Big Lychee, Various Sectors

A couple of items that may or may not warrant forthright responses from the government press-release writers…

Washington Post op-ed co-authored by Samuel Bickett calls for sanctions to cut off banks and other companies involved in illicit trade off from the US financial system…

Once a trusted global financial center aligned with Western democracies and governed by the rule of law, our new report with the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation details how Hong Kong has become the world’s leader in such practices as importing and re-exporting banned Western technology to Russia, forming untraceable front companies for the purchase and sale of barred Iranian oil, and managing “ghost ships” that illegally trade natural resources with North Korea.

Hong Kong’s business-friendly policies, which make it easy to conceal corporate ownership and quickly create and dissolve companies, allow illicit actors to make a mockery of U.S. and Western sanctions. At the same time, slow and inconsistent enforcement by Western governments has allowed those actors to continue their operations with relative impunity. The United States can and should address this situation without delay.

…Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee’s statement in October 2022 confirming that the territory would not enforce U.S. sanctions offered a green light to illicit operators who had set up shop in the city. Since then, many more have done so, from Russian tanker owners to Iranian exporters of drone technology. 

…other jurisdictions in places such as Central Asia and the Middle East play a significant role in sanctions evasion. Yet Hong Kong stands out for the sheer volume and breadth of its involvement with rogue nations. In 2022, only mainland China shipped more integrated circuits and semiconductors to Russia than Hong Kong did — and the difference between them was small. 

BBC radio documentary – Erasing Hong Kong…

Authorities are attempting to erase and rewrite history – both the recent history of pro-democracy protests, as well as Hong Kong’s 180-year history as a British colony … and how ordinary people are trying to resist.

Includes the disappearance of Luisa Lim’s Indelible City from public libraries and the wiping of RTHK’s archives.

An obituary of barrister Alvin Cheung, who spotted what was happening 10 years before everyone else…

A Canadian citizen of Hong Kong descent, Mr. Cheung, 38, was a Hong Kong barrister in 2009 when he noted the insistent and steady encroachments by Beijing on the former British colony, especially through the city’s supposedly independent common law courts. As he studied how authoritarian governments manipulate law to seize and retain power, Mr. Cheung wrote tirelessly about the coming downfall of legal and civil rights in his hometown years before Beijing seized control.

Mr. Cheung was not satisfied just with sharing his concerns among fellow lawyers and academics. With his characteristic, even caustic wit — he once described Beijing’s intervention in a Hong Kong decree as a political “temper tantrum” — Mr. Cheung told journalists and his social media followers that the Chinese and Hong Kong governments had weaponized law to undermine the city’s autonomy and degrade civil rights.

The Hong Kong government reports that the number of registered voters in the city has fallen for the third year running… 

…around 18,900 new registration applications were received for the geographical constituencies in the 2024 voter cycle… A total of 142,400 voters were provisionally removed from the electoral register [about 29,900 due to death and about 112,500 as a result of other inquiry processes].

The number of deaths in Hong Kong in 2023 was 54,400, so about 54% of them were registered to vote (presumably, their names are automatically taken off the voters’ register). But what about the other 112,500 missing voters?.

If my experience is anything to go by, the ‘other inquiry processes’ include attempts to update addresses when people move to a new home and don’t update their particulars with the Registration and Electoral Office. When a voting card or other communication is returned as undelivered, the authorities can send an email or SMS, if they have those contact details. And you get a stream of reminders (see right).

It’s not especially onerous to update your details, so if you don’t do it, it either means you’ve emigrated, or you’re making a conscious decision not to be on the electoral roll any more. Why would you decide not to vote in future? Perhaps because you don’t see any point. For example, maybe the candidates you used to support are now in jail, and today’s ballots have only a handful of unknown names with similar platforms. 

The Education Bureau releases curriculum guidelines for a new Citizenship, Economics and Society subject in Hong Kong secondary schools…

“[Patriotic Education] helps students understand the development of our country and the importance of the close relationship between the Mainland and Hong Kong to the development of our society, thereby cultivating students’ sense of nationhood, affection for our country and sense of national identity,” the document reads.

…Xi Jinping Thought is recommended for third-year secondary students as part of a module called “Our Country’s Political Structure and Its Participation in International Affairs.”

