Big Lychee, Various Sectors

So intercepting US 8964 – a sort of Alfa Romeo-ish sports car – is an annual thing.

China Media Monitor tries asking Mainland AI chatbots some awkward questions about a historical event…

My most candid query about June Fourth was a quick lesson in red lines and sensitivities. When I asked iFlytek’s “Spark” (星火) if it could tell me “what happened on June 4, 1989,” it evaded the question. It had not learned enough about the subject, it said, to render a response. Immediately after the query, however, CMP’s account was deactivated for a seven-day period — the rationale being that we had sought “sensitive information.”

…“How did Zhao Ziyang retire?” I asked guilefully. But Spark was having none of it. The bot immediately shut down. End of discussion.

…In another attempt to confuse Spark into complying with my request, I rendered “1989” in Roman numerals (MCMLXXXIX). Again, Spark started generating an answer before suddenly disappearing it, claiming ignorance about this topic.

However…

Spark was not able to offer any information in Chinese on why the [liberal World Economic] Herald closed down, but when asked in English it explained that authorities shut down the newspaper and arrested its staff because they had been critical of the government’s “human rights abuses” — something the government, according to the chatbot, considered “a threat to their authority.”

I remember Alta Vista. It took ages, but it was so much less irritating. (A few months ago, I noticed a new icon in the bottom right of my Windows PC screen. Turned out to be Microsoft’s AI thing. I asked it to describe the archaeological role of bananas. Got a long rambling response mentioning the Latin name of the species, the history of its human cultivation, and an apologetic explanation that such material rots and so leaves little evidence in ancient sites. Haven’t had a reason to use it again.)

Foreign Policy asks why the national leadership doesn’t do something about China’s economic problems…

…zero-COVID and the messy exit, the extended attack on private tech firms, the heightened attention to ideology, an unrealistic pursuit of technology self-reliance, and growing tensions with the West. These fears translate into weak consumer demand, restrained business investment, and efforts to move wealth and family abroad.

The article gives four possible reasons (which overlap): they don’t know; they don’t care; they’re stumped; or they see it as the next stage on the path to national greatness. The third sounds about right…

…Xi and other top leaders are well informed but they are facing a variety of problems that are not easy to fix. The list is long—the real estate crisis, ballooning local government debt, the plummeting fertility rate, rising inequality, disaffection in Hong Kong, and expanding tensions with the West and most of China’s neighbors—and solutions are far from simple.

The author is simply surveying business people in Beijing, and this is far from a must-read on China’s economy. But for an idea of how much more illiterate it could be, try the SCMP’s My Take column today. In its desperation to blame the US for everything, the paper’s tankie chatbot denies that China has an overcapacity problem…

Under the label “overproduction”, the Western criticism is really launching a new trade war as part of its full-spectrum containment of China and its alleged threats.

Wrong. Even China’s leaders themselves acknowledge – at least implicitly – that after several decades of diverting household savings away from consumption into investment, the country has a severe and unsustainable imbalance that distorts international trade. 

It was impossible for anyone in Hong Kong to forget that yesterday was the anniversary of the 1989 Beijing massacre: thousands of cops plus their ‘Sabretooth’ armoured vehicle were on the streets to provide a high-profile reminder. They kept an eye on activists, artists, strolling diplomats, bystanders with knowing looks holding little cups of soft-serve ice cream, and confused tourists intercepted by law enforcement for accidentally switching on their phone flashlight. 

A full report on the weirdness with great pix at HKFP. Some more from the Standard.

This could be a new annual event!

It’s ‘police overtime’ day. Ronny advises that you remember Tiananmen privately. What’s going on elsewhere.

Some random recommended reading…

From Asian Crime Century – picking up from the UK arrests of three men for conducting illegal activities for ‘Hong Kong intelligence’, a fascinating history of the Hong Kong Police Special Branch and its descendants today…

Superintendent “Our Frankie” Shaftain, the head of CID and a Special Branch section dealing with subversion … led the police intelligence efforts during the battle for Hong Kong in 1941, and was responsible for major decisions such as the summary execution (by machine gun) of collaborators in an alley next to the Lane Crawford department store…

Fast-forwarding to the post-1997 era…

…The outcome of [a] somewhat single minded focus by [the Security Wing] on Falun Gong seems to have been a decline of insight into what was happening in Hong Kong society. SW and the Hong Kong Police leadership had no insight into the nature and extent of new protest movements that developed in the first two decades of the 21st century.

