Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Hong Kong’s two nominal political/cultural camps – pro-Beijing and pro-democracy – were not exactly united by the Edward Snowden visitation-frenzy. Patriots gleefully seized on the revelations that the evil US was hacking everyone’s emails and Facebook posts, but they did not look convincing protesting in favour of liberty outside the US Consulate. Some more cosmopolitan members of our community, meanwhile, squirmed a bit in discomfort as they tried to reconcile their more genuine commitment to human rights with their anti-Communist/pro-Western instincts.

Everyone agreed that Ed in Hong Kong was a Good Thing, but for different reasons. For the pro-Beijingers, he made China look good and accentuated ‘One Country’ as Beijing publicly defended the Big Lychee’s government while discreetly pulling the necessary local administrative strings. For the pro-dems, he underlined the importance of ‘Two Systems’ by picking this one little part of China specifically for the rule of law and free press that you don’t get on the Mainland.

Ed relied on the HK Democratic Party’s Albert Ho for legal counsel, and when the denouement approached the Hong Kong government refused to have direct contact with the lawyer. This was perhaps the only visible evidence of Beijing officials’ presence during the proceedings. In the Chinese government’s worldview, the Dems are possibly a CIA front (everyone had problems with contradictions in this episode). This Communist Party paranoia could have left us all in much deeper doo-doo; the go-between who had to be used did not entirely win Ed’s trust, and it seems it was touch-and-go as to whether the whistleblower would take the intermediary’s hint and try the Aeroflot exit option.

Now Ed faces a few relaxing months kicking back and checking out the Wi-Fi and recharging options at Moscow Airport while Ecuador does its mañana thing over his asylum application. And for us it’s back to good old-fashioned, deeply tribal and even personal, mutual loathing. A Commercial Daily editorial declares Occupy Central a criminal foreign plot against China’s territorial integrity, while Bauhinia magazine repeats weird stuff about the stock market losing HK$10 billion a day because of the pro-dem movement, which will lead to another ‘colour revolution’.

The Voice of Loving Hong Kong plans to organize a 10,000-person assembly next year to counter the pro-democracy Occupy Central extravaganza. In the meantime they will print millions of ‘Protect Central’ stickers and put pressure on schools to keep radicals at bay. (The United Front groups being mobilized against Occupy Central are making a special point of targeting schools – maybe after noticing the militancy in seats of learning against National Education last year.) I’m still trying to work out the VLHK; my theory is they were rejected by the Falun Gong for being too seedy and pitiful, and this is their way of hitting back at a cruel, uncaring world.

A letter-writer in the South China Morning Post from that famous hotbed of ultra-Maoist fervor, Shatin, pleads for the People’s Liberation Army to run ‘em all down with tanks – it worked last time. His plaintive listing of Hong Kong’s ills, right down to inequitable school-funding systems, confirm that he is sincere and probably sane. How good to see the world getting back to normal.

After sweating under the hot glare of international attention as intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden weighed his options over pizza and Pepsi, Hong Kong’s officials can relax and go back to what they do best – unconvincingly detailed, overly defensive, panicky whining about nothing much. Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen says that the Big Lychee’s authorities had no possible legal way to prevent the trendy geek hero-traitor from leaving town because, while our authorities had him down as Edward Joseph Snowden, the US paperwork named him variously as Edward James Snowden or Edward J Snowden.

Imagine that (say) the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing had fled to Hong Kong: would a quibble over his middle name leave him free, lest we pick up the wrong Timothy McVeigh? This is where mendacity becomes audacity. Few US officials or politicians would stoop to debate this sort of crap even if Ed were still here rather than in Moscow. To confound them even more, Hong Kong is also still demanding a response to its query about the National Security Agency’s hacking into our local Internet hub up at Chinese U.