When asked how much students should learn about Xi Jinping Thought, Ranny Yau, the principle of TWGHs Kap Yan Directors’ College and chairman of a committee responsible for reviewing the new subject, told Ming Pao on Thursday that junior secondary school students were expected to know more about China.

“It is unnecessary to single out and highlight some content that may worry teachers,” Yau said in Cantonese.

What exactly is ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’? Some observers see its aim as the ‘great rejuvenation of China’, or to enable the CCP to avoid the fate of the USSR. A recent ASPI Strategist article says…

It is a totalising ideology that enshrines the absolute leadership of the party over the state constitution. There is no state separate from the party. The decisive function of the market, a key aspect of the reform era, is now subservient to XJT and the party cells that are embedded in businesses and required to guide them.

In the Mainland, it is taught in primary schools – and many adults are expected to attend workplace seminars on the subject.

Some reading from the weekend…

Oz ABC on the remaking of Hong Kong…

In the past couple of years, more than 100,000 people have moved to Hong Kong, and the majority have come from mainland China. It’s not by accident. Hong Kong’s Beijing-controlled government is offering a raft of incentives to lure people to the city, after an exodus of skilled workers in the wake of the COVID pandemic and China’s ruthless crackdown on political dissent following the 2019 pro-democracy protests. 

PBS interview with the co-owners of Bleak House Books, formerly of San Po Kong, now in a village near Rochester, NY.

If you’re on Twitter: illustrated thread by @bauhiniacapital who’s renovating a smallish Hong Kong fishing boat as a leisure craft (presumably – though he also gets a gill-net commercial fishing permit as part of the deal)…

Decent-sized cabin. Sits 8-10 pretty easily. Not what one would call callipygian, but she’s got good bones.

Michael Pettis on Beijing’s difficulties in stimulating consumption…

Beijing’s reluctance to support consumer demand might not be as bizarre as it seems. Other countries in similar positions—most famously Japan in the 1980s—also said they wanted to boost the consumption shares of their economies but struggled to do so. Raising the consumption share of the economy is much more difficult than it may at first seem.

…direct and implicit transfers meant that China’s global competitiveness in manufacturing was the other side of the coin of China’s very weak consumption … China’s extremely competitive manufacturing—and the world’s best transportation and logistical infrastructure—should not be thought of as separate from the country’s extraordinary low domestic consumption. The former exists because of the latter, and one requires the other. 

Taipei Times op-ed on one way President William Lai is different from his predecessor… 

Lai’s speech touched on issues of Taiwanese nationality and identity, and vision for the future that he expects the (DPP) to take the lead. Meanwhile, at around the same time, his administration announced plans for a change in national linguistic self-identity.

The two moves are almost certainly connected. One is the Ministry of Education (MOE) announcing plans to change the labelling on language teaching materials from “Southern Min” (閩南語) to “Taiwan Taiwanese” (台灣台語). The other is Lai’s decision to give his entire speech at the DPP National Congress in “Taiwan Taiwanese.”

Lai was taking some political risks in his language choice. On one hand, it is quite likely that younger audience members and some older ones couldn’t understand his speech. The other is that traditionally the party has been dominated by Taiwanese speakers and distrusted by those who came to Taiwan from China after the Chinese Civil War, Hakka and indigenous peoples.

Mainlanders traditionally distrusted the DPP because they identified as Chinese, while Hakka and indigenous peoples had historically suffered at the hands of the numerically superior Taiwanese-speaking peoples who originated in Fujian. Tsai had actively tried to court those groups and de-emphasize any link to any specific group, with some success. For example, the DPP went from zero indigenous legislative seats to two out of six now.

The Court of Final Appeal will consider the HK Alliance case in January. Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong were convicted of not handing over information to NatSec police in 2021…

Representing herself on Wednesday, Chow, who is a barrister, called her conviction “wrongful” and said there was uncontested evidence in the trial that the Alliance was not a foreign agent. By categorising the Alliance as a foreign agent, police were able to use powers granted under Article 43 of the national security law to demand information.

Robert Pang, who represented Tang and Tsui, referred to the fact that some of the documents used in the trial were heavily redacted as the prosecution said disclosing them could harm public interest.

