics.

… [Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law said] “Over time, I’m just not sure whether the Hong Kong government and Beijing will be willing to keep its hands off of other cases — including business and commercial cases — that affect Beijing’s interests.”

The SCMP on reactions to CE John Lee’s declarations of economic recovery…

A government source said tourism would be a priority for Lee among ongoing efforts to revive the economy.

“What boosting tourism can accomplish is more visible, and it can translate to GDP growth more easily and create more job opportunities,” the insider told the Post.

……But [a] former researcher at the government’s now-defunct Central Policy Unit questioned banking on tourism for a boost.

She said while more than 65 million visitors arrived in 2018, inbound tourism contributed only 3.6 per cent of added value to that year’s GDP.

It also created an array of problems, including threatening the survival of small shops frequented by locals when retail chains popular with mainland visitors began moving into some neighbourhoods as rents surged.

Hong Kong is importing workers because of a shortage of manpower. What is the point of creating more jobs – especially low-paid ones associated with mass-tourism? Maybe it’s because officials see visits as a way to counteract the negative publicity caused by Covid and NatSec excesses…

The source said that promoting tourism would also help improve the world’s perception of Hong Kong as visitors experienced the city for themselves.

“They will realise that Hong Kong is safer, more vibrant and liberal than some Western media have portrayed it to be. You won’t be arrested on the street for criticising the government,” the official said.

Meanwhile, people are arrested for Facebook posts or wearing a ‘seditious’ T-shirt. 

Later in the article, no fewer than four people – a European business leader, an academic, a former government minister and a current all-patriots lawmaker – call in various ways for less NatSec rhetoric.