Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Is this ‘soft confrontation’?

On Tuesday evening, China Daily, the ruling Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) English-language mouthpiece, published an editorial saying Donald Trump’s frequent claims of the US being “ripped off” were “hoodwinking the US public”.

“The US is not getting ripped off by anybody,” it said. “The problem is the US has been living beyond its means for decades. It consumes more than it produces. It has outsourced its manufacturing and borrowed money in order to have a higher standard of living than it’s entitled to based on its productivity. Rather than being ‘cheated’, the US has been taking a free ride on the globalisation train.”

It added: “The US should stop whining about itself being a victim in global trade and put an end to its capricious and destructive behaviour.”

What are things coming to when we find ourselves nodding furiously in agreement with that first sentence of the second para in China Daily?

Or how about this?

The Chinese Consulate in Osaka is openly providing anti-Japanese propaganda films to Chinese students in Japan, with a note encouraging students to watch them at home. China is brazenly fanning anti-Japanese sentiment *in Japan*.

Bit of an uphill struggle, perhaps. Chinese students who go to Japan must find the place attractive, even if only because of sushi, manga or space-age toilets, and they surely can’t help noticing over time that their host country has a high quality of life as well as being free and democratic.

Via Forbes on YouTube, a former Meta employee tells a US Senate committee that China-adoring Mark Zuckerburg’s company passed details of Hong Kong and Taiwan users to Beijing authorities. ‘Virality counters’ triggered reviews of any posts getting more than 10,000 views.

(I feel sorry for anyone forced to read posts that go viral on Facebook).

Plenty of quotable quotes arise from the recent 10th National Security Education Day forum.

Although we still haven’t found out what ‘soft resistance’ is. Education Secretary Christine Choi tells us that it has (or is) a “dangerous aspect” and can ‘easily penetrate the heart and mind’.

But now we also have ‘soft confrontation’…

Speaking at the forum, Huang Dahui, a School of International Studies professor at Renmin University of China, noted that soft confrontation has emerged as a new battlefield and strategy among major powers and warned that Hong Kong is susceptible to such ideological warfare.

“We all know that Hong Kong is a diverse, open and highly interconnected society,” he told forum participants.

“And therefore Hong Kong’s interests, social composition and ideologies are also very diverse.

“With such features, Hong Kong is more susceptible to this kind of soft confrontation cognitive warfare.

“And soft confrontations are more likely to work here,” he said.

The professor, also the chief expert in the National Security Interdisciplinary Platform, further elaborated that such soft confrontations often come in the form of “spreading fake information” to confuse the public and represent a cognitive theory of western nations.

Is he referring to a theory about Western nations, or an undesirable cognitive framework – ideas, in plain English – pushed by them? A quick Google search suggests that ‘cognitive theory’ is an actual thing, to do with studying mental processes involved in learning and understanding. Perhaps cognitive theory could help us find out why we can’t understand what the guy means by ‘cognitive theory’. 

Maybe he is referring to ‘soft power’? Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility that Mainland ideologues/academics pushing the party line at conferences lapse into jargon just like anyone else. 

Does Amnesty International count as ‘soft confrontation’? It is re-opening its Hong Kong office, albeit overseas.

Why did the US impose sanctions on a number of Hong Kong officials two weeks ago? CFHK thread on Paul Lam.

HK and Macau Affairs Office Director Xia Baolong slams…

…the United States for its tyrannical and bullying imposition of tariffs and sanctions, which aim to “strangle the lifeblood of Hong Kong.”

…Xia criticized Washington’s suppression of Hong Kong, including imposing sanctions on its officials and the “preposterous” accumulated tariffs as high as 145 percent on the city – a tariff-free port.

“[Such an act] is brutal and shameless, enabling the world to see the US’s hostility toward Hong Kong’s success,” said Xia, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office. “They are not trying to collect taxes, they want to claim our lives.”

…”Those who believe that groveling before the US – currying favor, kneeling in submission, or begging for mercy – will bring peace, respect or development are profoundly naive,” Xia said.

“We must abandon such illusions.

“The United State’s repeated attempts to suppress Hong Kong will ultimately backfire.

“Let America’s bumpkins wail before China’s 5,000-year civilization. Victory will belong to the great Chinese people.”

Not all ideologues/American bumpkins are so sure of themselves these days. An NYT column sees radical-right theoreticians starting to have second thoughts…

Nathan Cofnas, a right-wing philosophy professor and self-described “race realist” fixated on group differences in I.Q., wrote on X, “All over the world, almost everyone with more than half a brain is looking at the disaster of Trump (along with Putin, Yoon Suk Yeol, et al.) and drawing the very reasonable conclusion that right-wing, anti-woke parties are incapable of effective governance.”

