Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Hong Kong’s amazing success over the May 1 Golden Week holiday was to attract huge numbers of tourists. The 1.1 million mostly Mainland visitors coming into the city represented an increase of around 20% over the previous year. However, many were not the high-spending sort we are told benefit the local economy. Social media carry photos of young Mainlanders sleeping overnight in McDonalds, while 60-strong day-trip groups paying as little as RMB40 a head were being herded around the West Kowloon parks and other cheap but photogenic spots.

CE John Lee says we ‘must welcome’ them all. I was once a youthful backpacker myself (sample of wretched nocturnal arrangements here), and I don’t begrudge elderly villagers from Pearl River backwaters a once-in-a-lifetime chance to gaze across the Fragrant Harbour. The problem is the excessive numbers of them, all going to the same spots that already have inadequate space for locals. Places are near bursting point. Either at least pedestrianize the streets and lay on enough transport – or just stop encouraging mass-tourism in this mindless pursuit of higher and higher visitor numbers. 

Unless, it’s not about tourists (as in landlords/rents) at all, but just about swamping the city with outsiders as an end in itself – perhaps some sort of collective punishment, or a way to reinforce the principle that the government runs the people, not vice-versa.

The Secretary for Stuff No-one Else Wants to Do says Hong Kong has space to cram in even more tourists. It’s a test of a) the population’s admirable patience and b) the government’s equally impressive imperviousness to public opinion. Which will break first?

Asia Times on China’s ‘deflationary death spiral’. Good example of headline writers exaggerating the gist of a story, which is interesting enough…

Tariffs are drying up international demand for Chinese goods, and in a bid to keep factories alive, Beijing is urging exporters to turn inward. However, that pivot is compounding the very problem it aims to solve.

Chinese authorities have been positioning the domestic market as a pressure-release valve for the manufacturing sector. But the influx of export-grade inventory is creating excess at home in a consumer environment that is already highly restrained. 

This is accelerating a destructive process: prices are falling, and not because productivity is rising or technology is improving. They’re falling because companies are desperate to shift stock and survive.

From religious journal First Things, a plea for a new pope with a ‘better China policy’, including blunt language from Hong Kong’s Cardinal Zen/Chan…

Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Cardinal Parolin is the architect of the [Vatican-China power-sharing] deal and its chief enthusiast. Beijing has not-so-subtly signaled that he is China’s top pick for the next pope. At a press conference on April 22—one day after Pope Francis’s death—Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun dangled the prospect of “improvement of China-Vatican relations” through “continued” partnership, and no one among the leading papal candidates has more experience working with China than Cardinal Parolin. 

The deal endangers faithful clergy in China. A stark reminder of this reality came last month when the Chinese state security authorities indefinitely detained Bishop Peter Shao Zhumin of the Catholic diocese of Wenzhou without due process. This is the sixty-one-year-old underground prelate’s eighth detention over the last seven years.  

…Joseph Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong accused Cardinal Parolin of “manipulating” Pope Francis into approving the deal by falsely claiming that Pope Benedict XVI had approved its draft. In an October 2020 blog post, the Hong Kong cardinal didn’t mince words: “Parolin knows he is lying, he knows that I know he is a liar, he knows that I will tell everyone that he is a liar.” 

Beijing has taken advantage of the agreement, and the Catholic Church is suffering for it. A better policy—one that does not share the pope’s important power of appointing Catholic Church leadership with an atheistic government and that supports the perpetuation of the Church through a faithful underground—is long overdue.

Fugitive activist Anna Kwok’s 68-year-old father is arrested and detained in jail for allegedly ‘attempting to deal with, directly or indirectly, any funds or other financial assets or economic resources belonging to, or owned or controlled by, a relevant absconder’. Her brother was also reportedly taken in and released on bail…

It is the first time Hong Kong authorities have charged a family member of a wanted activist under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, more commonly known as Article 23.

It is also the first prosecution for the offence that is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

According to the charge sheet, between January 4 and February 27, Kwok Yin-sang is said to have attempted to obtain funds from a life and personal accident insurance policy that belonged to Anna Kwok – who is wanted by Hong Kong authorities for suspected foreign collusion.

More on ‘absconders’. From Australia’s (paywalled) Age, the tale of how a Hong Kong lawmaker came to be an Adelaide lawyer…

To his friends and colleagues in Adelaide, he’s just Ted. To the Chinese and Hong Kong governments, Ted Hui Chi-fung is a traitor guilty of numerous heinous crimes. In Hong Kong, wanted posters for Hui have hung from noticeboards outside police stations.

