Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Yesterday was National Security Education Day. Among the lessons…

“For an extremely small number of people who endanger national security, this law is an overhanging sharp sword,” said Xia Baolong, Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office chief.

“Hong Kong’s development would not be stopped by a few mantises and flies,” he added in a speech from Beijing.

Speaking at the ceremony in Hong Kong, Zheng Yanxiong, Beijing’s liaison chief in the city, declared “tit-for-tat cognitive warfare” against critics of the law.

“Some ill-intentioned foreign forces have been bad-mouthing China and Hong Kong… and even some renowned Western media has joined the wagon of slandering and smearing,” Zheng said, adding “our only way to survive is to unite and fight”.

Mantises are cute. Did he mean manatees? Didn’t Deng Xiaoping say ‘when you open the window, you will let in some mantises’? 

Also from Xia…

“Hong Kong is the sun in the universe, no clouds can ever stop it from shining. Hong Kong’s prosperity cannot be slandered by a few passages and few criticisms,” he added.

“It is time to whine for those who do not want Hong Kong to thrive. Hong Kong’s future is destined to be glorious.”

Xia also said Beijing will not change its stance in implementing the one country, two systems principle in Hong Kong.

“It has not been changed, is not being changed, and it will not be necessary to change it,” he said.

The hostile forces are breeding like flies. Or mantises. Or something…

Chief Executive John Lee said the threats to national security were “unpredictable,” “consistent,” and “discreet.”

“Foreign intelligence officers and their proxies would use different industries as disguise,” Lee said, also speaking in Mandarin. “Spies may marry and raise a family just like an ordinary citizen, and only commit acts of terrorism or theft of state secrets after years [of hiding].”

Lee called Article 23 an “effective vaccine” for Hong Kong, but added that “threats to national security are like viruses that continue to attack [the city].”

Consistently unpredictable? Is everyone married with kids under suspicion? Metaphorical viruses?  None of this sounds like ‘back to normal’/‘focus on the economy’. Indeed…

[Head of Beijing’s Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong] Dong Jingwei told an opening ceremony for National Security Education Day that Hong Kong is highly open and susceptible to external threats, and its destiny is closely tied to that of the country.

“During critical times of reform, it’s more important than ever to unite. During key phases of development, our national security becomes even more important. Maintaining social stability and national security in Hong Kong isn’t a one and done process,” he said.

And…

Addressing [a panel discussion], Secretary for Justice Paul Lam said the city’s national security laws and its development go hand in hand.

“Before the legislation was enacted, Hong Kong was like a vehicle with one of its tyres not fully inflated or a bird with one of its wings not fully developed. It is inevitable that the car won’t go smoothly, and the bird will not be able to fly high and far,” Lam said.

A reminder of the welcome awaiting visitors to Hong Kong.

In other news, former CE Carrie Lam’s office is costing over HK$9 million a year…

“This includes personnel such as a senior personal assistant, an assistant clerical officer, a chauffeur and a staff member responsible for daily reception duties,” the office said.

She has a separate office in Pacific Place as there’s no space left in the original building housing support for the previous three CEs. Why can’t all four share a pool of drivers and secretaries? 

A new online magazine – the Hongkonger. Proclaims itself ‘inspired by the New Yorker’. A couple of items by a former local film studies academic (and occasional hiking companion of mine) looks at how older movies are affected by the NatSec laws – here and here. There’s a review of Michael Davis’s Freedom Undone. And more.

The Hongkonger is aimed at the diaspora, which perhaps brings us to the SCMP’s story on vacancy rates in the public sector…

Hong Kong’s public service departments have almost 20,000 vacancies, with some having up to 20 per cent or more of posts unfilled as the number of retirees continues to rise.

The Civil Service Bureau revealed on Friday that RTHK, the city’s public broadcaster, had the highest vacancy rate, with 175 posts unfilled- 23.8 per cent – and the police force had the highest number of jobs available, 6,837, 17.9 per cent of its total establishment.

The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department registered a 20 per cent staff shortfall with 460 vacancies.

The Education Bureau recorded a 15.6 per cent vacancy rate with 983 posts unfilled.

…Almost 4,000 civil servants from more than 200 departments quit over the 2022-23 and 2021-22 financial years.

They have more than 200 departments???

Transit Jam investigates the Nathan Road fire, which left five dead…

Buildings Department (BD) says it issued a Fire Safety Direction to the New Lucky House Owners Committee (OC) in 2008, “requiring the upgrading of certain fire safety provisions of the building to a level in line with the current fire safety standards, including the replacement of fire doors, provision of fire resisting enclosures to non-emergency services and provision of fixed lights meeting the required fire resistance and the like.”

The OC appointed a consultant to follow-up the Fire Safety Direction seven years later, in 2015 and then replaced the consultant in 2020, with the work still not even started.