This is rather obviously taking a leaf from China’s statecraft textbook: playing the ‘victim’ card. That’s hardly surprising given that the whole drama has required Hong Kong to align (to put it mildly) its interests fully with Beijing’s. But it goes beyond presentation; this affair has resulted in a step forward in the ‘Mainlandization’ of Hong Kong’s international relations. The US and its closer intelligence-sharing allies will not see honorary-Anglosphere-member Hong Kong in the same light again. Give it time, and Rimsky will be complaining that Western powers’ misdeeds are hurting the feelings of the Big Lychee’s people.

And so we have to return to domestic trivia. The Hong Kong government releases its annual wine-purchasing meta-data. Chief Secretary Carrie Lam gets through a lot, but then she does so much work doesn’t she? Ultra-patriot Lau Nai-keung’s medication kicks in – or wears off – with the pointed observation that Hongkongers can hardly go around being happy smiling Chinese if their city and well-being are sacrificed to an influx of tourists…

If our collective interests are genuinely shared with 1.3 billion compatriots on the mainland, how can we reconcile this fact with our everyday experience – such as congestion, inflation, shop closures and rising real-estate prices?

And, as if on cue, the Cochrane Street branch of Pho Tai in Central is ordered to be closed down after its owner is found guilty of operating an inoffensive, affordable and cheerful Vietnamese restaurant aimed at local people, and because we really need another jewelry/cosmetics/scented candles/luxury French macaroon outlet…

While the rest of the world waits for intelligence-whistleblowing Chinese spy/heroic global citizen Edward Snowden to resurface in some Latin American bastion of liberty run by an economically illiterate gringo-phobe, Hong Kong ponders its shortest-lived adopted son’s hasty and impulsive decision to skip town. It is a story rich in the glamour and excitement of the international jet-setting espionage milieu, featuring as it does a little apartment, mobile phones in the fridge, a meal of pizza, fried chicken and Pepsi, and cherubic Democratic Party legislator and lawyer Albert Ho.

Almost as in one of Batman and Robin’s more reflective moments, Ed grapples with Albert’s insistence that there would be no Internet access in a Hong Kong detention centre. The incredulous 30-year-old geek seeks confirmation from the highest levels of his host city’s government, and the word comes back, with momentous solemnity, that nope – there would be no computer access in prison here. The senior official pauses to let the message sink in before putting the phone down. With no more hesitation than James Bond showed in killing a guy for ordering red wine with fish, Ed flees to the airport and is last seen waving from the window of the rusting Tupelov as it lumbers skyward towards Moscow. Viewers will now become better acquainted with new cast member, the gorgeous, leggy, pouting Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks, former girlfriend of Julian Assange, English rose and non-lawyer intern investigative superwoman freedom fighter heroine, who is replacing Ed’s ballerina femme whom audiences found too cold/New York/wacko. Then the action will resume.

Meanwhile, some pictures fresh from the digital. On the right, Japanese tea in a refrigerated display in a store. If only one of ‘Straight Tea’ and ‘The Pungency’ were on offer, I wouldn’t have cared, but it’s not every day you see them together. These are just a couple of the many things you can’t get in Ecuador.

On the left, a white luxury mega-van seen on Ice House Street late yesterday afternoon, with cross-border as well as Hong Kong plates, parking not only just beyond a 24-hour no-parking sign but on a bus stop (don’t be fooled by the brake lights – he was very stationary). Fortunately, with my Rosa Kleb knife-in-shoe, I was able to puncture the tyres with four swift kicks. And give the driver one in the shin…

Hong Kong seems that little bit emptier now Edward Snowden has suddenly upped and left the city. The dashing, trendy, cyber-hero, whistleblower-traitor-fiend flew into the sunset yesterday on Aeroflot, apparently en route for Ecuador via either Cuba or Venezuela via Moscow. (Given Ed’s image problems back home as a Chinese red Commie turncoat, I would probably skip Cuba, still viewed by many Americans as a Soviet-backed menace to hemispheric freedom.) Plucky little Ecuador is, of course, the liberty-loving nation in whose London embassy sits Julian Assange, who released tons of stunningly uninteresting classified data passed on by US soldier Bradley Manning, the least glamorous and so far only captured member of the Three State-Secret-Spilling Musketeers of our era. WikiLeaks, now Ed’s advisor and guardian, is in danger of officially replacing Greenpeace as the world’s most insufferably self-righteous and self-important NGO.