“There were allegations that the Alliance was a foreign agent of various organisations. The organisations are not named,” Pang said.

In response, government prosecutor Jonathan Man said that if the prosecution were required to prove that a certain party was a foreign agent, it would “seriously hamper the effectiveness of the whole regime.”

After the appellants and the prosecution presented their submissions, Justice Roberto Ribeiro said the court would grant the appellants leave to appeal.

The appeal might in theory involve one of the overseas judges. Either way, it will be a chance for the top court to show some ‘soft resistance’.

Good title for a noir film: Another Miserable Night In Paris – a tale of hunger, fatigue and defeat. About China’s female gymnasts…

The women’s team came in sixth on Tuesday and left the venue in tears, while a star-studded US team, consisting of Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera, clinched gold, followed by Italy and Brazil.

…Another [social media user] said: “I suspect they were malnourished during puberty and lack proper rest. They look like they are working hard but are so exhausted.”

Barring anything interesting happening tomorrow, I will declare an early weekend – for which, some reading…

RFA reports on Beijing’s problems with Burma’s latest military dictators…

Frustration with the junta’s military and economic incompetence is mounting.

To be clear, Beijing has never trusted Min Aung Hlaing, whom they are said to view as incompetent and an embarrassment. 

Chinese leaders have consistently denied him an invitation since the coup, including to the sparsely attended third Belt and Road Initiative Forum in Beijing in October 2023.  

Beijing appears more convinced that Min Aung Hlaing is unable to stabilize the country, no matter what, and has been more vocally pushing for elections as an off ramp to the military’s self-made crisis.

War on the Rocks asks why Beijing is going easier on Vietnam than the Philippines in the South China Sea…

…while China has been escalating with the Philippines at unprecedented levels around Second Thomas Shoal, it has exercised striking restraint toward Vietnam’s far larger and more militarized expansion of its South China Sea outposts. 

The article offers five possible reasons why Beijing is less aggressive on Hanoi – all of them sort-of possible – plus some good background on China’s vaguely ambitious claims on the area.

Carried in the Macau Times, a Xinhua editorial on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s visit to Beijing…

As two major countries with ancient civilizations that stand at the two ends of the ancient Silk Road, the time-honored friendly exchanges between the two countries have made significant contributions to the overall exchanges and mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations and to the progress of humanity.

…Marco Polo’s journey underscores the timeless value of cross-cultural interaction. His detailed descriptions of China’s innovations, governance and societal structures sparked curiosity and admiration in Europe, fostering a spirit of exploration and a quest for knowledge that transcended borders.

Today, Marco Polo’s legacy is a crucial reminder that mutual learning can break down barriers, inspire progress, and build a foundation of trust and respect.

Note adroit omission of longstanding spaghetti/noodles controversy. But it was the Mongol Empire, with Kublai Khan sending Polo on missions to various domains, such as what is now Iran.

Flicking briefly through the RTHK and other news sites this morning, I get the impression Hong Kong media are grateful for having the city’s fencing, swimming, badminton and other feats to occupy the space normally devoted to trials of pan-democrats, retail closures, falling property prices, moaning about insufficient millions of tourist arrivals, and the government saying everything is amazingly good. 

We do have a cheery Mainland official. Cui Janchun, the little-heard-from Commissioner of the local Ministry of Foreign Affairs outpost, says Hong Kong’s political system ‘will be an example for the rest of the world in five to 10 years’. (Meanwhile, presumably, it’s not.)

And a NatSec-type trial: the ‘Dragon Slaying Brigade’ alleged bomb plot. Unusual in that there is a jury, which may account for the prosecutor’s measured tone…

“When you examine the evidence [alleged mastermind and prosecution witness Wong Chun-keung] gave in court, you may believe in some part of it and not believe in other parts,” [prosecutor Juliana] Chow said. “You do not have to believe in everything he said, but meanwhile you do not have to dismiss him completely.”

…The group has denied involvement in connection with the thwarted plot to plant two bombs in Wan Chai on December 8, 2019.

…During the trial, the defence lawyers tried to attack Wong’s credibility by pointing to financial records that showed he had spent about HK$300,000 (US$38,400) on football betting.