…The police were unable to stop the [2019] protests, and it was apparent through 2019 how little the police, and by implication SW, understood about the new wave of youth led protest movements. Clearly SW and political intelligence policing in Hong Kong had failed from 1997 to 2020.

This assumes that Beijing’s officials did not intervene in 2019 and order local authorities to treat the protests as a law-enforcement, rather than political, issue. However…

…The Office for Safeguarding National Security is effectively an outpost of the Ministries of State Security and Public Security…

…In September 2023, by then head of the PRC Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Zheng was reported to have stated that the authorities should be vigilant against anti-Chinese forces, continue to “rigorously enforce” the national security law, that there are still “hostile foreign forces” trying to disrupt Hong Kong’s development and stability, “anti-China elements” are attempting a comeback, and the Hong Kong Police should “build a solid defense line” for national security. The statement seems to be a continuation of the provision of backbone to the Hong Kong Police to take the lead in suppressing political dissent and criticism of the CCP.

…Because of the large overt deployment of senior MSS and PSB staff to the city and their expanded role in local government committees, it is unlikely that the Hong Kong Police has operational independence in national security matters after the establishment of the MSS led Office for Safeguarding National Security in 2020.

The article concludes with some theories about why the ETO-linked operation was apparently so amateurish.

Thorough post by Kevin Yam on overseas judges serving in Hong Kong…

…the advantage of the likes of Lords Hoffman and Sumption staying on the Hong Kong court is, while well-meaning, cosmetic and illusory, and do nothing to hold back the tide. Without this advantage, one is then left with their presence being an endorsement of an authoritarian system of laws and government. They should not stay.

US Customs are checking every item on air freight arriving from China.

“…CBP is finding a lot of illegal stuff. There is fentanyl, drug-making equipment and misdeclarations of value to meet the de minimis threshold.” 

…Fentanyl caused the death of 200 Americans every day in 2022 and over a quarter of a million have died from a fentanyl overdose since 2018. Fentanyl-type drugs reportedly caused the death of 100,000 Americans last year alone. 

From China Leadership Monitor, a lengthy discussion of ‘lying flat’. It started as online slang, then became a way for the young to express despair at China’s system. After officials blasted the phrase for a while, it became acceptable as a way to criticize foreigners – and at one point, the Hong Kong government…

Chinese Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) member and pro-Beijing think-tank director Cheung Chi-kong lambasted Hong Kong officials in general, and Chief Executive Carrie Lam in particular, for being “opportunists” who half-heartedly pursued “dynamic clearing” while secretly believing the British and American models of co-existence with the coronavirus to be “superior and civilized.” “‘Lying flat’ and ‘co-existing with the virus,’” Cheung railed, “is definitely not the choice of most Hong Kong people, and this ‘elite faction’ cannot possibly represent Hong Kong, let alone the whole of the Hong Kong people.”

The Guardian…

The panel of Hong Kong national security judges had set down two days for the hearing but dispensed with the core business in about 15 minutes. In the city’s largest ever national security trial – involving the prosecution of pro-democracy campaigners and activists from a group known as the “Hong Kong 47” – almost all the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion.

Their crime was trying to win an election, holding unofficial primaries in 2020 attended by an estimated 600,000 residents.

…Claudia Mo, a former journalist and popular legislator known affectionately as “Auntie Mo”, pleaded guilty. Mo, a passionate but unflappable advocate for Hong Kong’s democracy, had frequently spoken to the foreign media over the years. For these conversations she was denied bail.

When police smashed through her front door, they also seized her phone and laptop, from which they presumably found the WhatsApp conversations she had had with the Guardian and Observer and other outlets. In jail, the 67-year-old has reportedly run language lessons for other prisoners. She was denied permission to visit her husband, British journalist Philip Bowring, when he was ill.

The Economist…

The three presiding judges wasted little time in presenting their verdicts in the case of the “Hong Kong 47”, members of the city’s pro-democracy political opposition. Over the course of two minutes on May 30th, the justices declared 14 of the defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion in the biggest national-security trial in the city’s history.