The US government is miffed that Hong Kong dragged its feet over its request to have Ed arrested with a view to extradition, thus allowing him time to split. This implies that the US authorities submitted paperwork to Hong Kong that was no less adequate than in the many past successful cases of HK-US extradition. The alternative explanation, implied by the Hong Kong government, is that US officials goofed up with the legal documentation. Shouldn’t be hard to prove which. Either way, the Big Lychee and Beijing are now breathing a sigh of relief. In an uncharacteristic display of wit, the Hong Kong government also mentions in its statement that it is still waiting for Washington to respond to Ed’s charges that US security services hacked (presumably illegally) into our local Internet infrastructure.

It is unfair that the US ends up in the role of villain. Ed’s revelations simply confirm that the National Security Agency and its partners conduct wide-scale traffic analysis on the millions of bits and pieces flowing around the Internet in the hope of detecting patterns that could help identify planned terrorist attacks. China’s spy agencies, meanwhile, target individual corporate and public networks, probably in order to steal specific commercial and strategic information and maybe even to acquire the capacity to disrupt vital Western services and systems. The only similarity is that both powers rely on young geeks to do the work.

But it is hard to sympathize for an American leadership that seems determined to make the country look bad in the eyes of the world by refusing to admit that it might be infringing the principles it declares everyone else should follow.

Part of the problem is that the US has nurtured a bloated intelligence and security industry. Attempting to scoop up records of every email, every Facebook posting and every data transfer on the planet is ridiculous, as is making people take their shoes off every time they fly, along with dozens of other over-the-top measures in the ‘war on terror’. Maybe a few percent of this activity is worthwhile, but for the most part this whole thing has become a massive waste of taxpayers’ money. Needless to say, this yields huge profits for security contractors and fat pensions for public-sector labour – and no doubt contributions flow into lawmakers’ and parties’ election campaigns to keep it that way.

This is related to another American taxpayer-funded industry that has gone out of control, namely the penal system. One of the reasons people are cheering Ed on as the Feds chase him round the globe is that they know the harshness of the justice he will face if caught. The length of possible prison sentences and the severe conditions of incarceration that await Ed are in line with a whole array of excessive Federal and state penalties that go back to the ‘war on drugs’. Thanks to an absurd incarceration rate, billions of US taxpayers’ dollars are now poured down the drain while prison construction/supplies/services companies – and unionized prison guards – laugh all the way to the bank, stopping of course to donate to tough-on-crime politicians’ campaign funds.

In short, a country with a good-albeit-not-perfect claim to the moral high ground is inviting international ridicule (not least by taking everything way too seriously), while a kleptocratic dictatorship like China or a flea-size authoritarian banana-producer like Ecuador come out looking halfway cool. It’s a funny old world.

Special deals on pre-owned handbags, dried seafood and meals from 2-5pm; a K-pop concert with cheap tickets sponsored by all the property giants from 2-6pm; a carnival in Tamar Park starting at 2pm… Establishment and pro-Beijing bodies are clearly attempting to divert people and attention from this year’s July 1 march on Monday week. In the interests of thoroughness, or maybe just paranoia, I can add a parade and display by the HK Classic Car Club – from (in case you hadn’t guessed) 2-5pm.

The Standard quotes City U’s James Sung as saying it all looks like a dummy run for next year’s planned Occupy Central. A Chinese U counterpart Ivan Choy notes how eagerly the establishment bloc is responding to the central government’s nervousness. Another academic, Dixon Sing of HKUST, says it is clear that Beijing will not be granting Hong Kong real universal suffrage and “There will be a ‘war’.”

It is impossible to rule out Liaison Office politics playing a role here. Beijing’s local emissaries have their careers to promote, and getting tough on Hong Kong’s counter-revolutionary, subversive enemies of the people is one way to do it. (Though this time 10 years ago, just before the massive Article 23 protest that ultimately toppled Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, local Mainland officials were doing the opposite and telling their bosses back home all was well.)