Some viewing and listening for non-sports fans…

A CBS TV report on Hong Kong five years after the big protests. Includes interviews with the inevitable Regina Ip, plus LSD’s Chan Po-yin and (from a few years earlier) Jimmy Lai, his son, and Nathan Law. ‘A once-vibrant Hong Kong hollowed of its people and its soul.’

An Oz ABC podcast on Jimmy Lai, including comment on the effect of 23 hours a day of solitary confinement.

Owen Chow, who faces possible life imprisonment as part of the Hong Kong 47 case, and his lawyer are found guilty of removing an ‘unauthorized article’ from Lai Chi Kok, where he is currently in jail. The item was a…

…complaint, intended for the government watchdog the Ombudsman, related to officers allegedly intercepting two books that were meant to be delivered to Chow.

Damon Wong, senior editor at InMedia (the last pro-dem media outlet still going), describes (in Chinese) how he was delayed and searched by immigration and customs at Hong Kong airport after returning from a vacation in Japan with his family. They experienced long delays for baggage retrieval, close inspection of the baggage, and a search of his body, leaving his children in tears.

Article 19 looks at the Hong Kong government’s ‘Proposed Legislative Framework to Enhance Protection of the Computer Systems of Critical Infrastructure’…

Cybersecurity provisions to compel critical infrastructure operators to boost cyber resilience and hold them accountable for non-compliance are important to securing essential services. However, the same legislation imposed to protect national security or cybersecurity can also supercharge violations of international human rights law and the right to freedom of speech and expression online.

Among the problems identified are loose definitions of critical infrastructure and excessive information disclosure and investigative powers.

The UK-China Transparency organization releases a report on the Lau Institute at King’s College, London. Among the findings…

99.9% of the Institute’s funding comes from a single donor from Hong Kong in the People’s Republic of China, Mr Lau Ming-wai. Lau has given at least £11 million to King’s to date in support of the Institute. In 2017, Lau was made a fellow of King’s…

Lau has served as an advisor to the government of Hong Kong … on … “integration” with China and … United Front work targeting young people from Hong Kong. He was also given a formal role at a body overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department…

…The Institute’s director, Professor Kerry Brown, in 2020 received an award from a Chinese government think-tank for “telling a good story about China and disseminating China’s voice well”. Brown has been a frequent contributor to Chinese state media outlets.

The organization has made a freedom of information request to find out what conditions are attached to Lau’s funding.  (Lau Ming-wai is son of developer-tycoon and, let’s say, character Joseph Lau.)

The answer to yesterday’s little quiz (inspired by a juxtaposition on RTHK’s news page): the two stories were the death of Edna O’Brien and Hong Kong swimmer Siobhan Haughey’s progress at the Olympics. The Irish justice minister (later PM) Charles Haughey was responsible for banning O’Brien’s The Country Girls in the early 1960s and was Siobhan’s great uncle. There was a winner.

From the London Times: ‘The speed and drama of the transformation that has overcome one of the freest and liveliest cities in Asia is difficult to exaggerate’. A (paywalled) follow-up to the recent Regina Ip interview…

Given everything else that is going on in Hong Kong, you would have thought the authorities had more to worry about than Chan Mei Tung’s potato. It was a summer evening in June when Chan, a performance artist, produced the vegetable on one of the city’s busy streets.

Before an assembly of curious onlookers, she held it aloft and whittled it down with a knife into what roughly resembled a candle. Then she raised a lighter and mimed the action of kindling a flame. Within moments, more than a dozen police were arresting her and leading her away — because on that day in Hong Kong two years ago, a potato was much more than just a potato.

…Visual representations of the date itself … cross the red line — on this year’s anniversary, one artist, Sanmu Chen, was detained for several hours for tracing the numbers in the air with his fingers.

A white Porsche with the licence plate US 8964 was impounded and towed away by police last year…

After being arrested and questioned for 26 hours for her potato whittling in 2022, Chan’s “performance” this year consisted of standing on the street near the park and drinking Blue Girl beer, whose logo is an idealised Liberty-like figure. She got away with it, but one man was chased away by police for conspicuously consuming a can of Kronenbourg 1664, whose numbers include the famous date.

