Inspired perhaps by chefs who lure suckers to special feasts of caviar with truffle and gold flakes, Ocean Park is offering exclusive VIP opportunities to ‘meet’ its baby pandas. Expect to pay…
…HK$1,500 each for a special, 30-minute visit before the park opens each day
…Each session will start at around 9.30am and can accommodate up to 40 people…
Perhaps wisely, considering how special tickets to see stars sometimes flop, the park’s chairman is managing expectations…
“For the sake of animal welfare, there will not be any activities for people to interact with or hold the giant pandas.”
The pair of panda cubs might not appear at the same time to meet the public because they are still young, Pong added.
Or maybe they find the whole concept offensive. “We feel like we’re living in a zoo sometimes,” one told me by phone this morning.
HKPORI will suspend its self-funded surveys and perhaps close down for good…
Pollster [PORI CEO] Robert Chung has been taken in by police to assist with investigations twice since PORI’s former deputy CEO Chung Kim-wah, currently in the UK, was added to a wanted list last December over alleged violations of Beijing-imposed national security law.
Robert Chung was first taken in for questioning on January 13, the same day the PORI office was raided. He was taken in a second time later that month.
PORI will “suspend all its self-funded research activities indefinitely, including regular tracking surveys conducted since 1992, as well as all feature studies recently introduced,” the polling organisation said in a statement on Thursday.
“HKPORI will undergo a transformation or even close down,” while CEO Chung “welcomes interested parties to take over the Institute,” the statement said.
As with David Webb’s superb on-line database, PORI’s opinion polls would ideally be adopted by Hong Kong U or some other university. But HKU actually cut ties with the polling group in 2019, leading Robert Chung to pretty much predict what is now happening.
Maybe the government should take it in-house. Who wouldn’t want accurate data on what citizens think?
A few more things to read…
From Quillette – at the site of protests over a planned new giant Chinese embassy in London…
A war is coming to Britain’s streets—a war that pits those Hongkongers who have made the UK their home against a Communist Party that wants to make the UK its vassal. This war has nothing to do with the Woke/DEI propaganda that seems to constitute modern police training (if either of these new combatants were to shout “Racist!,” the police really would be in a position of some difficulty.) Things are about to get a lot more complicated, and Britain is not ready.
The Globe and Mail on Hong Kong’s Four Trails ultra-marathon – a 300km torture for only the fittest (and perhaps borderline insane), subject of a surprise box-office hit documentary.
Former Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s taxpayer-provided secretariat is to move from Pacific Place, where the rent is HK$5.6 million, to the government’s Immigration Tower, where renovation will cost a mere HK$2.8 million. (Look – gold toilets aren’t cheap these days.). The SCMPreports…
[Chief Secretary Eric Chan said] the government previously spent about HK$6.55 million to renovate her office in Admiralty but stressed it did not have to return the premises to its original state.
“The government liaised with the landlord, who agreed to take over the office in an as-is condition, and no reinstatement works will be required,” the chief secretary said.
Lam’s office came under scrutiny by lawmakers and the public when it was revealed the Admiralty space cost taxpayers an estimated HK$9.17 million in the 2023-24 financial year, including HK$5.67 million in rent.
Swires aren’t stupid. If someone had spent HK$6.55 million renovating an office I owned, I would sure as hell let them off returning it to its original state.
In 2017, Lam announced that the Immigration Tower would be demolished to make way for a new wing of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Local media reported that the complex would be demolished in 2026.
Chief Executive John Lee confirmed last January that the demolition plan would go ahead as planned. “So while the redevelopment plan will go ahead, for the buildings that have been vacated, we should make good use of them,” he said.
“That is why we are now renovating the accommodation there, so as to allow the former Chief Executive to move in. I think that will save government money, and also that will ensure government resources are properly utilised.
‘Good use’. So after one year, it will be returned to its original state in a big way. And this is using resources wisely. It’s almost as if there’s: a) no budget deficit; and b) no-one who could find a more productive and economical short-term use for empty space in a prime location – just use it as a shelter for street sleepers if you can’t think of anything better.
Has anyone explained why all four former CEs can’t share a pool of secretaries and drivers at the Kennedy Road site? (Or why they need any of this and can’t just make their own dental appointments and take a bus.)