If we take it at face value, however, Beijing must be genuinely worried. Although the Occupy Central organizers are open about what they are doing, and even perhaps endearingly naïve, the methodical and structured nature of their campaign must look intensely suspicious. It follows a formula and is therefore replicable; if it can happen in Hong Kong, it could happen over the border. Indeed, with its workshops and efforts to reach out to the grassroots, it looks a little like something that did happen in the Mainland – in Shanghai in 1921.

The fewer messages and causes a July 1 march has, the more people turn up. The 2003 event was an obvious example. Since then, the annual demonstration has often been broadcasting a bewildering array of demands for everything from a universal pension to gay marriage to Indonesian maids’ rights, along with the inevitable calls for this official and that official to step down (never any suggestion as to who should replace them). Beijing’s local minders foresee a more united gathering this year. If they had shut up, they could have found they were mistaken; hapless Executive Council member Barry Cheung, a dozen people’s illegal structures, striking dockworkers, dividend tax and a host of other outrages and dreams could have led to the usual carnival of mixed messages. But the anxiety about Occupy Central and the silly stunts with pop concerts and shop discounts could instead yield a self-fulfilling prophecy: a sizable march relatively focused on political reform and governance.

Two reasons to, at the last minute, cancel that planned country park picnic or YouTube-binge-in-pajamas and scribble ‘Monday afternoon, Victoria Park’ into your diary: it could up the stakes in what is looking like the next confrontation between Hong Kong and Beijing, following Article 23 and National Education; it will piss them off that so many people don’t want 20% off a handbag.

On a less optimistic note, there is no reason to imagine that the central authorities will be as flexible on rigged elections as they were on symbolism like Article 23. The last thing a big demonstration will do is convince Beijing officials to open up the political system. It’s the last thing a small one will do, as well. Maybe Dixon ‘War’ Sing is on to something.

I hereby declare the weekend open.

Click to hear ‘I Predict a Riot’ by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band!

A day when nothing is happening coincides with one of those outrageous but mercifully rare occasions when I am expected to do some work. Just time to relate my bemusement upon opening the Standard this morning and seeing the following… 

Some writers are saying that the North Korean regime is planning to murder Adolf Hitler. That’s Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). It says a lot about the government of Kim Jong Un that a reader glancing at the headline does little more than raise an eyebrow at something apparently impossible, illogical and lunatic. Coming from Pyongyang, it’s entirely plausible.

So I read on and find out what it’s actually about. Then I examine the headline more carefully and see – my mistake – that it makes sense after all… 

We see what we expect, or at least wouldn’t be too shocked, to see. Good thing I bothered to read the first paragraph.

If there were a book called Hong Kong Pressure Groups You’ve Never Heard Of, Left 21 would probably appear around halfway through, on page 791. Between Left 20 and Left 22, perhaps. Anyway, these people and their buddies from the Neighbourhood and Workers’ Service Centre (page 633 of Hong Kong Pressure Groups You’d Heard Of But Forgotten Existed) have called for a tax on dividends to help the poor.

They describe it as a tax on tycoons, but it would affect anyone with a stock portfolio, including helpless retirees who depend on dividend income to survive. And, now I come to think of it, me. (There is a way round that, namely to expand the current salaries tax into a broad levy on all forms of income above a given living allowance – but even Left 21 aren’t suggesting we go down that road.)

Obviously, this is more about getting media attention than proposing a sensible policy; this way, Left 21 can mention property mogul and famed non-payer of tax Li Ka-shing, and thus get into the papers. The suggestion is silly because it assumes that the government needs additional revenues in order to increase expenditure on the poor. With a grossly overpaid civil service, regular budget surpluses and some HK$1.6 trillion in reserves, Hong Kong could double welfare spending without even noticing the impact on its pocket.

The Standard quotes a number of individuals, all of whom come across as buffoons – with one exception: a legislator from the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment Etc of HK, who calmly points out the government’s enviable fiscal position. I can’t help noticing this, as it’s the second occasion recently (or ever?) that DAB members have unwittingly sounded like they’re thinking for themselves.