And so on, up to the last order that was issued – and apparently ignored – three weeks ago.

From building safety to national security…

The trial begins of the first person to be charged with disrespecting the national anthem…

…a video … showed Chan sitting down while the anthem was played and covering his ears. He also sang Do You Hear the People Sing, a song from musical Les Miserables that was popular during the pro-democracy protests in 2014 and 2019.

…[An] officer who testified for the prosecution … observed Chan, noting that when the China team scored, he made a thumbs down sign.

…said Chan told him under police caution that he sang the English song because he “does not like the China team and the Chinese anthem.”

At the start of the trial, barrister Steven Kwan said Chan has autism and ADHD.

A 41-year-old man is sentenced to five years in prison for conspiring to incite others to commit secession online…

…the prosecution said leniency would be at odds with an earlier national security case in which Hong Kong’s top court ruled that guilty pleas, which typically carry a one-third jail term discount, could not reduce sentences below the five-year minimum for “serious” security law offences.

Delivering John’s sentence on Thursday, [Judge Ernest] Lin handed down an initial 78 months. Although John pleaded guilty, his sentence could not be set below the minimum five years.

Lin said John had “distorted history, demonised the Chinese government, and appealed to foreign countries to destroy Hong Kong and China.”

And a representative of Reporters Without Borders is questioned and searched for six hours before being denied entry at Hong Kong airport. She had flown from Taipei to ‘meet journalists and monitor a hearing of the national security trial involving media tycoon Jimmy Lai’.

The problem with treating members of the media like this is that they write stories about you. Predictably, this has been picked up by WaPo, Al Jazeera, ABC, UPI, etc. 

The Lai trial continues, with activist Andy Li testifying that he never met or had contact with the Apple Daily owner.

Hong Kong forecasts a huge drop in the number of primary school students…

Hong Kong schools operating Primary One classes should brace for a 36 per cent drop in the number of enrolled students over six years, according to the latest prediction by education authorities that are even gloomier than the one made in 2023.

…According to the latest projections released by the Education Bureau on Thursday, the number of six-year-olds expected to start Primary One will drop from 49,600 this year to 31,500 in 2029, a 36 per cent decline.

The bureau last year expected 50,000 six-year-old children to enrol in Primary One in 2029.

This calls for lateral thinking…

So Ping-fai, chairman of the Subsidised Primary Schools Council … called on authorities to count every child with special needs as 1.5 or two pupils when counting student enrolment.

Some weekend reading and viewing…

More on birth rates and emigration. The Diplomat looks at the impact of a cross-Straits war on Chinese and Taiwan demographics. Makes reference to Russia-Ukraine experience, and…

The Chinese authorities may be proud of thwarting the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and successfully implementing the national security law in 2020. However, they ignore the huge cost: weakening Hong Kong’s status as a financial center, destroying the bridge between China and the West, and not least the massive loss of population. In mid-2022, there were 180,000 fewer people aged 20-39 in Hong Kong than two years earlier. Political high-handedness and the zero-COVID policy jointly led to an economic recession, with births plummeting from 53,000 in 2019 to 33,000 in 2022, and the fertility rate dropping from 1.06 to 0.70.

Lingua Sinica catches up with Hong Kong authors and publishers at a Taipei book fair…

Another Bbluesky publication [editor Leslie Ng] brought to Taipei, a reprint of Allen Au’s 2012 travelogue Tide Pools: Wanderings in 20 Countries (潮池：浪遊二十國度的故事) had been pulled from the shelves at the Hong Kong Book Fair two years earlier. The reason, Leslie says, was not sensitivities around the book’s subject matter but simply the author’s identity. Au, who previously worked as a radio host for public broadcaster RTHK and a senior producer at pro-government station TVB News, was arrested by national security police in 2022 for allegedly conspiring to publish seditious materials. While the presumption of innocence still exists on paper in Hong Kong, the tightly controlled nature of national security cases means that an arrest alone is enough to pin a scarlet letter on one’s name.

That even books about travel cannot escape political sensitivities, Ng says, shows that, in the current environment, Hong Kong writers will not even touch controversial topics, much less cross red lines. “Things won’t be written directly,” he observes. “If it’s clear, it will be clear.”

Antony Dapiran reviews Vaudine England’s Fortune’s Bazaar…

Rather than binary and tendentious grand narratives, England gives us a Hong Kong of many cultures, hues and stories. She embraces early colonial Hong Kong’s “fascinating mix of Indians, Parsis, Goans, Macanese, Malays, Filipinos, Japanese, and West Indians, and Lascars,” its Jewish families (including the renowned Kadoories and Sassoons), its “Portuguese” (a term which covered various people of mixed-race background originating in Macau) and its Eurasians.