In Australia, he’s the target of patriotic Chinese thugs and foreign interference campaigns…

In Hong Kong, before leaving for good…

Hui was regularly followed home from work by security officials. By July 2020, his office had been raided three times in six months.

“I was in a dangerous situation,” he recalls. “I knew that the rules of the game had changed and that this was their new tactic, that they would come up with new things and they would use whatever means to put you in jail.”

Beijing had begun implementing a new national security law, which gave the Chinese government unprecedented powers to sentence those deemed guilty of subversion to life imprisonment. In August, Hui was arrested after participating in a small protest in a local park in Tuen Mun, his childhood suburb, 11 kilometres south of the border with the mainland. He posted bail, but the Hong Kong police confiscated his passport.

And then…

COVID had shut the world’s borders. Zoom had killed in-person conferences. “For the first couple of weeks, we tried to look for real meetings to invite him to,” says [Danish activist] Storgaard. “But there were none. So we decided, ‘Let’s just make an invitation.’ ”

Storgaard, then 26, and his then 25-year-old friend Thomas Rohden, now a regional councillor for the Social-Liberal Party, got on the phone to their contacts in the Danish parliament. They rang non-government organisations, environmental groups and two Danish MPs, the Independent Greens’ Uffe Elbæk and the Conservative People’s Party’s Katarina Ammitzbøll. They convinced them to sign off on the official letter inviting Hui to a series of meetings and conferences that did not exist.

But quarantine would have prevented his scheduled court appearance on return to Hong Kong…

“So within four hours, Thomas and I had to call all the parliamentarians and NGOs and just ask them again, ‘We have this situation, we are trying to get this guy out of Hong Kong. If somebody calls you and contacts you from China, are you willing to say you’re going to have a meeting with this guy?’ And to my surprise, everybody said yes…”

…Hui did not tell Storgaard that he, too, harboured a secret: he was also going to smuggle his family out of Hong Kong.

Renee Xia, director of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a US-based NGO, says the “Chinese government’s collective punishment of human rights defenders’ families appears to be a state policy”. Hui says, “My family didn’t want me to come back. They said even though we’re in trouble, they didn’t believe the regime would keep them in jail for a very long time.”

Hui was determined to avoid that outcome. “I didn’t want them to be held hostage,” he says.

Quite a story. No wonder the authorities are massively miffed about his success in fleeing. They won’t fall for it again.

A couple more HKFP pieces you might have missed…

Hong Kong falls to 140th place in the 2025 Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index…

The free expression NGO said: “The main factor behind this decline is the deterioration of the political indicator (-7.28 pts), notably due to the September 2024 conviction for ‘sedition’ of Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, former editors of Stand News. This is the first sedition case against the media since the UK handed over the territory in 1997.”

And an op-ed on the Hung Hom marina proposal. What or who are such marinas for? Whatever the answer, local residents don’t come into it.

The SCMP reports…

A 47-year-old Hong Kong man has undergone an amputation of his left lower leg two days after developing a Group A Streptococcal infection following acupuncture treatment he received at two traditional Chinese medicine clinics.

The Centre for Health Protection said on Tuesday the man developed a fever and left thigh pain on April 11 and subsequently sought care from a private hospital, where he was diagnosed with septic shock and necrotising fasciitis, commonly known as “flesh-eating infection”.

…“During the investigation, the team suspected that the Chinese medicine practitioner had not strictly followed infection control procedures when performing acupuncture. The investigation is still in progress,” a spokesman said.

The man started off with a strained muscle, which would have fixed itself, then went to the voodoo clincic, then – after infection set in – to a private hospital, which sent him to Queen Mary. (Not to the Baptist U ‘Chinese medicine’ facility.) 

The paper’s explainer describes the infection and urges readers to exercise caution, while quoting a ‘Chinese medicine’ guy…

Lawmaker Chan Wing-kwong, president of the Hong Kong Registered Chinese Medicine Practitioners Association, also said he believed the case was isolated and it was the first in Hong Kong. He urged the public not to panic or stop treatment.

Nowhere does it mention that acupuncture is a pseudoscience.

The government is completing a ‘Chinese medicine’ hospital at Tseung Kwan O. Interesting to read the tender info.