(That Twitter post has lots more.)

Scott Siskind, who blogs under the pseudonym Scott Alexander, has been an influential figure in Silicon Valley’s revolt against social justice ideology, though he’s never been a Trump supporter. Last week, he asked whether “edgy heterodox centrists” like himself paved the way for Trump by opening the door to once-verboten arguments. In an imaginary Socratic dialogue, he wrote, “We wanted a swift, lean government that stopped strangling innovation and infrastructure. Instead we got chain-saw-style firings, total devastation of state capacity in exactly the way most likely to strangle innovation more than ever, and the worst and dumbest people in the world gloating about how they solved the ‘grift’ of sending lifesaving medications to dying babies.”

Activist Chow Hang-tung goes to court to challenge prison rules requiring female inmates to wear long trousers during summer, while male inmates can wear shorts…

Chow, who has been detained since September 2021, and her lawyers had earlier argued in a writ that the “deprivation of opportunity” to wear shorts for daytime activities “would have the effect of rendering the whole policy discriminatory.”

The female inmates are deprived of an effective way to cool themselves, as they could potentially face a disciplinary offence for pulling up their trousers, Tam added.

Failure to comply with an instruction to wear their trousers properly can result in an offence, according to prison rules.

…However, Tam pointed out that the CSD had not explained how wearing trousers – as opposed to shorts – served the aim of custodial discipline.

Tam said that thermal comfort was only part of the “basket of considerations” that the CSD had taken into consideration when formulating its clothing policies, adding that Chow and her team could not “single out” an individual aspect in their submission.

Citing evidence from CSD clinical psychologist Elise Hung, Lui said that the existing policy was the product of “decades of CSD management” that had identified female inmates’ preference for trousers over shorts.

…Their preference was based on “actual concerns,” including their working needs, the need to cover up scars and wounds, as well as leg hair and mosquito bites, he said.

Citing Hung, Lui said their preference for trousers was largely due to most female inmates’ concerns over “privacy and decency” that could be traced back to “inherent” historical, biological, and psychological differences between men and women.

It surely wouldn’t take the wisdom of Solomon to suggest simply that women prisoners be allowed the choice to wear shorts if they prefer. At least on a trial basis to see whether such a reform would result in a breakdown of custodial discipline.

(I recall seeing male inmates at Victoria Prison emerging every day in brown shorts and bare feet to carry the garbage out of the prison staff quarters on the other side of Old Bailey Street. One guard would stand a few yards up the road and one a few yards down in case a prisoner tried to make a run for it, which they never did. Can’t remember how their legs looked. It later became an Immigration Dept detention facility. I went in a few months after it finally closed, and you could still smell the sweat in the cell blocks.) 

The government’s arguments for requiring long trousers are at least clear. Contrast with the oblique statement on its refusal to allow UK MP Wera Hobhouse to enter the city…

A HKSAR Government spokesman said that it is the Government’s standing policy not to comment on individual cases. The Immigration Department will deal with each case in accordance with the relevant law and immigration policy. It is the duty of immigration officer to ask questions to ascertain that there is no doubt about the purpose of any visit. The person concerned knows best what he or she has done. It will be unhelpful to the person’s case if the person refuses to answer questions put to him or her for that purpose.

The Hong Kong Democratic Party announces that it is starting the process to shut itself down. For a party founded to fight for democracy, it is a depressing end – pressured to disband by figures working for a government that rules out political pluralism. The Reuters story makes clear that Beijing is telling the party to do it…

Five senior members of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, the city’s biggest and last remaining major opposition party, say that Chinese officials or middlemen have warned the party to disband or face serious consequences, including possible arrests.

Amid a years-long national security crackdown by China after pro-democracy protests in 2019, the Democratic Party will hold an extraordinary general meeting on April 13 to seek members’ views and possibly pave the way for the group’s dissolution.

The group’s chairman, Lo Kin-hei, has not given a concrete reason for the likely disbandment, but five senior Democratic Party members told Reuters they had been told in meetings with Chinese officials or individuals linked to Beijing in recent months that the party should close.

Fred Li, a veteran Democratic Party member and former lawmaker, said a Chinese official had told him this should be done before this December’s legislative elections.

Four other senior Democratic Party members also said they had been warned in recent months by middlemen linked to Beijing, some of whom said the party would face “serious consequences” if it did not disband. Three declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

…”For a long time it seemed like Beijing could live with the situation of having the party around as a figment of opposition,” said one Western envoy.