…To give one example: the businessman Sir Catchick Paul Chater, born of Armenian parents in British Calcutta, literally changed the face of Hong Kong through his coordination of the Praya Reclamation Scheme, with the support of Jewish and Parsi business associates. Hong Kong’s central business district, which today ranks among the world’s most expensive real estate (including the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and the Hong Kong Club) all sit on land that Chater imagined out of the sea in the late 1880s, with a road bisecting it that still bears his name.

On economics – a translation of a speech by Xu Gao, Chief Economist of Bank of China International, at Peking U. Noteworthy in that he identifies the astounding shortfall in domestic consumption in China’s economy (below 40% of GDP when it should be more like 55% – hence the US trade deficit). And for the disconnect between corporate profits and household incomes, owing to state ownership of so many large enterprises. With some good charts! What he’s saying is semi-subversive, in that it is counter to the mercantilist assumption that people are there to serve the economy, not vice-versa. Note also that Chief Economist of a bank is quite a lowly position.

On YouTube – What are China’s ambitions for the world order? Talk and Q&A with the Economist’s David Rennie.

On unrelated matters – I’ve had a slight discomfort with the idea of maiden voyages ever since, oh, 1912, and I definitely don’t get cruises. Atlantic writer Gary Shteyngart goes for it…

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

…My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us … In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

In trials, fewer than half of households are using the paid-for designated green waste bags that will (perhaps) become compulsory in future. (As the old lady in Harry’s SCMP cartoon pointed out, ‘they cost money’. The government gives you free ones for the soft launch? Hoard them for later.)

A pro-Beijing ‘heavyweight’ enters the picture. (By ‘heavy’ we mean ‘person we have never heard of’, and by ‘weight’, we mean ‘boss of an organization that basically doesn’t exist’.)  He says the waste charging scheme – years in the making – is more trouble than it’s worth, and it would be better for Hong Kong to develop recycling. With the plans so far looking like a bureaucratic implementation and enforcement nightmare, this sounds suspiciously like common sense. However, rather than implicitly accusing the government of lacking any brain cells, he declares the initiative to be the work of pro-democracy evil forces ..

“The controversial waste charging scheme was proposed by radical opposition factions (some of whom are even in jail), and it was a policy implemented by the government during the last term facing pressure in the highly politicalised environment. It was a mission impossible from the very beginning,” Lo [Man Tuen, vice-chairman of the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese] wrote…

Thus government supporters can dismiss any idea associated with non-‘patriots’ as evil – as MAGA conservatives in the US accuse anything they don’t like of ‘woke-ism’. As a commenter says…

The most reactionary and self-serving elements of the pro-Beijing camp are going to wield the cudgel of national security against any government policy that goes against their interests. 

In fact, the waste-charging idea dates back to an earlier cohort of government environment officials – back in the pre-‘all patriots’ days, when civil society activists and NGOs (‘some of whom are even in jail’) were at least allowed a hearing in policymaking circles. The old ‘administrative absorption of politics’ also enabled bureaucrats to share the blame if an initiative was unpopular. Under the new order, such independent stakeholders are denied participation, and ‘opposition’ critics run the risk of being accused of ‘soft resistance’. So the ‘all patriots’ system has to take full ownership, including when things go wrong.

The earlier cohort strikes back. Officials don’t exactly rule out postponing the planned August 1 launch date.

The Sheik Ali Al Maktoum saga takes another twist, as the Dubai royal/pop singer/family office guru’s website disappears…

Last December, Sheikh Ali visited the Hang Seng University of Hong Kong and met with president Simon Ho Shun-man and other members of the university’s senior management. And during his second visit on March 26, Sheikh Ali signed a memorandum of understanding and was appointed an honorary professor. 

Yet, it was recently revealed that HSUHK has amended the press release that day and deleted all references related to Sheikh Ali. 

…The opening of the family office was scheduled on March 28 but was pulled at the eleventh hour.

On April 2, Sheikh Ali’s singer identity was exposed and it was found out that his portrait in the Sheung Wan office had been removed.

A valuable lesson on the dangers of collusion with foreign forces.

China Media Project on Hong Kong’s new NatSec language…

Local officials now decry “soft resistance” against the state and exclusively refer to the pro-democracy protests that drew millions of mostly peaceful marchers to the streets as the “black riots” (黑爆) and an attempted “color revolution” (顏色革命) orchestrated by foreign “black hands” (黑手).

Perhaps the most curious new addition to this dialect of officialese, however, has been “going into battle lightly equipped” (輕裝上陣). The four-character set phrase has been a favorite of Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu (李家超) when delivering promises about how the law will revitalize Hong Kong’s economy, which has been in the doldrums since the first national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.

As far as metaphors go, it’s not the most intuitive. But the logic is something like this: Hong Kong has, hitherto, been weighed down by threats to its national security. This need to constantly be on guard against hostile foreign forces has distracted authorities from developing the economy and solving long-festering livelihood issues like unaffordable housing and an overtaxed healthcare system.