Another thing: funny how we have a group of cops running Hong Kong, arresting people for their T-shirts and pushing inane pandas everywhere, and still you never hear anyone saying ‘Gosh, I miss Carrie Lam’.
While we’re at it – a transcript of Jimmy Lai’s trial on Tuesday is here. Scroll down to ‘15:22 Lai Calls Himself a Political Prisoner’.
It’s not just me: Hong Kong really is infested with pandas. Aesthetically displeasing renderings of the creatures are all over public transport, on government publicity posters, in parks and foyers, and in senior officials’ speeches. Check under your bed.
The word has obviously gone out that promoting the lumbering, dull-witted beasts is vital to promoting Hong Kong as a tourist destination. It could also be that our charismatic leaders calculate that getting the infantile citizenry super-excited by pandas will divert attention from the mood of stagnation permeating the city for some years now.
And perhaps there is a deeper meaning to it all – a patriotic angle. Companies are now chucking cheap images of Ailuropoda melanoleuca on advertising hoardings and elsewhere, in a manner reminiscent of earlier political performances and pre-emptive cringing, such as embarrassingly forced enthusiasm for ‘Belt and Road’. (Maybe I’m showing my age: the hip buzzword du jour is ‘Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Co-operation Zone’.)
If you thought you could get away from the animals by going to the post office to send something by registered mail, you’d be wrong…
Away from furry distractions – the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC)has noticed that it is being talked about at the trial of Jimmy Lai (see here) . Its response…
We … categorically reject the false claims regarding Jimmy Lai’s involvement with our network. On days 130-1 of his trial, Jimmy Lai was questioned repeatedly by the prosecution and the presiding Judges about his alleged connection to IPAC.
…Jimmy Lai had no involvement in the foundation or operations of IPAC…
IPAC has repeatedly offered the Hong Kong Department of Justice (HKDoJ) the opportunity to review evidence material to Mr. Lai’s charges, and which is in our possession alone. To date, they have failed to respond. Their silence on this issue highlights serious deficiencies in Hong Kong’s contemporary legal system.
Ongoing attempts to link Jimmy Lai to IPAC are part of a broader effort to portray him as having orchestrated criticism of the Hong Kong authorities at home and abroad. This narrative is false … the reality is that the relationship prosecutors are attempting to construct did not exist. We condemn this fabricated narrative, reiterate our offer to rebut it, and call for an end to all unjust politically motivated prosecutions.
Two arrested for allegedly perverting the course of justice – helping people wanted by police following the 2019 protests. And police question relatives of Carmen Lau, former district council member and current ‘absconder’ with a HK$1 million bounty on her. She says it is because of her recent activities in the UK.
Which will be the first year with there are no arrests connected to 2019? Not this one.
Some more on Trump as pro-China – Bill Emmot in Asia Times…
This brings in the final pattern that is emerging. The Trump teams’ mission to establish “America Alone,” to impose trade tariffs on allies to achieve “wins” and to withdraw from international collaboration is creating an open goal for China.
If Beijing wants to strengthen its friendships with the Global South or even with long-time American allies, it now has a huge chance to score.
Lai, who is now 77 years old, a British citizen and a devout Catholic, is held in solitary confinement and reportedly only permitted 50 minutes of exercise per day. That means he spends over 23 hours daily without natural light, fresh air, or human contact except with prison guards. A diabetic, he has been denied independent medical care and concerns are growing about his failing health.
For over four years, since his arrest in December 2020, Lai has been imprisoned on multiple fabricated charges. These include a 13-month sentence for lighting a candle and saying a prayer at a vigil to mark the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and a 14-month sentence for participating in a peaceful protest in 2019, sentences he has now served.
The latest on his trial from HKFP is here: prosecutors are focusing on how much he did or didn’t know about the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China in mid-2020. Last week, judges admonished him for being ‘riled, excited [and] emotional’ towards the prosecutors.
Foreign Affairslooks at how China hopes to manage the risks and opportunities posed by the incoming Trump administration. The conclusion is that Beijing will try to ‘weather the storm’.