…Despite its suppression of open dissent, the government is enraged, and apparently alarmed, by such symbolic gestures. It denounces them as “soft resistance”, an undefined term which seems to mean nothing more than perfectly legal acts that annoy the authorities.

“It is imaginable that if we … disregard the behaviours of ‘soft resistance,’ it will create gaps in safeguarding national security or lead to a return of turbulent times,” Hong Kong’s security minister, Chris Tang, has said. “We must remain vigilant.” Such vigilance was exhibited last month by Hong Kong’s education bureau, which criticised two schools after finding that although their students were singing the Chinese national anthem, they were not singing it loudly enough.

To some people, such touchiness is encouraging, a sign of the government’s vulnerability and a recognition that, even if it has suppressed physical and verbal dissent, it recognises its failure to win hearts and minds — an official fear of potatoes does not suggest a secure and confident government.

Quotes from Emily Lau…

“It has really caused a huge collapse of civil society … The news organisations have collapsed, people have been arrested, trade unions have folded up and people are no longer allowed to demonstrate. It’s very, very distressing and people are very scared. But don’t get the impression that they’re all lying flat, that they’re all dead.

…“Although you have managed to suppress the expression of unhappiness, you still have a society where people are unhappy … And if you are in charge, I think you’d be quite scared.”

Re-engineering the human soul is long, hard work, and it must be frustrating for those attempting it to see ‘soft resistance’ everywhere they look. But people can’t not see what they are witnessing. It’s impossible not to see courts that jail folk for wearing T-shirts. It’s impossible not to see the pliant mediocrity of dozens of appointed patriots who replaced smart and spirited democratically elected legislators. And how can you instantly eradicate the sentiment of a movement whose followers are willing to suffer Blue Girl and Kronenberg for their cause?

Some reading from the weekend…

HKFP op-ed asks what do the HK Consumer Council and the Wall Street Journal have in common? The pre-emptive kowtow, of course…

Following a meeting, the council, usually a robust defender of its conclusions, collapsed in a heap, apologising, reclassifying Nongfu’s masterpiece as five stars, and stressing that all the samples it tested were perfectly safe to drink, as indeed it had stated in its original report.

…[Selina] Cheng’s union activities were not likely to clash with her professional work covering the car and energy industries in China. And the newspaper will soon be free from worries about hostility in Hong Kong because it has moved most of its staff to Singapore.

The Guardian on China’s Olympic swimmers…

Saturday was the first day of major competition since this all came to light. And of course the fallout is already toxic. This past week Qin posted a feisty social media message claiming the increased drug testing of Chinese swimmers was a tactic designed to throw his country’s athletes off their stride.

…China has often suggested this is all a result of Sinophobia, racism, US propaganda. There is even a theory China now welcomes, at an obscure political level, the suspicions around its athletes, which is presented as evidence of hostility, a unifying sense of national victimhood.

China Digital Times on another incident of anti-Japanese violence in China – aimed at a Chinese person…

Videos of the incident, which went viral on social media, showed the man punching a young female cosplayer while yelling, “You’re wearing goddamn devil clothes. Look at what you’re wearing. Did you grow up eating shit? All of you are wearing Japanese clothing.” 

China Media Project looks back at the success of Xi Jinping’s ‘media convergence’…

Ten years on from the start of Xi Jinping’s media convergence campaign, the leadership seems confident it has wrestled back control of a media ecosystem that from the late 1990s through the 2000s had grown restive and unruly from the standpoint of public opinion controls. This has been aided by strict media controls under Xi Jinping, as well as the swift collapse of the traditional media models (such as advertising-driven metro tabloid newspapers) that to some extent empowered more freewheeling journalism more than a decade ago. Even if there have been cases of waste, particularly at the county level, there is also a clear sense that convergence has optimized the state’s use of media resources. 

…[International Communication Centers] below the national level are now actively involved in producing external propaganda, much of it powered by the newest tool in the media convergence arsenal, generative AI, directed at foreign audiences through social media platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Central state media and regional ICCs are working closely with state-backed technology firms to harness generative AI and streamline foreign-directed content production.

Topical quiz: which two current news items – one Hong Kong, one international – are linked by a 1960s Irish government minister’s comment that a certain book was ‘filth and should not be allowed inside any decent home’?