But…

…Didn’t Hong Kong’s economy thrive for generations while it was supposedly beset by insidious foreign threats, and didn’t it begin its present freefall precisely when the national security crackdown began? How is digging further supposed to get them out of this hole?

“Going into battle lightly equipped” is that rare breed of political slogan that not only defies reality but flips it entirely on its head. As “Asia’s World City” decides to go to war against the outside world by making cooperation with “international organizations” a possible security infraction, it is doing so more tightly encumbered and heavily weighed down than ever before.

An SCMP op-ed by Mike Rowse calls for the government to ease off on the inflammatory press releasees and high-profile pursuit of ‘absconders’…

Perhaps Hong Kong should start by ceasing to add fuel to the fire. Whenever government officials attack named individuals in a high-profile way using strong language, the outcome will only add lustre to their standing.

I was disappointed to hear the Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung and other government figures say that going after fugitives is likely to be the top priority following the enactment of the Article 23 legislation. Is this the best course of action? After all, the people involved will never come back and their host governments are highly unlikely to extradite them.

Surely the city government’s first priority should be to rule wisely and ensure social stability is maintained….

(His recommendation: get some old gwailos to talk the city up.)

Stephen Roach, of Morgan Stanley/upsets-Reg fame, asks why bother with the China Development Forum? (He sounds disillusioned but still eager to be a fan. Presumably he is using the gathering, at which he was sort of sidelined, as a metaphor for China as an investment location?) 

More on the 3 Body Problem problem… Background from AP/HKFP. 

An examination of Chinese sensitivities by the NYT…

Instead of pride and celebration, the Netflix series has been met with anger, sneer and suspicion in China. The reactions show how years of censorship and indoctrination have shaped the public perspectives of China’s relations with the outside world. They don’t take pride where it’s due and take offense too easily. They also take entertainment too seriously and history and politics too lightly. The years of Chinese censorship have also muted the people’s grasp of what happened in the Cultural Revolution.

And perhaps best of all – Howard French in (possibly paywalled) Foreign Policy on the expanding scope of US soft power: ‘period epics [Netflix’s Shogun and 3 Body Problem] rooted in non-Western cultures for mass audiences that preserve space for non-Western characters and non-Western languages’…

The fiercely hostile online reaction of some people in China toward 3 Body Problem’s opening scenes reminds me of the famous quip by the writer La Rochefoucauld. “Hypocrisy,” he said, “is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” These popular criticisms derive from people who are likely finding alternative ways of streaming 3 Body Problem because for political reasons it has not been, and probably can never be, released in China. That isn’t because the Netflix miniseries gets anything wrong but, rather, because it gets this Chinese scene right. The best response, of course, would be for China to produce its own realistic dramatizations and accurate documentaries about this crucial recent period in history, in which an estimated 2 million people were killed, but of course official censorship could never tolerate this.

…Can Western audiences be carried along by non-Western actors who dominate the leading roles?

If the American entertainment industry can overcome this lingering racial timidity and provincialism, the sky would seem to be the limit. There are new audiences to be won on every continent with authentically told stories about dramatic periods in history that have little or no need for Westerners front and center.

On real-life disasters: how a Greek former scout led a group to safety out of Tarako Gorge after the earthquake. (Interesting if you have been to the Gorge – some photos from my last visit below.)…

Later in the afternoon, with the aftershocks gradually subsiding, Belbas heard a bird sing, interpreting it as a good sign: “If the birds are willing to sing, maybe Mother Nature is slowing down a little bit.”

Those who liked the idea of turning part or all of Fanling golf course into affordable housing and/or public park land are now full of remorse, it seems…

Public opinion on building housing on Fanling Golf Course has made a U-turn, with many who had supported the plan now regretting it, says Heung Yee Kuk chairman and lawmaker Kenneth Lau Ip-keung.

…”When the housing supply was not sufficient in 2018 and 2019, many friends thought it was not a big deal if the government took back a small part of the land,” said Lau, a member of the Hong Kong Golf Club.

“But now they feel regret after the government actually did so, as the Hong Kong Golf Club had hosted a lot of great competitions on the land over the past two years.”

…”Some people actively pushed the government to take back the land in 2018 and 2019 as they were trying to divide society,” he said.

“But our society is advancing from stability to prosperity now and harmonious development is what we need to achieve prosperity. I believe the government could make a wiser decision.”

Not only that – the HK Golf Club would like taxpayers’ money while we’re at it…

The administration should reconsider whether Fanling Golf Course is the optimal location for constructing a public housing estate, according to captain Andy Kwok Wing-leung.

Speaking to a small group briefing, Kwok, the captain of the Hong Kong Golf Club, emphasized the significant economic benefits brought by the three-day LIV Golf tournament held at the course last month.