Some weekend reading…

Brian Kern reposts Chow Hang-tung’s recent statement on why she decided to withdraw her judicial review on the Correctional Services Dept’s refusal to let her receive four books, including Szeto Wah’s memoir. He prefaces it with a useful commentary…

It’s not hard to see why, in this new era of political censorship, prison authorities refused to deliver those last three books to Hang-tung. In fact, according to Hang-tung in her application for judicial review, the CSD did give a verbal reason for refusing the books, something to the effect of the books “containing biased descriptions of social events, which may arouse a sense of resistance to governance and pose a threat to the security and order of the institution and are not conducive to rehabilitation.”

Here, it should be noted that Hang-tung’s actually the second Hong Kong political prisoner to make an issue of being denied books. Owen Chow was the first. On December 5, 2023, he filed an application for judicial review of CSD’s decision to deny him a book that contained a reproduction of Botticelli’s famous painting, “The Birth of Venus.” When his friend who was trying to deliver it received the book back from CSD, on the page in question was a post-it note with a prison guard’s writing, “Nude! Reject!” (裸露！退!).

A Chinese immigrant’s thoughts on voting for the first time as a Canadian…

…there’s homework to do. To make an informed decision, I’ve followed election news, tuned into political podcasts, and watched the leaders’ debate. I even told my parents back in China about it—like a child announcing proudly he’s learned to ride a bike.

When my mom recently asked how Canadian elections work, I struggled to explain an electoral system that can feel bewildering to outsiders.

Sure, the concept of “riding” was easy enough for her to grasp. But how would I unpack the intricacies of “strategic voting”? Or explain that we don’t vote directly for the prime minister, but MPs who represent us in Parliament? And what was the right Chinese word for “constituency”? Before long, our conversation veered into a new recipe my mom had recently tried.

Der Spiegel tracks down Chinese mercenaries fighting for Russia in Ukraine. Details of their motives and lives…

One of those contacted, though, opens up. On Douyin, he calls himself “Rabbit in the Bear Pit.” Videos show a man with a propensity for silliness. In one clip, he has stuffed animals shoved into the pockets of his military vest, another shows comrades dancing in a forest. The war is different than he thought it would be, he writes, “the ground was covered by the sleeping.” What? “By the eternally sleeping,” he specifies. Almost everyone in his unit is dead, he explains. He, too, urges his compatriots not to enlist.

He answers questions for two hours, soberly and without emotion. His responses come quickly – perhaps the conversation is a welcome change of pace. None of his comrades speak Chinese, he writes, adding that he is unable to speak English and his Russian is still poor. Still, he sends his nom de guerre in Russian: “Koshmar,” meaning “Nightmare.”

The Diplomat on growing closeness between Taiwanese who identify with the ROC but oppose unification with the PRC and those who support Taiwanese nationhood.

From the SCMP…

The number of unsold first-hand private residential units in Hong Kong’s completed projects rose to a record high last quarter as developers struggled to clear inventory at reduced prices and a global tariff war heightened economic uncertainty.

There were 28,000 unsold units as of March 31, an increase of 1,000 from the preceding quarter, according to data published by the Housing Bureau on Tuesday. The trend prompted the city’s home builders to rein in new launches for the past four quarters, it added.

Since the city’s housing market peaked in September 2021, a measure of home prices has slumped by about 29 per cent as social unrest and the Covid-19 pandemic sent the local economy into a tailspin. A recovery over the past six months is in jeopardy, after US President Donald Trump rolled out his so-called reciprocal tariffs on April 2 on most of the nation’s trading partners.

Nothing some price cuts won’t fix. Well done for using the phrase ‘so-called’ appropriately. But why call it ‘social unrest’ when it was specifically political?

Which brings us to HKFP‘s report on the (not especially good) sculpture ‘Lining Up’ by Taiwan artist Ju Ming. It was installed on the Tsimshatsui waterfront in 2017. Post-2019, it was obscured ‘for renovation’ by boarding featuring photos of all the figures not wearing yellow. And now it has finally just been removed. Someone, somewhere agonized for several years over the yellow umbrella (a 2014 icon) and two figures in yellow raincoats. Whoever it is can now sleep at night.

Officials’ peculiar yacht fetish continues with plans to turn the area around Hung Hong Station into a ‘commercial and transport hub’ with a marina. A key feature will be a 50-storey tower – because Hong Kong desperately needs another one doesn’t it? (Pity they can’t build 50-storey marinas. It would use up less of the harbour.) 

The SCMP reports that…

Hong Kong’s legislature plans to amend its rules to require lawmakers to attend meetings, take part in votes and regularly submit work reports.

Legislative Council president Andrew Leung Kwan-yuen announced the proposal on Friday, with an aim to implement the changes in the legislature’s next term.