…The verdicts, which are likely to result in prison sentences (in some cases for perhaps as long as life), represent the ongoing strangulation of dissent in Hong Kong.

…The most cynical view is that the government was growing embarrassed by its 100% conviction rate in such trials. But the justice secretary looks likely to appeal against the [two] not-guilty verdicts.

Perhaps feeling unease over endless NatSec arrests and trials, some pro-establishment figures have suggested in recent months that once the high-profile HK47 and Jimmy Lai cases are over, things will calm down. So far, that looks like wishful thinking. From big round-ups…

A Hong Kong woman, who was among seven arrested under the city’s new security law, has also been accused of violating the Beijing-imposed security law over funding overseas activist Nathan Law and others.

“Investigation revealed that she supported with money fugitive Law Kwun-chung and other individuals through an online subscription platform, with the amount of funding amounting to approximately $140,000, ” Hong Kong’s national security police said, referring to Law by his Chinese name, in a statement released on Friday afternoon.

…police said that the 53-year-old woman was also suspected of “providing pecuniary or other financial assistance or property for the commission of secession by other persons,”

…to hassling of small, apparently pro-democracy bookstores…

At around 4:30 today, police officers from the nearby Sham Shui Po police station went to Hunter Bookstore and accused them of blocking the street with their sofa outside. After the sofa was moved indoors, police started recording ID numbers of everyone who enters or leaves 

A summary of NatSec’s 47th month.

Nor does the government’s PR look likely to get any calmer, as the function comes under former law-enforcement officers. SCMP reports that former cop John Tse, currently the CE’s communications secretary, will become Government Information Coordinator…

He became a well-known face during 2019’s social unrest when he led the force’s daily press conferences while still a serving chief superintendent.

…Tse will earn between HK$249,500 (US$31,850) and HK$264,800 a month.

…Apollonia Liu Lee Ho-kei, the deputy secretary for security, was last month appointed to succeed Fletch Chan Wai-wai as director of information services.

Liu spearheaded the passage of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance through the legislature in March.

She had earlier written letters to foreign media, such as Britain’s The Guardian, to “condemn” their reports on the new domestic national security law.

Fourteen pan-democrats of the HK47 are found guilty of conspiracy to subversion.

Chief Superintendent Steve Li gives his NatSec Police section a pat on the head for a job well done. Does the phrase ‘like shooting fish in a barrel’ come to mind?

“According to the court’s judgement, you could see this is a very serious crime. While [the 14 convicted defendants] had different roles [in the primary election] … they were all entirely lawless and flouting the law.“

Exactly how lawless seems to be debatable. On Twitter, Kevin Yam…

Those convicted were essentially accused of promising to filibuster the budget to force a promise on democratisation. 

And Matthew Brooker…

They tried to win an election

Their crime was they might have succeeded, despite a gerrymandered system that was designed to prevent that ever happening

It is odd: if planning to reject a budget and thus require the administration to dissolve the legislature and ultimately to stand down is illegal, why does the Basic Law specifically allow for it? (The key prosecution word here is ‘indiscriminately’, though that doesn’t appear in the mini-constitution.)

The government will appeal the two acquittals. Skeptics might see stage-management…

As expected, not all the defendants would be convicted. It seems to be a tactic to show that the court did consider the “evidence” before making its decisions. However, the whole trial was simply a farce. 

International coverage is plentiful, and largely negative. The NYT…

The convictions show how the authorities have used the sweeping powers of a national security law imposed by Beijing to quash dissent across broad swathes of society. Most of the defendants had already spent at least the last three years in detention before the 118-day trial ended.

…Their offense: holding a primary election to improve their chances in citywide polls.

“The message from the authorities is clear: Any opposition activism, even the moderate kind, will no longer be tolerated,” said Ho-fung Hung, an expert on Hong Kong politics at Johns Hopkins University.

…In the past, pro-democracy activists had held primaries, without issue, to select candidates to run in the election of the city’s leader, Professor Hung said.

“The fact that they were arrested and convicted and even put behind bars for so long before the verdict manifests a fundamental change in Hong Kong’s political environment: Free election, even the pretension of a free election, is gone,” Professor Hung said.