“The game was broadcast live to over 500 million families all over the world, with video clips about the tournament on social media hitting 24 million views,” he said.

…However, he noted the financial burden and post-game responsibilities taken on by the club, lamenting the lack of government support despite receiving an “M” mark status and subsidy for the tournament.

…Kwok appealed to the government for financial subsidies to facilitate the sustainable organization of more mega golf events.

He acknowledged the need for improvements to course facilities to meet the LIV Golf requirements but urged the government to retain the course for hosting additional mega events, as they would yield greater financial benefits for Hong Kong compared to constructing public housing estates.

Kwok also called for the return of management rights for a 32-hectare land at the course, which was reclaimed by the government last September for public leisure use, to enable the club to hold more mega golf events.

If the pro-golf folk were smarter, they would more blatantly pander to officials’ obsession with attracting rich white tourists to Hong Kong. They hint at it – ‘mega events’, ‘high-spending visitors’ and those half billion families – but it is obvious they are mainly determined to protect their own privileges and notoriously tedious pastime. (In previous arguments against using a small part of the course for housing, they have shown a curious concern with hydrological impacts and the preservation of swamp cypress trees.)

As it is, the government appears unimpressed, and unwilling to revisit its plans (though the amount of housing the site will yield won’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things). It’s almost as if someone in the post-2020 power structure – perhaps a Mainland advisor, definitely a non-golfer – sees the issue as a symbolic opportunity for the government to serve the masses. 

From HKFP…

In the fourth quarter of last year, the city recorded 72,035 UK tourists compared to 158,702 in the same period of 2018. The number of US visitors declined from 377,613 to 216,965 in the same period.

…Hong Kong authorities have made winning back tourists a key policy goal. During the budget speech in February, the government announced it had allocated HK$1.1 billion to promote “mega events,” host monthly pyrotechnics and drone shows, and partner with influencers to promote Hong Kong.

…But tourists today are visiting a city vastly different to what it once was. Following large-scale protests in 2019, Beijing the following year imposed a national security law on Hong Kong, under which civil society groups have disbanded and scores of activists have been jailed.

The city has also revived a colonial-era sedition law, jailing dozens – including ordinary people – for allegedly endangering national security.

Following the passage of further security legislation in March, the Australian government updated its warning. “The law includes additional national security offences. You could be detained without charge for up to 16 days and denied access to a lawyer for up to 48 hours,” the advisory reads.

Some commentators blame airlines for not offering enough/affordable flights; others say airline capacity reflects passenger demand, not vice-versa. But either way, flights from North America/Europe via Tokyo/Bangkok/etc are not too pricy.

The SCMP reports…

Hong Kong customs will alert police if visitors are caught with seditious materials and fail to give a reasonable excuse under the city’s domestic national security legislation, but did not offer a clear definition of what items fell foul of the new law.

…[Commissioner of Customs and Excise Louise Ho Pui-shan] was asked on Friday how authorities would respond to tourists carrying old newspapers, such as copies of the now-defunct tabloid Apple Daily, or returning residents with books covering military matters in Hong Kong.

The customs chief only said there were no import and export restrictions on regular books, but urged visitors not to transport anything that could be in breach of the law.

“When the customs inspects tourists who are entering Hong Kong or their luggage, if we find some suspicious publications and we have a reasonable suspicion that these publications have a seditious intent, where the tourists do not have a reasonable defence, only then will we alert the case to the relevant law enforcement units,” she said.

She also mentioned that there was no definition of ‘soft resistance’. Her statements were in response to questions from media, at a press conference intended to highlight NatSec-related training for Customs officials. She was trying to sound reassuring, but had to deliver an underlying message that visitors could end up being arrested simply for carrying books or newspapers. If anything she said is picked up overseas, that will be it.

And from AP…

At an immigration expo during the law’s first two days, immigration consultant Ben Li’s booth was constantly busy, its small white tables all occupied. Inquiries about moving abroad jumped about 40% from last year’s expo. More than half of those asking cited the new ordinance, known locally as Article 23, as a reason to consider emigration.

“The Article 23 legislation has brought a significant catalyzing effect,” Li said.

…But since the 2020 law was imposed by Beijing after months of anti-government protests, [freedoms] have been sharply curtailed. Many pro-democracy activists have been arrested, silenced or forced into exile. Dozens of civil society groups have been disbanded. Outspoken media like Apple Daily and Stand News have been shut down. And many disillusioned young professionals and middle-class families have emigrated to Britain, Canada and Taiwan.

An SCMP review of Hong Kong’s recent Art Week…

[I encountered] a taxi driver … ranting about the quality of public art in the city. Last week, he had passengers from Beijing and Shanghai complaining about the “mainlandisation of aesthetics” around Hong Kong.