The other case has been that of American geek-spy-traitor-hero Edward Snowden, about whom DAB vice-chairman Starry Lee says “I think the Hong Kong government should protect him.”

We must stress ‘sounded like’. Of course, Starry is not really speaking her own mind. The Global Times, almost in a parody of its own usual chutzpah, is calling for the Big Lychee to give refuge to Snowden on the grounds that we shelter Chinese dissidents. Although Beijing is officially silent on Snowden’s fate (and milking the we-are-victims-of-US-cybercrime thing for all it’s worth), it seems that China likes the idea of making the US sweat over the possibility that the 29-year-old school dropout whose mind holds the key to the US’s entire national security won’t be returned.

Everyone seems a bit confused. Some Hong Kong pro-Beijing voices are trying to say that the pro-democrats are American stooges for not criticizing Washington’s electronic surveillance enough. Other patriots, like Starry, find themselves protesting awkwardly with their local radical enemies outside the US Consulate. Over in the US, some conservatives who usually denounce Barack Obama as the Kenyan Socialist Muslim are siding with him, while some are joining progressives in opposing his attack on privacy, and some other progressives are miffed that Snowden is defecting to and passing secrets to Communist China (one or two here, at least). Compared with this lot, Left 21 thinks straight.

The allegation that Snowden is passing secrets to China adds a fascinating twist to all this. China would want to refute it as beneath the nation’s dignity, while Snowden has to disprove the slander to protect his status as saintly hero. It’s the sort of thing that can induce everyone to play along with an extradition. Meanwhile Ed is working on his wispy-beard-and-whereabouts-unknown mystique (except of course for those of us invited to the barbecue on Saturday).

The pro-Beijing/establishment’s contrived mass scare campaign against the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement seems to be metastasizing. The mouth-frothing against the planned civil disobedience explores ever-more desperate new angles, the latest being that the sit-down protests would be against family values. Next thing, they will add to climate change and endanger pink dolphins (and noise pollution – don’t forget the noise pollution).

Inevitably, the orchestrated alarmism is showing some strains. Trade Development Council boss Jack So reassured Americans last week that Occupy Central will be just another Hong Kong protest and everything will be business as usual. To the true believers, such a departure from the United Front propaganda script is unforgiveable. He was supposed to tell the overseas business community that the movement will create chaos and disaster and the destruction of billions of dollars of wealth. Rabid commentator Lau Nai-keung, in one of his gloriously North Korean moments, demands the enforcement of correct thinking.

A couple of years ago, a half-crazed poultry farmer climbed onto a walkway in Central. A policeman called Lau Chi-kin tried, perhaps unwisely, to get him and slipped and fell to his death. Now, lawmaker and former Security Secretary Regina Ip and a bunch of hangers-on nauseatingly feign respect for the deceased’s memory as part of the anti-Occupy Central campaign. We are supposed to conclude (in case you’re wondering) that lone aggrieved chicken guy and pro-democracy demonstrators are much the same – protestors, cop-killers, etc.

As if all this isn’t doing enough to convert the apathetic, skeptical and agnostic among us to full-blown radical activism, along comes an even grubbier anti-protest initiative: retailers eyeing a chance to make money out of shoe-shining Beijing. The shops offering a discount for three hours during the afternoon of this year’s July 1 march are, sadly, not the sort that right-thinking people will have an opportunity to boycott in future, catering as they do to the mentally feeble (pre-owned handbag outlet Milan Station, say).

To cap everything, pro-Beijing and official groups will hold celebrations and carnivals as a sort of counterweight to this year’s July 1 event, which will mark the start of a 12-month countdown to the Occupy Central non-violent sit-in extravaganza. You would expect Chief Executive CY Leung and Beijing’s local Liaison Office boss Zhang Xiaoming to attend the patriotic gathering at Tamar. The genius organizers have also arranged the presence of failed CE-wannabe, rich kid and husband of alleged illegal basement owner Henry Tang and property tycoon Henry Cheng. And with that, the United Front’s estrangement of pretty much everyone in Hong Kong is complete.