…The proposed requirements include attending meetings, taking part in votes, maintaining contact with different sectors of society and regularly submitting work reports.

…The performance of Hong Kong’s lawmakers has come under the spotlight after a report found at least two-thirds of bills were passed in the 2023 Legco year with under half of all councillors present, falling short of the 45-member quorum requirement.

The current 90-seat Legco, formed after an election in December 2021, is the first since Beijing overhauled Hong Kong’s political system to ensure that only “patriots” hold office.

Mainstream opposition parties sat out the election, with many of their leaders and former lawmakers arrested or behind bars for involvement in national security-related cases. Those still free said the patriots-only rule was meant to keep them out.

…Veteran lawmaker Priscilla Leung Mei-fun wrote on social media that she supported changing the code for legislators, noting that it would set out clear guidelines.

…“Besides following the law, lawmakers must strive for higher moral standards, actively participate in the discussions of policies, raise constructive ideas, be diligent in their work and love the people, as well as act as a bridge for residents and the government,” she said.

If two thirds of bills were passed without a quorum, how is the legislation enacted? (I guess there’s some sort of procedural let-out.)

The SCMP’s claim that opposition parties ‘sat out’ the 2021 election is presumably their idea of a joke. Not only were many formerly democratically elected lawmakers in jail, but the new ‘all-patriots’ system required all candidates to be vetted in order to weed pan-dems out, and only around a fifth of seats were elected by universal suffrage anyway. (Most voters ‘sat out’ the polls, hence a barely 30% turnout.)

Apart from some older pro-Beijing figures like the fragrant Priscilla, most of LegCo’s current members are unknown to most of the public. While making the chamber far less representative, the government for some reason also expanded the number of seats to from 60 to 90, so it’s not just people you’ve never heard of, but loads of people you’ve you’ve never heard of. (Salaries are HK$100,000 a month, plus over double that in expenses.)

With many/most lawmakers now pretty much hand-picked and not representing actual districts – and debates and votes inevitably reflecting the administration’s positions – few Hong Kong people nowadays pay much attention to LegCo. Hardly surprising if that includes the members themselves.

Just in from HKFP: four of the pan-dems have just been released from prison. Claudia Mo, Gary Fan, Jeremy Tam, and Kwok Ka-ki were all popularly elected, and will no doubt still be recognized by many passers-by when they walk down the street.

From the Guardian – posts on UK social media invite racists to attack Hong Kong activists in exile…

[Finn] Lau and his fellow activists have been called traitors, with bounties on their heads that are three times what the authorities offer for murderers. Relatives back home have been arrested and intimidated. As he read the posts, Lau suspected a chilling new tactic: an attempt to harness far-right violence.

Working with the anti-racism group Hope Not Hate, the Guardian found more than 150 posts from 29 accounts on three days in August 2024 that sought to draw the attention of anti-immigrant groups and the far right to Lau and other Hong Kong exiles. Cybersecurity experts who have reviewed the posts say they exhibited some similarities to a major online influence operation that a Chinese security agency is suspected of orchestrating.

HKFP on Hongkongers going to the Mainland to enjoy far lower-priced shopping and leisure…

During the four-day Easter holiday last week, around 1.86 million Hong Kong residents left the city, with around 1.6 million heading to mainland China, according to the Immigration Department.

Meanwhile, the number of travellers visiting Hong Kong over the Easter holiday only reached over half a million.

The tourism deficit has left the city’s shopping malls and restaurants reeling.

Simon Wong, president of the Hong Kong Federation of Restaurants & Related Trades, reckoned the city’s food and beverage industry suffered a 30 per cent drop in business during this year’s Easter holiday.

All of which leaves Hong Kong sorely vexed. They view people spending across the border rather like Donald Trump sees cheap imported manufactured goods: somehow bad for the economy even though it’s good for consumers.  

The difference is that Trump doesn’t understand the basic economics, while Hong Kong policymakers have a clear rationale. To them, money spent on groceries and personal services in Shenzhen is money that doesn’t flow into the pockets of Hong Kong landlords. This depresses land valuations, which in turn reduces government revenues, which in turn threatens expenditure on mega-projects and – horror of horrors – bureaucrats’ generous salaries.

But what did they think ‘integration’ would mean?

Is Trump caving on China without Beijing making any serious concessions at all? This would be an even worse example of his ‘deal making’ than offering Russia most of what it wanted as an opening position on Ukraine. But all the signs are that, as one wit puts it, the US president is ‘negotiating with himself’. 