The FT…

Most of the 47 defendants have been detained for more than three years after being denied bail. They span the city’s opposition camp, including politicians and former lawmakers, social workers, civil society leaders and journalists.

The verdict comes as Hong Kong is attempting to revive its reputation as a global financial centre and woo back foreign businesses that fled in the wake of pandemic restrictions and a political crackdown by Beijing and local authorities after pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Thomas Kellogg, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law, said the court was “poised to put many of the top figures in Hong Kong’s pan-democratic camp behind bars”, predicting sentences that could be “some of the heaviest sentences yet handed down under the national security law”.

Reuters…

Once one of Asia’s most liberal cities, China-ruled Hong Kong is experiencing a years-long crackdown on dissent under China-imposed security laws that have silenced liberal voices, unnerved investors and triggered a wave of emigration.

…[The 14] were found guilty by three judges of conspiracy to commit subversion for holding an unofficial primary election in 2020 that was deemed by Hong Kong authorities as a plot to paralyse the government and “subvert state power”.

…In what U.N. human rights experts  and the U.S. say is a departure from established common law practices, Chow and other democrats were denied a jury trial, and 32 of the 47 have languished for over 1,000 days in detention without bail.

The WSJ…

The authorities alleged that [the 47’s] plan, which included a primary among candidates who pledged to block government legislation and force the city’s Beijing-backed chief executive to step down, amounted to an illegal subversion of state power.

Defense attorneys and human-rights advocates said the pro-democracy activists were engaged in standard electoral politics using powers enshrined in Hong Kong law.

…The authorities’ case against the 47 amounted to a swift decapitation of the city’s pro-democracy opposition.

“There’s no doubt that the January 6 arrests—and the subsequent prosecution, which is only now coming to an end—were absolutely transformational,” said Thomas Kellogg, the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law.

Before then, the possibility remained that the Hong Kong government would use its new legal powers narrowly, targeting just the most extreme activists, such as those who called for Hong Kong’s independence from China.

“Instead, the law would be used as a legal wrecking ball, one that would be swung in the months to come at a growing number of journalists, activists and others,” Kellogg said.

…“You may think there’s actually time to prepare because they would prosecute the most famous and then next most famous and then the next,” said a former colleague of [hospital workers’ union leader Winnie] Yu’s. “In this case they arrested all of the public faces. Just overnight, everyone got caught.”

The Global Times is more understanding…

Legal experts believe that the court’s ruling is reasonable, beyond dispute, and demonstrates judicial independence and the justice of the rule of law.

“The case process fully embodies the spirit of the rule of law and the NSL for Hong Kong,” Louis Chen, a member of the Election Committee and general secretary of the Hong Kong Legal Exchange Foundation, told the Global Times on Thursday.

…The judicial authorities of the HKSAR handled the case according to law, fully preventing, stopping, and punishing actions that endanger national security. This is reasonable, legal, and just, and should not be subject to criticism. The central government firmly supports this, [a] spokesperson said.

On a separate (or not) subject, Domino Theory on Taiwan-based artists and performers finding Hong Kong becoming like the Mainland…

Alice, a young theater actress, has recently given up the opportunity to go on tour in Hong Kong … She had been trying to apply for a short-term work visa in Hong Kong for the past three months. After several email exchanges, she finally received a notice from the Immigration Department. The email listed old social media posts, word for word, and asked her to explain herself and her political stance. “I’m a Taiwanese person who grew up in a free and democratic country. I shouldn’t have been treated like this,” she said.

…she remembered how she shared a post about “Revolution of Our Times,” a documentary covering the 2019 Hong Kong protest, on her Facebook page. She never anticipated receiving a letter from the Hong Kong immigration authorities some years later questioning her about her post.

One last Tweet on a topical issue, from Bill Bishop…

Trump conviction tricky for PRC propagandists. On one hand, highlights a rotting and fracturing democracy. On other hand, highlights that a former top leader can be arrested, put on trial, judged by jury of peers and convicted, for relatively small acts of corruption. Not an obvious propaganda win-win

While some government officials expressed satisfaction when Glory to Hong Kong disappeared from certain online platforms, there wasn’t much overt gloating. Which was just as well, since the subversive song is back. The news last week was that the UK-based distributor – a self-publishing service that helps indie musicians monetize their work – had removed the title from streaming sites. The originator of the piece has now restored it. And the clicks no doubt keep coming.