Does China have much to worry about? Consider the following…
Despite tough talk, Donald Trump is clearly nervous about putting big tariffs on China, preferring to pick on the US’s own allies, including Taiwan. He is also protecting TikTok. Elon Musk, dismantling the federal bureaucracy as if it’s Twitter, owns a ‘Gigafactory’ in Shanghai making EVs for the local and export markets. Kash Patel, nominee for firing 1,000s of FBI agents, owns stock in the holding company of controversial Chinese clothing company Shein. Attorney General Pam Bondi will ignore foreign interference. The near-abolition of the US’s foreign aid system would be a godsend to China in terms of soft-power rivalry. Cuts in science funding could boost China’s relative technological competitiveness. Measures to reduce use of renewable energy sources would weaken US energy security. Added to that, intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard is blatantly pro-Putin, and health nominee RFK Jr is dedicated to spreading disease throughout the US. And there’s more.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but if you join all these dots you get an administration of people inclined to appease Beijing working to undermine the US as a society and a global power in ways that benefit China in its pursuit of global dominance.
And this is at a time when China is facing serious economic challenges. A time when targeted US measures to maintain its international credibility and force China to rebalance its economy could leave Beijing’s leadership having to reconsider their superpower ambitions.
As an aside, an NYTarticle describes how insiders – no prizes for guessing who they would be – made millions by pumping and dumping Trump’s cryptocurrency memecoin on cretins dumb enough to buy them…
In those first minutes, a crypto wallet with a unique identification code beginning 6QSc2Cx secured a giant load of these new tokens — 5,971,750 of them — at the opening sale price of just 18 cents each, starting a surge in the $Trump price that would soon reach $75 per token.
This early trader, whose identity is not known, walked away with a two-day profit of as much as $109 million, according to an analysis performed for The New York Times.
…Whether people made or lost money, it was stellar business for the Trumps. Nearly $100 million in trading fees have flowed to the family and its partners, although most of that has not yet been cashed out, the Chainalysis data shows.
President Trump set off this scramble three days before he was inaugurated, triggering a rapid boom-and-bust sequence that has now raised broader questions about the speculative dangers of so-called memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency based on an online joke or celebrity mascot.
He promoted the coin on his own social media platform, as well as Elon Musk’s X, saying: “Join my very special Trump Community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW.”
And purchases from China seem to have contributed to the token’s pump.
The government issues data on ‘restaurant receipts and purchases for the fourth quarter of 2024 and whole year of 2024’. Stats geek Joel Chan provides the summary above.
In real terms, restaurants saw a 2.4% drop in revenues in 2024. Given that there were no wars, major disease outbreaks or other horrors, this doesn’t look good. GDP grew 2.5% last year and 3.2% in 2023. All else being equal, you would expect spending on dining out to roughly track economic growth – though perhaps not when times require unsustainable government stimulus.
The government provides separate data for what it calls ‘Chinese’ and non-Chinese’ restaurants. They have probably done this since the 1850s or something. It would be more interesting to see separate figures for up-market and cheap places regardless of the types of cuisine. Yet there is a noticeable drop in trade for the ‘Chinese’ outlets. I’d guess middle-class emigration has hit the pricier places, and everyone else – including Mainland tourists – is tightening their belts or changing consumption patterns post-Covid where cheaper shops are concerned. Equivalent figures for Shenzhen would be interesting.
The numbers for ‘non-Chinese’ places look better, though Outback Steakhouse wouldn’t agree. Of course, receipts do not equal profits. Nor do the stats indicate how reliant restaurants are on customers who are highly paid civil servants.
Fast-food purveyors are seeing faster than average growth, which also suggests belt-tightening. The 13% inflation-adjusted drop in income for bars points to an exodus of boozy expats or a shift to drinking at home. Or both.
The government statement says…
Looking ahead, business of restaurants will continue to be supported by the various measures by the Central Government to boost the Mainland economy and benefit Hong Kong, the SAR Government’s proactive efforts to boost market sentiment and promote tourism, and increases in employment earnings…
Whatever happened to strong consumer demand?
Ultimately, it’s structural. The old days are over.
HKFPlists retailers who have recently downsized or pulled out of Hong Kong. The article blames the 2019 protests and Covid, which spurred middle-class emigration and changed consumer habits – including a trend of leisure spending in far more affordable Shenzhen. Some F&B and other sectors have never recovered.