Slightly maverick lawmaker Paul Tse criticizes Hong Kong’s Legislative Council for no longer exercising oversight over ‘serious matters’…

“…only two reporters attended the Public Accounts Committee press conference in May, and Legco has yet to convene a Committee of Inquiry meeting in the current term,” he said.

“The monitoring role of Legco has been distorted, and its very purpose has been repeatedly questioned.”

To address this, Tse suggested strengthening Legco’s monitoring function, which could “restore public support and trust in Legco and the government.”

Surely the whole purpose of an opposition-free legislature is to support the government and not have democratically elected troublemakers highlighting problems?

But if they want to stir things up, maybe the all-patriots could get some inspiration from the HK Outdoors blog’s view of the government’s plans for a South Lantau Eco-Recreation Corridor…

The planned project [basket of projects] is “eco” in name only, using eco for greenwashing rather than being of any substance.

Zero plans for any enhancements to the natural environment/biodiversity of south Lantau; instead, only projects that will damage the environment to varying degrees.

Kind of shocking, really, this can emerge from the “Sustainable Lantau Office”, which has been operating for several years now. 

…Chairlift, visitor centre with catering, boardwalks, education centres etc – There isn’t a shred of originality here! Just lazily cobbling together a bunch of ideas that are applied elsewhere, with no real thoughts or insights about Lantau itself; nothing even suggesting the consultants have taken part in any activities whatsoever, experienced issues like taking buses back to Tung Chung on busy days.

Credit where it’s due…

Cheung Sha Hillside Adventure – There is almost a good idea here, but only almost. 

Some weekend reading and viewing…

Marketwatch looks at the anti-Kamala Harris (and pro-Trump) content coming out on Chinese social media…

…with many spreading long-debunked rumors about her past romantic relationships…

And disapproval from state media…

[One] said, “Harris has not achieved any political achievements worth mentioning in the more than three years since she became vice president, her governing ability is limited, and she often laughs for no reason.” 

Perhaps the problem is that Harris is not in the pocket of Vladimir Putin and can’t be bought off by Beijing.

A pretty hefty (17-minute) trailer for TV series Zero Day – about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, starting with a blockade.

As a clever touch, the trailer was released at the same time as an official annual air-raid drill.

RFA says…

People are shown trying to leave the island, amid a run on banks, the hasty evacuation of foreign citizens, young men pledging to defend Taiwan and infiltration by Beijing collaborators.

“The trailer reveals a very realistic description of a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan, also China’s use of cognitive warfare and the incitement of internal unrest,” said Taiwan security expert Shen Ming-shih.

It does look pretty harrowing. It will be interesting to see how it impacts Taiwanese public opinion, and whether Chinese officials or state media respond.

While we’re at it – another (lighter and shorter) video from Taiwan incorporating a maritime theme.

The Committee for Freedom in HK report on Hong Kong companies helping Russian, North Korean and Iranian entities avoid sanctions is here. A synopsis from author Samuel Bickett…

Some of our most significant findings:

• Hong Kong’s exports of advanced tech to Russia surged after the invasion of Ukraine, with $750 million of shipments in Dec 2023–nearly 40% of the total–consisting of items on a US/EU list of the most essential components for Russia’s military systems.

• Hong Kong companies have long supported North Korea’s illicit shipping operations, facilitating ship-to-ship transfers and the creation of fraudulent ship identities to evade international sanctions.

• Hong Kong companies have facilitated the transfer of advanced drone and missile technology to Iran, which has been used to support military efforts in the Middle East and beyond, and facilitated the illicit sale of Iranian oil via ship-to-ship transfers at sea.

In the report, we call out by name companies and individuals who appear to be participating in these activities, using information found via Russian customs records collected by global security nonprofit C4ADS, Hong Kong corporate records, vessel tracking data, leaked Iranian emails, and other materials.

Story in tech publication the Register, saying ‘government doesn’t seem to mind’. And in Tradewinds…

Hong Kong has become vital to Russia’s efforts to evade sanctions by providing a “safe haven” for blacklisted shipowners to operate beyond the reach of Western regulators, according to a report.