The big news story for today will be the verdict for 16 of the 47 opposition figures arrested back in 2021 for plotting to ‘subvert state power’. Good backgrounds from HKFP and the BBC. As someone following this closely pointed out, the authorities can’t tolerate the idea of prominent and popular activists – Long Hair, Joshua Wong, et al – being out on the street where they can be a focus of attention or even some sort of potential alternative power centre.

Meanwhile, some early weekend reading…

The Jamestown Foundation looks at a new Chinese university textbook called An Introduction to the Community of the Zhonghua Race (中华民族共同体概论)…

…the textbook is critical of past preferential policies for minorities. It argues they “deviated from their original intention” and “solidified ethnic differences and fostered a narrow ethnic consciousness that gave rise to the false thesis of ‘ethnic minority exceptionalism’” … This has caused “some minorities”—again left unnamed, but the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Mongols are the obvious referent—to distort their histories and “use the protection of cultural diversity to cling to backward ways of life and stereotypes.”

…The historical imaginary behind this molding process is deeply influenced by the late sociologist Fei Xiaotong (费孝通), and his dialectic reading of the “multiple origins, single body (多元一体)” structure of Chinese racial evolution…

…The Zhonghua race, according to this theory, emerged some two million years ago with a distinctly Chinese group of hominids. It then organically grew by drawing in and absorbing surrounding peoples into its superior Huaxia-cum-Han core, expanding in size and geographic distribution without either interruption or division. Like a giant “snowball (雪球)” in Fei Xiaotong’s words. In this story of national becoming, Tibetan, Mongol, Uyghur, and other indigenous peoples exist only in their genetic service to an eternally evolving, Han-centric “mega-community (超大规模共同体).”

At China Heritage, a New Zealand academic asks why fewer people are interested in learning Mandarin…

…one of the main problems is that the Chinese culture promoted overseas by PRC apparatchiks is totally unappealing to the majority of young people…

Calligraphy and Peking opera and the “Butterfly Lovers” simply won’t cut it with the majority of people under fifty, and yet this is the stuff that is constantly trotted out to the world as “Chinese culture” for foreign consumption … most of the money to promote Chinese culture overseas comes out of PRC state coffers and passes through the hands of out-of-touch bureaucrats eager to show their fealty to Xi Jinping’s ideas of “Superior traditional Chinese culture” and “cultural confidence”. As a result, the sorts of things that might appeal to prospective foreign learners — the works of the innumerable musicians and artists who have refused to serve the narrow interests of the state, for example — are passed over altogether in favour of people waving their arms around in long sleeves or cosplaying as Uyghurs to recorded music.

This is itself a reflection of what has happened within the PRC itself over the last decade

…The people in charge of promoting Chinese culture and language have succeeded in turning one of the world’s richest cultures into a total yawn-fest.

On the other hand – in a triumph of Chinese soft-power, Cambodia names a highway Xi Jinping Boulevard, which…

…connects National Road 4 in Phnom Penh’s Por Senchey district, to National Road 1 in Kandal province’s Kien Svay district. The construction work, undertaken by the Chinese company Shanghai Construction Group Co Ltd, began on Jan.14, 2019, and included four flyovers and eight bridges. The boulevard spans 15 km (9 miles) in Phnom Penh and 38 km (24 miles) in Kandal.

From The Hongkonger, Hong Kong’s historic role for anti-government activists (Sun, Rizal and Ho)…

It may seem hard to believe now, but there was a time when Hong Kong was a haven for revolutionaries who fled their own country to seek safety elsewhere.

For nostalgia buffs, a Discovery Channel documentary on Hong Kong in 1992.

And some BBC radio shows on China. This one, in particular.

Chow Hang-tung – already in jail – and five others, including her mother, become the first people to be arrested under the Article 23 NatSec Law passed in March…

…police said five men and one woman had been detained on suspicion of acting with seditious intention. One of them, a woman already in custody, was alleged to have continuously published anonymous “seditious” posts on a social media page with the help of the other five.

The posts were said to have made use of an “upcoming sensitive date” to incite hatred against the central and Hong Kong governments, as well as the Judiciary. Police also alleged that the posts intended to incite netizens to organise or participate in illegal activities at a later time.