He obviously miscalculated how much his tariffs would disrupt the US and how much the subsequent U-turns would upset the markets. But his worst decision was to start by alienating every other trade partner, including allies, by imposing tariffs on them all. Many have their own problems with China’s subsidized exports, and he could have enlisted at least some in a grown-up multilateral effort to pressure Beijing to wind down its over-production/under-consumption economic model. China is vulnerable.

And at some stage, the world will have to do something about China’s imbalances. But for the time being, it looks like Beijing has dodged a bullet, thanks to Trump’s ineptitude.

HKFP on the trial of health inspectors enforcing Hong Kong government’s anti-Japanese radiation measures…

…the five inspectors were charged with conspiring to steal food – including canned abalone, white truffle sauce, and crab bisque – ordered for conducting radiation tests.

According to an Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) statement published when they were charged in June last year, the five health inspectors bought food samples worth around HK$88,000 for radiation tests in mid-2022 and early 2023.

A total of 82 food samples were subsequently found at their homes, the ICAC said.

No doubt their actions infringe official procedures. But imagine if your boss tells you to buy HK$88,000 worth of perfectly edible (not to say luxury) foodstuffs and then chuck most of it in the bin. What would most people do?

(Full marks to anyone who answers ‘donate some to a charity in case of legal problems and keep the rest’.)

Nathan Law on Lu Siwei, the mainland lawyer who represented the ‘Hong Kong 12’.

Recently saw the Japanese movie First Kiss (was almost the youngest person in the cinema). Then I start to watch the Fuji TV series Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands, starring the same actress, Takako Matsu. Mildly jarring to see her again in a different role. But – this being a genre that recycles an apparently limited number of actors – it gets much worse.

The guy playing the first of the three ex-husbands (the publicity photo helpfully numbers them) is also appearing in another series I’m watching, the 156-episode Ama Chan. He plays a talent scout for a Tokyo idols company who recruits a girl who dives for sea urchins in a small northern fishing village. The actor playing ex-husband number 2 also appeared as an alien passing as a hotel staffer in the series Hot Spot, which I recently finished. (More confusion: the multiple-divorcee’s best buddy is played by the actress who is the alien’s colleague at the hotel.) Ex-husband number 3, meanwhile, is played by the same guy who is a judge in the 130-episode drama Tiger With Wings, about Japan’s first female lawyer, which I am also about halfway through. And the actress who plays the lead role in that series does the voice-overs for Omameda Towako and Her Three Ex-Husbands. 

Nothing like Japanese TV dramas to keep your brain alert.

(In case you’re wondering, the 150-episode epics are morning shows lasting 15-20 minutes. I’m not wasting that much time.)

CNN on the imminent disbandment of the HK Democratic Party…

“A dissolution of the party reflects official Hong Kong’s turn away from popular participation, locally accountable government, and increased transparency toward more authoritarian rule,” [academic John] Burns said.

Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said the Democrats’ move “shows there are no more feasible ways for groups to exist as an opposition party.”

“It’s self-conflicting for the government to suggest that nothing has changed,” he said.

Includes a brief history of the party and a video interview with Emily Lau, who days…

“We’ve been around for over 30 years, and we’ve got the support of many Hong Kong people,” she told CNN outside court in February, before another former party lawmaker was jailed on charges of rioting during the 2019 protests.

“I don’t know what they are thinking in Beijing. We have demonstrated, not just words, but by action, that we are reasonable. We are willing to talk, to negotiate, to compromise, reach a deal and go forward.”

Which would be great if talking, negotiating and deal-making with political opponents was a CCP thing.

China Unofficial Archives celebrates a 10th anniversary…

Beneath the calm surface of Hong Kong in 2025 lies the weight of dramatic upheaval. After the 2019 anti-extradition protests, the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Security Law, the “patriots governing Hong Kong” policy, and the passage of the Article 23 National Security Ordinance, the open and free Hong Kong many remember seems to be fading from view. This year also marks the tenth anniversary of the independent film Ten Years, once dubbed a “prophecy” about Hong Kong’s future.

…Back in 2015, Ten Years may have seemed dystopian, even absurd. But in the wake of the 2020 National Security Law, it now appears almost restrained.

HKFP op-ed on Chow Hang-tung’s bid to allow female prisoners to wear shorts…

Ms Chow’s suggestion is nevertheless unwelcome, because it comes from her. 