…China does not recognise unilateral sanctions and the region’s chief executive, John Lee, said in October 2022 that Hong Kong would not enforce global sanctions against Moscow.

The comments gave the green light to “illicit operators to set up shop in the city”, said the report by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

“Many have done so, from Russian tanker owners to Iranian exporters of drone technology.”

The report also covers Hong Kong’s role as an operational hub for shipping goods to and from other sanctioned nations, Iran and North Korea.

The report urges Western regulators to blacklist Hong Kong and Chinese banks along with logistics firms, insurers and corporate registry services.

No official response as yet. It will need more than the usual boilerplate.

Calling for sanctions counts as ‘conspiracy to collude with foreign forces’ under Hong Kong’s NatSec Law. Which brings us to Jimmy Lai, who is being tried for urging overseas politicians and governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong individuals such as government officials. His lawyers are arguing that there is no case to answer…

[Senior Counsel Robert] Pang said: “There may be some evidence of agreement to publish certain articles… to work with some organisations, but there is no evidence after the NSL was promulgated.”

From the Standard…

[Pang] said in a half-time submission that the prosecution’s description of the now-defunct Apple Daily as Lai’s political platform was “weird,” as it was a newspaper that exercised the watchdog role of the fourth estate in criticizing the government and publishing commentaries from different perspectives.

Pang said press freedom and freedom of speech are protected by the Basic Law and Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance.

…Pang conceded that Lai had requested sanctions before the law was implemented but insisted he stopped doing so upon realizing it could constitute a criminal offense with the law’s enactment.

Instead, Lai only expressed his views in articles and talk shows.

Regarding the conspiracy charge, Pang said it has to involve unlawful conduct or means, and without the “unlawful” element, the “conspiracy” would only amount to an agreement.

Lai, he said, might have reached agreements with some people, but they were made legally before the implementation of the law.

This is a NatSec court. They have a 100% conviction rate, apart from two acquittals in the HK47 case – which the government is appealing.

Following the WSJ’s firing of Selina Cheng, China Media Project looks at how most international and local media in Hong Kong dissuade employees from campaigning for press freedom…

In other parts of the world, getting elected to lead one’s local press group is a cause of celebration — a sign that a journalist has become a pillar of the professional community, esteemed and trusted by their colleagues. But for Selina Cheng, it was a cause for concern. The day after she was chosen by members of the Hong Kong Journalists Association to be their next chairperson, she told the China Media Project she was surprised not to have been immediately fired by her employer, the Wall Street Journal. When senior editors learned about her plan to stand on the eve of the election, her supervisor at the WSJ’s international desk in London told her to withdraw and quit the HKJA’s executive committee, where she had already served for three years.

Put bluntly, if a commercial enterprise wants to operate in today’s Hong Kong, it can’t oppose or contradict the authorities. HSBC or Manulife refuse emigres access to their MPF funds. Corporations will put their names onto joint public statements welcoming national security laws. Chambers of Commerce tiptoe around sensitive subjects like rule of law. They have shareholders’ (and they would argue employees’ and customers’) interests to protect. It’s either that, or leave.

The Guardian, of course, moved its correspondent to Taipei – and has found plenty of things worthy of coverage there. Following yesterday’s Reg-vs-democracy thing, an article on how Taiwan’s government gained voters’ trust…

In 2014, the Taiwanese government’s approval rating was less than 10%. Anything it suggested was automatically distrusted. Then, an uprising prompted a chain of events that would transform it into one of the most trusted democratic governments in the world.

On 18 March 2014, a coalition of students and civil society groups occupied the parliament, protesting against a proposed trade deal with Beijing that was being fast-tracked without scrutiny. The protesters included civic hackers using technology to promote transparency in government and experiment in digital democracy. During the weeks of the occupation, they demonstrated a different way of operating – through listening and building consensus, rather than directing and opposing.

After the protest something extraordinary happened. The government invited the protesters in – some became mentors to ministers, others were appointed as participation officers championing involvement in government departments, and a new team – the Public Digital Innovation Space – was established. One of the hackers, Audrey Tang, went from occupier to digital minister.