“They meant the tacky cartoon figures that are popping up everywhere!” he exclaimed.

…Lisa Movius, an arts journalist visiting from Shanghai, questioned the “quality control” for the city’s public art commissions.

“Just pandering to selfie-takers may hit KPIs but makes a city seem culturally unsophisticated. Also, the schlock often edges out quality art in funding and in our attention economy,” she told me.

“Garish graffiti sexy Asian fetish ladies in Sheung Wan have not the cultural draws of, say, small bookshops.”

Several of which have been closing after regulatory/enforcement hassles from the authorities. Something similar is happening with drama: HKFP lists various performances and other events that were recently cancelled for NatSec-related reasons…

In a February internal circular to schools, the Education Bureau asked artistic bodies to sign a declaration that their performances would not endanger national security, as a prerequisite for renting school venues. 

How can a play or dance endanger the security of the nation? If it was possible to threaten a country with drama, wars would be far less lethal, cheaper, and probably more enjoyable.

Some weekend reading and viewing…

What is behind Hong Kong officials’ determination to host rich folks’ fund managers, known as ‘family offices’? Such offices create lucrative work for a few lawyers and financial professionals, but are hardly a major GDP driver. Perhaps (as with talent visas for Mainlanders) the idea is to compensate for a net outflow in recent years. Anyway, there was much excitement among officials when a sheik apparently related to a UAE ruling family talked of setting up a US$500 million operation here. Then it transpired that he is also ‘a singer-songwriter with a fan base in the Philippines’. He then scraps the planned office. And now – a snarky editorial in the Standard…

So far, no one seems to have been able to say categorically whether or not the 28-year-old is a Dubai prince.

…It would be too easy to accuse the government of not performing due diligence to check Sheikh Ali’s background before committing to high-level meetings with him as the SAR is desperate to attract capital from the Middle East.

This can also be a challenge for officials because, first, royal wealth in the Middle East is opaque and, second, the government lacks expertise in the Middle East.

Graham Allison was one of the group of business and other figures who gathered around Xi Jinping in Beijing last week for a meeting. Geremie Barme, with a 2017 piece by Arthur Waldron, critiques his ‘Thucydides Trap’ ideas…

[self-described acolyte of Henry Kissinger] Professor Allison might possibly believe that he is the right man in the right place at the right time. But the Harvard academic also has something of a ‘three-body problem’, shape-shifting as he does between his role as an academic, a market-oriented commentator and a new ‘old friend of China’. Like the three bodies of the eponymous novel and its screen adaptations, Allison is enmeshed in the gravitational pull of three personæ.

From YouTube: interesting film footage of Beijing in 1917, and a quick history of Japanese anime’s obsession with an idealized, typically pre-industrial, Europe. (Partly, the buildings are exotic and quaint; partly, it allows depiction of homoeroticism and militarization without upsetting Japanese prudes and nationalists.)

More whining as 1.5 million Hongkongers leave the city – mostly over the border – during the Easter long weekend…

…[Restaurants lobby head] Simon Wong Ka-wo warned that the trend of people spending holidays in the mainland will rock the catering sector’s confidence in the short term.

…”Overall, the catering business dropped more than 30 percent compared to the Easter holiday last year, when many Hongkongers stayed despite the border reopening.”

…He urged the government to promote local consumption by hosting large-scale events across the city, not just in specific areas such as West Kowloon and Tsim Sha Tsui.

Wong said around 200 to 300 restaurants ceased operation over the past month and he believes the market will not improve this year.

…”I haven’t seen such a bad situation during holidays in Sai Kung for decades,” a restaurant owner said.

He added: “People either traveled overseas or visited the mainland – not many people stayed in Hong Kong. Authorities should pay attention to the situation. Building the Greater Bay Area is a good thing but we cannot push everyone there. What about Hong Kong?”

Restaurants demand more Mainland tourists – and government handouts in the form of ‘holiday vouchers’.

From Bloomberg…

The record outflow was largely the result of people heading across the border to the mainland and Macau, where they can enjoy cheaper and a larger variety of entertainment, food and shopping. Hong Kong residents last month made 8.3 million departures via border checkpoints — another record since at least 1997…

…Hong Kong is increasingly losing out to nearby Chinese cities including tech hub Shenzhen and casino town Macau as a high-speed rail and a mega cross-sea bridge make cross-border travel faster and easier than ever before. 

The FT notes that it’s not just retailing…

Container throughput in Hong Kong fell 14 per cent last year to 14.3mn twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), according to figures from maritime consultancy Drewry.

This was the biggest percentage drop among the world’s biggest ports last year. Hong Kong is now the 10th-largest port in the world by volume

… Once the world’s busiest port, according to Hong Kong government data, volumes have fallen as the city’s manufacturers shift to mainland China and competition from other Chinese ports rise, analysts said.