Standard report here. Extracts from the Facebook page in question here, including a request ‘not to play along with the game of rewriting history’.

A quick Google search shows the story has been picked up by Radio Free Asia, the BBC, Reuters, Amnesty International. ABC, and the Guardian.

Looks like the South Lantau Eco-Recreation Hub-Zone ‘proposal’ from yesterday is a done deal, The Civil Engineering and Development Dept has published a paper for LegCo in which the phrase ‘awareness of conservation’ appears three times. A public engagement exercise has started…

…to seek views on the recommendations from the relevant stakeholders, including the Islands District Council and the South Lantao Rural Committee. We will set up street booths at the Tung Chung Bus Terminus and various locations in South Lantau to collect feedback from residents and visitors of South Lantau.

All you non-relevant stakeholders can, um, take a hike.

After abandoning the ill-fated waste-charging plan, the government moves on to propose development of South Lantau as an ‘Eco-Recreation Corridor’…

…establishing a landmark visitor center with dining, retail, and viewing facilities. The center will also host a variety of year-round activities and events, such as markets. Diverse water sports and recreation facilities, including activity centers, adventure water sports zones, leisure piers, and camping sites, will be added along the Cheung Sha beach. Rope adventure facilities, hiking chairlifts and high-quality resort accommodations could also be introduced at Cheung Sha’s hillside. 

As for Shek Pik, the authorities intend to leverage the reservoirs and sea views to create facilities catering to those seeking tranquility, as well as cultural and historical enthusiasts. The concept of an “open-air museum” will be applied, with a heritage trail developed alongside the reservoirs. 

In Shui Hau, the rich natural resources will be used to establish an education center promoting conservations, highlighting the area’s valuable sand dunes and horseshoe crabs, as well as traditional village culture. 

In Pui O, a hiking trail will be constructed along the western side of Pui O Wan, enabling visitors to explore the forest ecology and admire the scenic views of the bays. Additionally, a high-quality campsite will be developed on the hillside, offering experiential learning opportunities about the local ecology.

Enjoy the area before they start to ‘leverage’ it.

I like the Standard’s headline. In the UK political sit-com Yes, Minister, the senior civil servant would use the word ‘bold’ when the minister came up with a reckless idea. It could also describe the Hong Kong government’s plan to ease better-off tenants out of public housing.

This is no doubt overdue. But it’s also hard to pull off – or even perhaps justify – when private-sector housing is so artificially expensive that any rational person will get a subsidized apartment (or live in illegally converted industrial buildings, or add unauthorized structures) if they can, to access affordable living space.

Still, officials want to encourage estate managements and other tenants to snitch on people who sublet or mis-use public housing units, own other property, or who have a luxury car. So why not go one step further and ban anyone at a public housing estate address from hiring an overseas domestic helper? It might concentrate rich residents’ minds if they have to wash their own Mercedes.

The Hong Kong government inches towards admitting that the ‘green bags’ waste disposal plan is pretty much dead…

The Hong Kong government said its waste-charging scheme had become a “public disturbance” over the course of a two-month trial run.

In a paper submitted to the Legislative Council on Friday, the Environment and Ecology Bureau and the Environmental Protection Department said residents found the waste tax to be a hassle and the designated rubbish bags to be overpriced.

Frontline cleaners reported an “significant increase” in their workloads and raised concerns that they may inadvertently break the law by handling rubbish incorrectly. Some even said they would quit their jobs upon the official launch, the government said.

The Standard quotes sources as saying the scheme is ‘postponed indefinitely’.

The waste-charging plan has been years in the making and in principle makes good sense. But the people responsible for policymaking and implementation have little connection with the lives most people lead. With spacious housing, cars (even chauffeurs), house servants, maybe subsidized overseas schooling for kids, priority access to public hospitals, etc, they probably never take a bag of trash out. 

With elected and critical lawmakers now debarred, jailed or in exile, the legislature is mostly composed of appointed loyalists who repeat official talking points and vote for whatever the executive branch wants. Opposition media have been closed. There was no-one to point out possible public opposition.