Although this little middle-class neighbourhood has one in every living room, Cambodia as a whole has only one car for every 32 people. The country is at the moped stage of development. Little motor bikes can carry a surprisingly sizable family, or they can be hooked up to a trailer and serve as a pickup. They represent an important economic sector in their own right, supporting thousands of people who sell fuel from old Coke bottles by the roadside, and who lovingly wash, shampoo and massage the machines at countless maintenance shops. As tuk-tuks or as simple two-wheelers, they serve as taxis – essential in a city with no urban bus system, let alone metro.

The rich elite and the international aid community, who can’t perform their humanitarian mission without air-conditioning and stereo, drive monstrous black 4-by-4s. The stupidest thing planners (if any) could do at this stage is to think “those things are cool and the way of the future, so let’s build the city around them.” So that, of course, is what they are doing. Phnom Penh’s third flyover is currently under construction, complete with clover-leaf ramps looping round it. The city will never be quite like Bangkok, Manila or Jakarta (each of which has a bigger population than the whole Kingdom of Cambodia), but officials seem to be determined to make the same mistakes anyway and ignore this never-to-be-repeated opportunity to implement some sort of trendy electric buses/road pricing system before descending into standard Southeast Asian gridlock.

Not that my hosts see it that way. They are actually proud of the new flyover – as they are of the small number of skyscrapers – because it will look so modern. They’ll be able to look snotty, uppity Thais in the eye, and maybe feel better about the Vietnamese taking over all the coffee shops and being registered as voters to help the ruling party. This makes me wonder what other evils of the 21st Century these poor people, with their tragic history, misguidedly imagine to be desirable. Will they, for example, ask to be taken to a tacky, plastic, pseudo-American pizza place for the meal I will treat them to before I leave?

I know the answer because they have already told me and are very excited, because such a dining experience is a really high-class thing to do. For a short time we hang out at a function in the presence of a striking movie star with a big fan and even bigger bouffant hairdo, waiting for Princess Norodom to make an appearance. My hosts are very eager for me to come along, perhaps to prove (not that I doubted it) their social standing. Being irritatingly hard to impress – my biggest vice – I grow tired of waiting for Her Royal Highness and we head off to the Pizza Company, a franchise linked to the Swensens ice cream chain, overlooking the river.

Apart from a few expats with kids, the customers are nearly all young, aspiring, middle-class, urban Cambodians. One group have brought an aging grandmother along in her tribal dress and turban. She looks bewildered enough even before seeing the menu. This offers a choice of three crusts: regular thin; thick with a tube around the perimeter containing melted cheese (well, ‘cheese’, at least); and thick with tubes around the perimeter containing sausage (‘sausage’ – scroll down for intimate and detailed illustration). I make the barely forgivable faux pas of choosing the plain one. Tom yum gung flavour. Pol Pot tried to eradicate traditional Khmer culture; now it’s the Pizza Company’s turn. Outside, lizards scramble over the brightly lit Dairy Queen sign in an attempt to add a bit of local colour to the creeping homogenous consumerist globalization.

Time for one last evening stroll along the waterfront. This is the equivalent of walking along the harbour (if you could) in Central, except the bank on the other side is barely developed, with more trees and fields than buildings. Among the families, couples, ragamuffins and tourists, I can’t help noticing one or two unkempt and frankly putrid-looking 60-something white guys sitting and watching little kids playing on the swings. At least, I think that’s what I’m seeing. As with the colour divide between semi-Chinese light-skinned wealthy and native dark-skinned poor, everyone else seems oblivious to it.

And so we bid a fond farewell to plucky little Cambodia, with its 10% annual GDP growth, crumbling colonial architecture, corrupt government half-controlled from Beijing, children picking through piles of trash, the heart-warming sight (as in Vietnam) of French people having to speak English, and a small but growing population of ambitious and bright folk with enough disposable income to plan what electronic appliance to buy next. Another bit of Southeast Asia succumbs to brands, processed cheese and traffic jams.