Hong Kong’s number-one glutton for punishment does an interview with a not-very-sympathetic London Times. It’s paywalled, but I’m going to force you to see the worst bits anyway…

Regina Ip, convenor of the executive council, Hong Kong’s de facto cabinet, said democracy had failed in the territory and was alien to “Chinese tradition”. She spoke during the trials of democracy campaigners who have been prosecuted under national ­security laws that have criminalised many peaceful expressions of political opposition.

…“Your model, the western model … you have to have competition, you have to have pluralism, you have to have ­diversity. That’s never the Chinese concept. That’s never part of the Chinese tradition.”

First, democracy never ‘failed’ in Hong Kong – because it never existed. Beijing vetoed any moves to self-rule during colonial times. It then hand-picked every post-1997 Chief Executive, while the legislature was packed with an unrepresentative majority of pro-Beijing lawmakers. These leaderships’ inability to meet public expectations led to the discontent that ultimately came to a head in 2019.

Second, to say that democracy is alien to the ‘Chinese tradition’ is simply to point out that ever since the overthrow of its Manchu rulers in 1911, China has been run by dictators, regardless of what the population might have wanted. It is not a cultural preference or lifestyle choice. If Reg is hinting that Confucian societies are unsuited or unfit for representative government, she should ask the people of South Korea and Taiwan if they want to go back to the pre-1990s police-state days.

(We could also add that, according to the official line, Hong Kong’s new all-patriots system is ‘more democratic’ than its predecessor.)

Her apparent hostility to competition/pluralism is bewildering. How else can good policy be decided except through debate about different ideas? If Reg is saying that competition should take place only among an elite, behind closed doors, that reduces the population to sheep with no control over their lives. Is she saying that’s their ideal function? That any who speak up should be jailed for ‘subverting state power’?

“People don’t vote for the common good,” Ip told The Times, in her office in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council ­(LegCo), a parliament from which all opponents of the government are excluded. “People vote for whatever serves their interests. Just following the popular will is dangerous.”

This is a dumb argument, much beloved of Hong Kong establishment ‘elites’ like property tycoons, who have never considered anyone’s interests except their own. When the UK was expanding the franchise beyond the wealthy in the 19th Century, Lord Acton, of ‘power corrupts’ fame, said: ‘The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.’ In other words, there is no noble caste of unelected wise and impartial men who will decree what’s best for everyone else; only by letting everyone vote can you get a government that serves the overall good. (Usual disclaimers about messy processes, safeguards against ‘tyranny of the majority’, that Churchill quote, etc).

It is not a coincidence that the richest societies in the world are nearly all democracies. Even if democracy is an effect rather than cause of wealth, it doesn’t help the Reg argument.

And if people vote only for their own interests, look at the US, where a shocking number of gullible people will vote for tax cuts for billionaires provided you wrap that policy in a load of hogwash about guns, Jesus, abortion, ‘woke’ and thinly-veiled racism.

Ip indicated that there would be no return by those she dismissed as “directly elected rabble-rousers … the long hair and mad dog of our council”.

She added: “You cannot have a one-size-fits-all model, and our experiment with democracy failed in the past 20 years. It’s in China’s constitution that they are a one-party state. We were never asked to support the CCP. But as the ruling party, it’s a … political reality that you have to accept and support the CCP.

OK, whatever!

Brief videos by political scientist and ‘compulsive talker’ Huey Li on the superiority of China’s system, here, here and here. (Whole thread of them.)

Another interview: RFA with former US Consul General in Hong Kong Hanscom Smith…

Everyone was taken by surprise at the scope and vehemence of the protest movement. The Hong Kong government, and, I believe, Beijing [and] also Washington. No one knew that this was going to happen. It became clear that Hong Kongers were very frustrated. And I don’t think that you can necessarily paint the protest movement with a single brush. It was not, in my experience, an organized movement with a single leader…

…It’s an interesting question, the extent to which Beijing believed its [own] propaganda that in fact the protests were orchestrated by the United States. I believe that there are probably some senior people in Beijing who do believe that, and acted accordingly, because you’ve seen this since 2020, this rhetorical obsession with national security and this idea of instilling “stability” in Hong Kong, and an emphasis on “patriots governing Hong Kong.” I think there are probably other people certainly in Hong Kong and on the mainland who understand the true nature of what was happening in Hong Kong.

Including Reg, no doubt.