Transport bureaucrats similarly show little interest in conditions for pedestrians. An illustrated thread from Transit Jam on the last few days’ carnage on one road in Kowloon…

[May 23] Last night, Mong Kok, Alphard driver loses control, shovels the sidewalk, six injured including two passersby. 628 Nathan Road. Driver said a taxi cut him up and he had no choice. The instigating taxi disappeared into the night…

[May 24] It happened again last night … a few hundred metres further south, 380 Nathan Road. BMW driver lost control, smashed onto the pavement at around 3:15am and fled…

[May 25] And AGAIN, this time onto a pedestrian island at the southern end of Nathan Road (Salisbury Road junction/Peninsula). 6:40pm tonight, six injured and taken to Queen Elizabeth Hospital, including one aux policewoman on pedestrian marshall duty.

This island is usually VERY packed with tourists. The crash happened at 6:40pm, just before the drone show.

DRIVERS PLEASE STOP SMASHING INTO PEOPLE ON THE PAVEMENT!

[May 26] This is turning into the thread of death and destruction on Nathan Road.

4am. 27-year-old taxi driver smashed into a motorbike at Nathan/Argyle. 22-year-old rider and his 24-year-old female passenger both killed. Taxi driver and his passenger injured, a 67-yr-old pedestrian also badly injured by collision debris.

[May 26] HOLY FUCK YET ANOTHER NATHAN PED CRASH, AT THE EXACT SAME JUNCTION AS THIS MORNING’S DEADLY CRASH: A pedestrian crushed against a railing by KMB bus. Trapped for 20 minutes, taken to hospital conscious but struggling.

As per HK01 the exact same thing happened here in 2017, a mainland woman lost her foot in that crash: the driver got a suspended sentence.

It’s Sunday today, since Thursday the Nathan Road pedestrian injury tally stands at 12, out of 15 injured (and 2 killed) in total.

Some other things…

HKFP reports the resignation of the local weightlifters’ association after she was criticized for saying ‘countries’ without adding ‘territories’. Who would be involved in sports admin when the government blasts your casual phrasing as…

 …“absolutely unacceptable” and “grossly inconsistent with the fact that delegations from Hong Kong, China and Chinese Taipei participated as regional teams.”

An HKFP op-ed asks why suspects in Hong Kong are waiting years for trial…

Trials relating to the storming of the Legislative Council and disorders at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, both in 2019, came up last year. A man charged with posting subversive Facebook messages in 2020 was tried only last week. The famous 47 democrats, after first hearings at which most of them were refused bail in March 2021, are still awaiting a verdict, as are the former editors of Stand News – a case which began with their arrests, also in 2021.

Probably the current record-holder is Benny Tai, who was charged in July 2021 with election offences committed in 2016. But the competition is lively. The latest prosecution arising from the Yuen Long incident was brought only this year. Of the more than 10,000 people arrested at one time or another in 2019, there are still around 8,000 who have not yet appeared in court.

In the SCMP, Regina Ip paints a romantic picture of Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices overseas, especially the London one’s noble role during colonial times facilitating textiles exports and helping Hongkongers in a quasi-consular capacity. She says that ‘strengthening security protection and monitoring hostile activities targeting Hong Kong’ is justified as the office has been the focus of protests, but largely glosses over the UK’s recent arrests of an office manager and two people apparently hired by him. In an accompanying Tweet, she laments…

It would be a shame to write off [the HKETO’s] contributions, and overplay the “spying” allegations. Collecting “soft intelligence” is a standard part of consulates’ “country” reports, right ?

Maybe, but it looks like the ETO was involved in some sort of surveillance/enforcement operation – completely outside its supposed responsibilities.

(By ‘slight’, we mean ‘sub-atomic particle-like’.) Michael Tien – a pro-establishment tycoon-scion with a slight dash of original-thinking maverick – comes up with an idea on how to control the costs of former Chief Executives’ secretariats. He suggests that only the previous three should qualify for the pricy perk – so the government need pay only for the old house on Kennedy Road. In practice, that would mean ejecting Tung Chee-hwa’s office and moving Carrie Lam’s in from Pacific Place. 

A fairly simple (elegant?) solution, if hardly radical. Another option would be to merge concierge services so all ex-CE’s share the same facility. Or just scrap the whole pretentious thing (what do former mayors of London or New York get?). But a C-plus for effort.