…I would respectfully suggest that (government lawyer] Mr Lee drop the argument that uniform wearing is an essential part of maintaining “custodial discipline,” because this leaves him open to the question as to why custodial discipline in male prisons appears to be compatible with allowing shorts as an option.

What a wonderfully empty city we had over the holiday weekend…

Easter saw an “exodus” of residents, with approximately 2.22 million departures made over four days, an increase of 180,000 compared to the same period last year. In contrast, there were only about 400,000 mainland and foreign arrivals, resulting in a “travel deficit.”

Traffic peaked on the final day of the long break as northbound vehicles returned to the city. At 5.30pm yesterday, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge checkpoint reported a 500-meter vehicle backlog, with border-crossing wait times stretching up to 40 minutes.

According to Immigration Department data, as of 9pm yesterday, there were over 957,000 crossings recorded, with inbound travelers exceeding 631,000, some 86 percent of which are Hongkongers.

Economist Simon Lee Siu-po said the ongoing trade war has weakened the yuan, making products appear cheaper for Hongkongers to shop in the mainland.

Some things you might have missed while contributing to that horrible ‘travel deficit’…

China Media Project looks at the gap between Chinese media claims about the country’s tech prowess and the reality…

The current AI landscape, [tech academic Zhu Songchun] said, is one in which media narratives, investment patterns, and government initiatives present a distorted picture of progress. “What’s truly blocking our progress is not foreign technology restrictions,” Zhu told the audience, “but our own limited understanding.”

The reasons for this problem? Zhu says both Chinese media and officials tasked with promoting AI have little understanding of how it works. For their part, the media have fed the public “exaggerated” stories about AI. While Zhu notes this as a key problem, he tactfully steps around an important impetus behind this coverage — the fact that the leadership’s appetite for promoting AI as the next driver of development is also exerting pressure on state media to signal positivity and success. 

…This disconnect was illustrated once again over the weekend, as Beijing hosted a half marathon where Chinese-built robots raced alongside human competitors. The CCP’s official People’s Daily described the event as a “fierce competition” that had pushed the robots to their limits. Xinhua sang about “infinite possibilities,” and proclaimed in its headline that the racing event had “closed the distance between us and the future.” The less stellar reality, alluded to in a report by Guangzhou’s Southern Metropolis Daily that noted the “many problems” holding the race down, was that the robots had suffered constant failures and necessitated nearly constant repairs by the exhausted human crews running alongside them. In the end, only six of the 21 robot entries completed the race, and one quite literally lost its head.

George Magnus interviewed by Swiss outlet The Market…

If China, with its 1.4 billion people, had an income and consumption structure like the US, the UK or Switzerland, then their economy wouldn’t be in the situation it’s in. But it doesn’t. Why? Because the CCP is wedded to mercantilism, industrial policy, and export promotion. They try to boost growth through exports. But who’s going to take China’s overproduction voluntarily? Many countries all over the world are raising trade barriers against China. They’ve reached the end of the road with their growth model.

…what is the purpose of having a trade surplus? This goes back to Adam Smith, who famously said that the purpose of exporting is to be able to import. To be able to consume other things. That’s the big thing that’s missing in China. They don’t import enough, they don’t consume enough. China’s exports last year grew four times as fast as world trade, and imports didn’t grow as fast as world trade. Something’s wrong there. The philosophy behind China’s economic model is pure mercantilism. 

…so far, there hasn’t been any strong expression [in Beijing] to embark on tax reform, income redistribution, an abolition of the hukou system, or privatization of state assets. Xi is very opposed to welfare payments, he sees them as a Western corrupted practice. There are a few brave Chinese economists at think tanks who have called for such measures. But so far the government hasn’t done it. I’m skeptical that they’re comfortable with the idea of what strengthening household incomes and consumption implies. Because if you really transfer economic power to the citizens, households, and small firms, you are transferring political power as well.

The White House deletes practical info from the US government’s Covid website and replaces it with ‘lab-leak’ stuff. (An investigative journalist’s pithy response.)

What is the conspiracy-theorist/MAGA obsession with the ‘lab leak’ thing? Past experience (SARS, etc) shows that viruses are especially prone to cross species in central/southern China for a combination of natural and man-made reasons. The real scandal, beyond animal-trafficking and mismanaged wet markets, is that local and later national authorities in China tried to cover up the initial outbreak. Next thing, it spread worldwide and cost millions of lives and hundreds of billions in economic damage. The lab-leak story, hinting at evil scientists engineering exotic bio-weapons with Dr Fauci something something, detracts from that.