But will the victims be missed? Among them are the somewhat grotty supermarket chain DCH Food Mart, which I occasionally (as in maybe twice) bought things from. Then there is the MCL Plaza Hollywood cinema, Outback Steakhouse restaurants and CR Care health products stores, which were all places I vaguely knew of but never set foot in (NOKD). And then we bid farewell to Eggslut sandwiches, Flash Coffee, Garrett Popcorn and clothing/cosmetics outlet Paul & Joe – none of which I had ever even heard of. They sound trashy or at least ill-advised. The market is saturated with coffee and fashion brands. Anything called ‘Eggslut’ deserves to die. And how do you pay Hong Kong rents selling popcorn?
Former Transport and Housing Minister Anthony Cheung calls for a civil service pay freeze to help solve the government’s budget deficit. He notes that fiscal reserves of HK$1.1 trillion in 2018 are now at HK$570 billion. Much of that went to make up the shortfall during the economic shock of Covid – the ‘rainy day’ scenario officials have always used to justify the accumulation/hoarding of surpluses in the past. But with the economy now probably stuck with slower growth (basically a reflection of China’s own post-bubble slowdown), the deficits look structural.
Officials obviously hope to find new ways to boost growth. But all they can think of is more and more tourists, plus fanciful ideas for tech/bio/whatever hubs. Ultimately, Hong Kong needs to make some big adjustments. Assuming the currency peg will remain, the whole city needs to re-price itself. That means accepting lower housing and business rents as a good thing that will boost economic activity. And it means reducing the cost of government, most of which is salaries (and redundant infrastructure projects).
(Cheung warns that actual cuts to civil service pay would undermine consumption. Actually, a pay freeze is a cut, over time. But this is an old argument. If the economy is so dependent on public-sector employees’ household spending, that’s all the more reason to bring things back into balance.)
Easing into Snake Year gradually. Yesterday’s Standardreports Financial Secretary Paul Chan’s suggestions for tackling the government’s budget deficit…
Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has put forward potential areas for cost-cutting within education and health care and says adjustments will be made to the HK$2 fare scheme for the elderly and disabled in response to the fiscal deficit.
…He said the HK$2 fare scheme for the elderly cannot remain unchanged indefinitely as its current model is not financially sustainable.
…Regarding proposals to reduce or freeze civil servant salaries, Chan highlighted the importance of considering their impact on the private sector, particularly given the low unemployment rate.
With declining student numbers, maybe there are ways to trim education expenditure. But how can he cut health spending when public hospitals are already under-resourced?
Assuming big tax hikes are out of the question, the only real options are: axing big infrastructure projects; and reducing civil service costs.
Any justification for the huge Lantau reclamation went out the window when officials found that there is in fact space for several hundred thousand apartments in the New Territories (thanks to the miraculous disappearance of land ownership and other problems). And a public-sector pay freeze to bring government salaries into line with the private sector is long overdue.
Chan’s reported comments that lower civil service salaries would ‘impact the private sector, particularly given the low unemployment rate’ are puzzling. A tight supply of manpower will prevent private-sector employers from using government pay cuts as a pretext to reduce their workers’ pay (if that’s the undesirable impact he claims to foresee). Conversely, a mass exodus of government staff would prove that public-sector pay levels are in fact as low as they can get.
The real problem is that civil servants would whine like crazy. Maybe a threat to bring in Elon Musk would focus their minds.
The year ends with a strong smell of NatSec. A Twitter post…
Hong Kong pro-democracy politician / activist Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人) — who’s being jailed for organizing protests/ rallies in 2019 — was seen restrained in chains like a felon and boxed in by at least 6 correctional officers in Queen Mary Hospital…
What a performance. (How many feet of chain did they bring?) If he was really a dangerous criminal – a murderer, say – he would not be seated among the rest of the public in a hospital waiting area.
And PORI pollster Robert Chung is (reportedly) taken in for questioning again in connection with ‘absconder’ Chung Kim-wah …
…Chung Kim-wah’s wife and son, his three siblings, and at least two PORI staff members had also been questioned by national security police.
…Police have issued a HK$1 million bounty for information leading to the arrest of Chung Kim-wah, as well as [18] others on the wanted list.