I have a ‘mega-event’ tomorrow morning – namely a root canal. So some early weekend reading…

From Bloomberg (possibly paywalled) – Xi Jinping faces the challenge of governing a post-boom China…

Almost a third of office workers saw their salaries fall last year according to recruitment platform Zhaopin. From property to technology and finance, white-collar Chinese have taken a hit from the government’s campaign to rein in excesses.

Business surveys show factories and offices more focused on redundancies than recruitment, and numbers from the People’s Bank of China show the public is pessimistic about future earnings.

On household wealth the picture is even bleaker. The bulk of it is held in real estate, and property markets have been in a slow-motion collapse, with apartments in some cities losing half of their value since the 2021 peak. Chinese stocks are down more than a third over the same period.

“Xi is constrained by the context that he inherited,” said Yuen Yuen Ang, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.

A real estate bubble, overcapacity in industries, high debt and a low fertility rate are all major imbalances that China’s current leadership didn’t cause but are now forced to confront.

National Interest on how China is extending gray-zone tactics into the US…

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence notes “growing [PRC] efforts to actively exploit perceived U.S. societal divisions,” by which “The PRC aims to sow doubts about U.S. leadership [and] undermine democracy.”

According to Clint Watts, general manager of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, “More recently, [PRC government] efforts have shifted to exploiting existing partisan divides in the U.S.,” including “the Chinese actually going into U.S. audience spaces, masquerading as Americans, and posting inflammatory content around current events or social issues or political issues.”

A report by Microsoft published in April 2024 found efforts by the PRC to “spread conspiratorial narratives on multiple social media platforms.” As an example, these posts said the deadly August 2023 wildfires in Maui, Hawaii, resulted from the U.S. military testing a “weather weapon.” Chinese-linked accounts also published speculation that the U.S. government caused the derailment of a train in Kentucky in November 2023 and was “hiding something” in the aftermath. Microsoft concluded that the apparent objective of such posts is “encouraging mistrust of and disillusionment with the U.S. government.”

In the FT, a graphics-heavy survey of the balance of military power in a potential China vs US/Taiwan/Japan/Philippines war.

China Media Project describes how China’s state media are ‘spitting fire’ over the new President of Taiwan…

In a commentary on Lai’s speech posted online shortly after midnight today, China’s official Xinhua News Agency painted a portrait of Lai as a vocal proponent of what it called “the separatist fallacy of ‘Taiwan independence.’” In typical fashion, the headline — which included the fiery reference above — referred to Lai only as “the regional leader of Taiwan” (台湾地区领导人), emphasizing China’s claims to sovereignty over the islands.

Line by line, the Xinhua commentary dissected Lai’s speech, exposing what it claimed to be deceitful and separatist undertones, and responded with emotive and polemical attacks. Lai, it said, was a “worker for Taiwan independence” (台独工作者); a “troublemaker” (麻烦制造者). According to the news agency, his speech was “a naked confession of Taiwan independence.”

Lai’s message of peace and mutual prosperity was brushed aside. “The hope for cross-strait dialogue, exchanges, and cooperation is false,” said the Xinhua commentary, “and the continued deterioration of cross-strait relations is true.”  The article urged the Taiwanese to oppose independence and support unification.

With even harsher language, the Cross-Straits Voices channel of the CCP’s official China Media Group (CMG) adopted an adversarial tone. In the face of efforts toward Taiwan’s independence, it said, “peace in the Taiwan Strait is like fire and water” (台海和平水火不容).

This is relatively mild. While we’re at it, the SCMP’s ever-moronic Alex Lo writes…

Now in office, Lai is not even hiding his secessionism, which necessarily requires the American militarisation of the island, with all its terrible implications for the Taiwanese, as well as threatening a wider regional conflict. The DPP risks turning the island into an existential military threat to the mainland on behalf of the US. In doing so, it’s painting a big target on itself.

They are exchanging relative autonomy for vassal status under Uncle Sam. In this grand US design of China containment, a cross-strait conflict will only be a piece of the puzzle for Washington, but it will be the “be all and end all” for Chinese people. Of course the Americans are cheering on Taiwan.

(None of these commentaries ever mention the preferences of the Taiwan people, as if they are somehow irrelevant or non-existent.)