“It seems they are leaving nothing to chance. The message is it is time to close down once and for all,” said the diplomat, who was not authorised to speak publicly.

The story from AP covers some of the party’s history…

Former chairperson Yeung said in an interview with The Associated Press that Chinese officials told him the party needed to disband. He urged his members to support the motion to give the leadership mandate to handle the process.

“I’m not very happy about it,” said Yeung. “But I can see if we refuse the call to disband, we may pay a very huge price for it.”

…Looking back, former chairperson Emily Lau, who was involved in the talks with Beijing, insists many people supported the outcome because it was a step forward. She said they asked Beijing to continue to have dialogue with others to find a way for universal suffrage, but it never did.

“Maybe the only thing I would have done a bit differently is not to go into the (Beijing’s) liaison office (in Hong Kong). I guess we underestimated how many Hong Kong people hated them,” she said.

As new pro-democracy groups were on the rise, the party’s influence dwindled. That became more obvious after the emergence of younger politicians, including pro-Hong Kong independence activists, following the 2014 massive protests calling for universal suffrage. Still, five years later, when the 2019 protests swept Hong Kong, the party’s activism won widespread support once again.

It seems the authorities don’t want the party openly accused of NatSec, financial or other wrongdoing – though they could no doubt find some sort of ‘collaboration with foreign forces’ if they wanted to. They would rather the group just hurry up with its prevaricating and self-dissolve. As the unnamed diplomat suggests, even a harmless and largely inactive independent body worries the people at the top.

Is this a relatively recent response to continued deterioration of China’s relations with the US? Or is it simply unfinished post-2019 business? Either way, it seems likely other organizations – not necessarily just remaining political groups like the LSD – will be in for more attention.

Meanwhile, far from the world of patriots-only elections, Hongkonger Richard Choi wins a seat on Sutton Borough Council in London. (A landslide victory for the Liberal Democrats – 55% of votes despite fighting 6 other candidates. As it happens, a Lib Dem MP has just been refused entry to Hong Kong, presumably because of her association with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.)

After being acquitted of a ‘riot’ charge in 2020, social worker and activist Jackie Chen was re-tried. (Background here.) On the final day, assuming she would be found guilty, she prepared for prison. Translation of a Witness article from Brian Kern’s Substack. Also a link to a video.

National Review on Jimmy Lai’s Bradley Prize…

Xi Jinping has turned Lai into a living legend by subjecting the 77-year-old to a high-stakes national security trial, one likely to result in a life sentence. It now drags into its 17th month and may not conclude until fall. In the meantime, Lai is being held incommunicado in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison. He has been there since December 2021. He makes no secret that his Catholic faith gives him courage; the government’s arbitrary prohibition against Lai receiving Holy Communion makes his ordeal even harder.

Nathan Law looks at the prospects for NatSec prisoners coming up for release…

…as some of these campaigners prepare to leave prison, their futures remain uncertain. Nominal release does not guarantee true freedom. Under the National Security Law, the authorities have extended their reach beyond the prison walls. The NSL bureau and police have exercised their power through a climate of intimidation—cutting off imprisoned activists’ communication with the outside world, preventing political figures from leaving the city, and targeting the family and friends of exiled dissidents with raids and interrogations.

We still do not know what awaits these individuals once they step outside the prison gates. Will they be allowed to resume life in peace, even in silence? Or will they remain targets, shadows of their former selves, under constant watch? 

Via free-speech group Article 19, a statement on digital gallery Art Innovation’s censorship of four-second billboard clips by Baduciao during Hong Kong’s Art Basel week.

CFHK statement on the introduction of a US Senate bill that would classify Hong Kong as a money-laundering and sanctions-breaking hub.

Bad news for luxury designer labels, but otherwise almost amusing: Chinese factories are going onto TikTok to offer Americans identical products minus the brand logo for a fraction of the usual price, even after paying the latest 100%-plus or whatever tariffs. Behold the non-Hermes Birkin bag for US$1,000 rather than US$38,000.

NatSec police bring the parents of wanted activist Frances Hui into police stations for questioning. It is the mother’s second time…

National security police reportedly first took in the mother for questioning a week after they issued an arrest warrant and placed a HK$1 million bounty on her daughter’s head on December 14, 2023.

Hui was the first high-profile Hong Kong activist to be granted political asylum in the US. Now a policy and advocacy coordinator at The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, she is accused of colluding with foreign forces. 

She responds…

My parents and I have had no contact since I left Hong Kong in 2020. I’ve been financially independent ever since. The police arranged a crowd of media to photograph their exit—to humiliate them. This is a deliberate attempt to intimidate & silence me.