…“It is always inevitable that Hong Kong would contract as a port,” said Tim Huxley, chair of Hong Kong-based shipping investment company Mandarin Shipping.

(Let’s not have a huge port! Think what the city could do with all that space.)

From Wikipedia…

Arbitrage has the effect of causing prices in different markets to converge. As a result of arbitrage, the currency exchange rates, the price of commodities, and the price of securities in different markets tend to converge. The speed at which they do so is a measure of market efficiency.

Twenty years ago, Masters student Li Na at Lingnan U wrote a thesis titled ‘Price Convergence between Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland’, saying… 

I … find … a strong border effect between Hong Kong and the mainland. The nature of such a border effect may be due to big income gaps between the two places … Looking into [the] future, one would have the confidence to say that the speed of price convergence might accelerate in future years, owing to the increased economic integration of Hong Kong and the mainland, and reduced income and productivity gap. 

Weakening the ‘border effect’ through ‘integration’ and better transport links is longstanding government policy. But it apparently never occurred to officials that Hong Kong’s costs might have to come down as a result. Their obsession with cramming more tourists into the city reflects an instinct to keep the gap in rents and labour costs intact (partly to keep land revenues high). But not only is Hong Kong overpriced (and overcrowded) – it’s becoming less and less cool…

As an SCMP op-ed puts it…

International visitors go to places to experience what locals enjoy – Bangkok and Taipei, with their famed night markets, are classic examples – and not some artificial tourist construct.

…Taxpayer-funded gimmicks such as monthly fireworks displays and drone shows – tired, clichéd “attractions” disdained anywhere above fourth-tier mainland Chinese municipalities – will achieve little.

Absent from current debates – or what pass for them – are serious evaluations of whether earlier tourism-industry formulas are now outdated. Expecting further growth from a clearly declining model by continuing to offer more of the same past offerings cannot guarantee any pathway to success.

Rather than fight cost adjustment, why not embrace it and take advantage of it? Imagine how much more vibrant and diversified the economy could be if the rents were lower.

There are two types of PR. One tries to influence or change public perceptions in order to improve your reputation. This is difficult, as the spin-doctors’ boss might balk at the sort of candid and open communication that wins credibility. For example, you might need to concede that you have made mistakes and now plan to do better. The other sort is simply aimed at pleasing the boss, say through flat assertions that you are right and critics are wrong. Far easier to do (and get paid for) – but hopeless at convincing the wider public. And if the boss prefers hypersensitive defiance, you might just alienate that wider audience.

The Chinese and Hong Kong governments are rebutting every perceived criticism of the NatSec laws, with some ferocity. 

For example, the BBC and NYT …

In a statement, a spokesman condemned the BBC for an “extremely misleading report” about remission of sentence under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance and “the fact-twisting remarks made by anti-China organisations”.

Ma Chun-man, dubbed “Captain America 2.0”, reportedly did not receive an early release this week due to amended rules under the new homegrown security legislation.

…Separately, Secretary for Security Chris Tang hit out at NYT over an opinion piece titled “Hongkongers Are Purging the Evidence of Their Lost Freedom”, which questioned whether keeping old copies of the now-defunct Apple Daily newspaper could violate the law.

After the Hong Kong government criticized Radio Free Asia in January and February, the station closes its Hong Kong operation…

“Actions by Hong Kong authorities, including referring to RFA as a ‘foreign force,’ raise serious questions about our ability to operate in safety with the enactment of Article 23,” [RFA boss Bay] Fang said.

A Hong Kong government spokesperson declined to comment on “operational decisions of individual organizations,” but said authorities “strongly disapprove of and condemn all scaremongering and smearing remarks” in relation to the national security law.

(RFA’s parting shot – a gruesome report on abuse of political-activist inmates at a juvenile offenders institution.)

And a WSJ editorial and a Guardian piece incur the wrath of the Foreign Ministry…

Beijing’s foreign ministry arm in Hong Kong has told The Wall Street Journal not to be “a worrywart” as officials hit back at the US newspaper’s views on the new domestic national security law and its grim outlook for the development of the city.

The commissioner’s office of China’s Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong on Friday issued its second statement in eight days that took a swipe at the news outlet’s editorial “Hong Kong’s Giant Leap Backward”, published earlier this month.

The news came as an official from Hong Kong’s Security Bureau sent a letter to rebut an article in The Guardian, an influential UK newspaper, which highlighted warnings by the city’s justice chief that “online criticism” could breach the legislation, mandated by Article 23 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.

Here’s a part of that WSJ editorial…

The new legislation comes atop a controversial national-security law imposed by China in 2020 following mass protests over a bill that would have permitted Hong Kong to extradite criminal suspects to China. That law has turned out to mean whatever the government wants it to mean. Hong Kong’s secretary for security, Chris Tang, boasts of a 100% conviction rate in national-security cases.