Bloomberg reports that Hong Kong bans are feeling the effects of the fall in prices of commercial property…
Average prices of office buildings, shopping malls and other properties have fallen more than 40% from their highs in 2018, eroding the value of the collateral backing many bank loans. Defaults are also rising as more property owners and developers run into cash flow difficulties.
Banks with soured loans and mortgages have been reluctant to sell the underlying real estate assets at a loss — but that is changing…
“Banks are realizing that if they don’t sell their commercial properties, the values will go lower and lower,” said James Mak, chief sales director at Midland Commercial Realty Ltd., a property brokerage.
…Close to 40% of the HK$34 billion in Hong Kong commercial real estate transactions in 2024 were distressed sales or capital loss deals, where owners — including banks — sold properties for less than what they originally paid, according to data from Colliers International.
…The November sale of Cheung Kei Center caused seven lenders, including two Chinese banks and Hang Seng Bank, to realize a total of HK$2 billion in losses on a HK$4.6 billion mortgage they made in 2019, according to land records.
I remember three or four guys who were pooling their money to buy one floor of an office building in Central. They mentioned the sum of roughly HK$100 million. That was around, um, 2018.
Some other reading for anyone at a loss for something to do as Snake Year slithers in…
HKFPop-ed on the Hong Kong government’s obsession with appealing against court decisions recognizing same-sex marriage in overseas jurisdictions.
Is this fundamentalist Christians in the bureaucracy at work, or Beijing loyalists guessing this is what pro-natalist Mainland policy requires?
From ChinaFile, why US law firms are leaving China…
A big [risk] is that of data security. Global law firms like to have their offices interconnected so that staff in one office can access digital records in another. What happens if the gentlemen from the Ministry of State Security come to your Beijing (or Hong Kong) office and demands access to your computers so he can access your files in New York? “No, thank you. We’d rather not” and “See you in court!” are not going to cut it. This concern led Latham & Watkins last February to cut its Hong Kong office off from unfettered data access—a measure it had already taken with its Beijing office. And concerns about data security were also a reason behind the Dentons-Dacheng breakup in 2023.
In addition, communications may not be secure. While firms may use VPNs, they must be from government-approved VPN providers, raising the very security concerns that VPNs are supposed to mitigate.
A second risk is that of attorney-client confidentiality. Chinese law does not recognize any attorney-client privilege. If an attorney possesses information about a client the state wishes to know about, they are under the same obligation as anyone else on Chinese territory—citizen or foreigner—to reveal it. The fact that doing so might violate a foreign attorney’s legal or ethical obligations in their home jurisdiction is irrelevant.
The annual survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found 30 per cent of respondents were exploring alternative sources for goods and relocating manufacturing out of the country last year, or had already done so — double the percentage in 2020.
Michael Hart, AmCham China president, said that while the majority of US companies were not moving, the trend towards relocation was unmistakable.
“I don’t see any reason to think that bilateral investment will increase in the next couple of years,” said Hart. “Companies [are] pivoting or bolstering their supply chain by making investments somewhere else.
“Definitely . . . I would be concerned if I was in charge of Chinese investment policy,” he said.
On other matters, a great read (if you find this stuff interesting) on Donald Trump’s pre-inauguration venture into crypto scamming. Especially read the footnotes (scroll over the little number). EG…
If you put on your tinfoil hat though… it kinda looks like TikTok just paid Trump a massive bribe by buying up his memecoin in exchange for getting the ban lifted. It looks kind of a lot like that, actually.
Of the suckers who buy Trump, Melania etc memecoins and lost their savings, he says…
You should never feel bad for these people. What happened to them is exactly the thing they were hoping to do to someone else. Just laugh at them and move on with your day
Is it just me or is the world is going totally nuts. People are ‘investing’ real money in fake currencies, from Bitcoin to Melania-coin. People with no medical qualifications think they know better than experts and are avoiding vaccines and drinking unpasteurized milk. Leading figures in and around the US government are openly siding with Russia, the CCP and Nazis. Grifters, bots and cranks, egged on by algorithms, peddle deranged conspiracy theories on social media to millions of inadequate young men who believe it all. Communications cables around the Baltic and Taiwan are mysteriously being cut. I could go on, but Gung Hei Faat Choi!