Apparently that’s not enough. In defense of the new legislation, the government says it is merely following the Basic Law—Hong Kong’s miniconstitution. So notwithstanding Hong Kong’s underperforming stock market and a flight of foreign investors, the government decided it needs more tools to lock people up. The law’s reach is sweeping and its terms such as treason and insurrection are conveniently vague.

Chief Executive John Lee says he can now turn his attention to the economy, but it may be too late. Regarding foreign influence as a threat is incompatible with a world financial center whose prosperity is rooted in the rule of law and openness to foreign capital.

The US releases its latest – very thorough – Hong Kong Policy Act report (and imposes visa restrictions on Hong Kong officials). 

The government’s response is not exactly subtle…

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) today (March 30) strongly disapproved of and rejected the untruthful remarks, slanders and smears against various aspects of the HKSAR in the United States (US)’ so-called 2024 Hong Kong Policy Act Report and the relevant statement of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. It was apparent that the so-called report and the relevant statement were compiled to serve the political purpose of maintaining the US hegemony. By piling up false stories and narratives, they were clearly crafted to serve the political interest of the US in order to suppress the development rights and security interests of others.

“The HKSAR Government strongly condemns and rejects the wanton slander about and political attacks … The US once again told fallacies about Hong Kong by replacing the rule of law with political manipulation and confounding right and wrong, and blatantly interfering in Hong Kong affairs which are entirely China’s internal affairs. The US’ attempt to undermine the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong will only expose its slyness and will never succeed.”

…”The so-called ‘sanctions’ arbitrarily imposed by the US as mentioned in the so-called report, and the so-called ‘visa restrictions’ claimed to be imposed in the relevant statement, smack of despicable political manipulation to intimidate the HKSAR officials safeguarding national security. These grossly interfere in China’s internal affairs and Hong Kong affairs, and violate the international law and the basic norms governing international relations. The HKSAR despises such so-called ‘sanctions’ and ‘visa restrictions’ by the US and is not intimidated by such a despicable behavior…

The overseas criticism continues. A Minxin Pei op-ed for Bloomberg…

…Hong Kong … seems to be adopting two regrettable political traits which have long been genetically coded into China’s one-party regime.

The first is a tendency toward excess among lower-level officials. On the Chinese mainland, this manifests itself in the form of overzealous policy implementation by local authorities, who fear that acting more moderately and pragmatically could expose them to charges of ideological heresy and political disloyalty to the Communist Party.

…The speed with which Article 23 was introduced and passed appears to reflect similar zeal. Hong Kong leaders left little time for proper public consultation and detailed debate within the legislature. For that matter, they also didn’t leave themselves enough time to explain and justify the new legislation to their constituents, let alone an international audience.

The second trait Hong Kong seems to be acquiring from Beijing is political paranoia. Party leaders have a habit of seeing more threats than actually exist and making more enemies than necessary. As a result, they are prone to taking costly measures against imaginary foes. That can choke off the civil liberties vital to a normal society without doing much to improve regime security.

…it’s more likely that the new rules will be enforced strictly and restrictions expanded over time, not shrunk. Even though the Hong Kong government recently denied that the mainland’s Great Firewall would be widened to cover the former British colony, for instance, Beijing will inevitably be tempted to control information there as elsewhere.

…foreign firms might find themselves better off moving their Hong Kong-based operations to mainland cities such as Shenzhen or Shanghai. It will make little economic sense to keep operating in high-cost Hong Kong if they can’t count on stronger protections against arbitrary government action there.

If Hong Kong officials think passing Article 23 will assuage fears among foreign businesses, they are likely to be disappointed. The more the city’s leaders appear to be emulating their mainland counterparts, the more doubts they are guaranteed to raise.

No government respose as yet.

And the UN human rights Special Rapporteurs make their submission on Article 23. From a summary…

Many of the offences are vague, over-broad, do not satisfy the requirement of legality, and are likely to criminalize and chill civil society, media and human rights defenders – including extraterritorially as a technique of transnational repression of dissidents

…The law also provides for excessive periods of pre-charge detention, which risks abuse against civil society. Increased penalties for some offences are also disproportionate

The law restricts access to legal representation and choice of lawyers, in violation of the rights of defendants and fair trial. It also enables the government to hand-pick judges in security cases, infringing on judicial independence and the impartiality of judges

The law potentially criminalizes innocent and legitimate civil society engagement with the United Nations, including its human rights procedures, contrary to human rights law and the spirit of the United Nations Charter

The rights negatively affected by the law include freedoms of opinion, expression, peaceful assembly, association, and movement; liberty; fair trial; privacy; participation in public affairs; & academic freedom

(Whole report here.)

Will the UN rapporteurs get the ‘slanders and smears’ treatment?