These mini-detentions of relatives and friends give the ‘absconders’ additional opportunities to amplify and justify their opposition to Hong Kong’s government. What else do they accomplish?

A top government official latches on to ever more obscure – some might say desperate – micro-measures to rejuvenate the economy…

Authorities have said they will make it easier for people to cook freshly caught fish on boats, as part of a push to promote island hopping tourism.

Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Rosanna Law said in an interview with Wen Wei Po published on Thursday that the easing of fishing regulations is part of the administration’s medium-term plan in boosting tourism.

China File asks various think-tank/academic types to explain what Trump’s China policy really is. As one says…

Looking for a consistent “China strategy” under Trump 2.0 may well be what a Chinese idiom calls, climbing a tree to look for a fish: It assumes a level of coherence and institutional continuity that simply doesn’t apply.

And another…

The most benign possible interpretation of Trump’s all-fronts power play is that he simply wants to display dominance and extract statements of submission. Once the needed kowtows have been made, business can proceed more or less as before. This was roughly how Trump operated in his first term. And it might explain the extraordinary reversal of April 9, when Trump abruptly paused virtually all his “reciprocal” tariffs except those on China, on the grounds that China had disrespected him by retaliating, whereas other countries had not.

The better explanation of that move, however, is that Trump and his advisors realized that his April 2 tariff barrage would soon lead to economic catastrophe. China’s retaliation provided the pretext for a face-saving retreat on most fronts, while leaving the trade war on China in place. Administration apologists jumped to claim that targeting China was the master plan all along, but this is certainly false.

The world’s (not just the US’s) great trade problem can be summed up in a few (approximate, previously mentioned) stats: China, with 20% of the world’s economy and population, accounts for 36% of global manufacturing, but only 13% of global consumption. The suppression of consumption enables the expansion and subsidy of the manufacturing. It’s a valid way for countries emerging from poverty to develop (Germany and Japan both did it). But in China’s case, the policy has gone to extremes and significantly reduces the size of the overall global market. This is what the US (and other deficit countries like the UK) could and should be focussing on. The rest is just Trump’s bizarre obsession with medieval mercantilist voodoo.

From China Media Project, Chinese TV in crisis as viewers and advertisers flee channels full of propaganda, censorship and politicized product placements…

The gradual “salesification” (銷售化) of reporters has become a trend for television station workers in China, including at major state-run outfits like China Central Television (CCTV). To alleviate financial pressure, many television stations assign business tasks to their staff, meaning that directors, editors, and reporters must actively solicit advertisements. This, in fact, has become the primary standard for assessment when it comes to key performance indicators, or KPIs. 

“This is why many local television stations occupy large amounts of airtime repeatedly broadcasting advertisements for liquor, fake medicines, and health supplements,” Li Ming says. “These are among their few remaining ways to make money.”

The granddaughter of the author of the book Howl’s Moving Castle has a go at AI-generated fake Ghibli pictures.

…because of course/why not? 

The BBC reports US bonds being dumped, pushing up interest rates (Trump’s other obsession). Then CNN…

President Donald Trump announced a complete three-month pause on all the “reciprocal” tariffs that went into effect at midnight, with the exception of China, a stunning reversal from a president who had insisted historically high tariffs were here to stay.

But enormous tariffs will remain on China, the world’s second-largest economy. In fact, Trump said they will be increased to 125% from 104% after China announced additional retaliatory tariffs against the United States earlier Wednesday. All other countries that were subjected to reciprocal tariff rates Wednesday will see rates go back down to the universal 10% rate, he said.

This would all be quite funny except there are shippers offloading containers mid-voyage to stop them reaching the US. Insiders must be making a killing shorting then buying the stock market.

The Hong Kong Accountability Archive has been launched – a searchable archive of videos on police actions during the 2019 protests.

William Pesek in Asia Times notes that both China and the US (not to mention dozens of other countries) are heading for bigger problems if the trade war continues…

Xi’s China is calling Trump’s bluff in ways Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Green clearly didn’t expect. And upping the odds that a clash of the titans in Washington and Beijing might lay waste to the global financial system.

Here, the US should be careful about what it wishes for. Neither nation is as ready for this economic brawl as their respective policymakers seem to project.

A Fitch Ratings downgrade last week reminded investors that China isn’t in a state-of-the-art financial position. Fitch downgraded China’s sovereign rating to ‘A’ from ‘A+’ amid concerns about shaky public finances.

“The downgrade reflects our expectations of a continued weakening of China’s public finances and a rapidly rising public debt trajectory during the country’s economic transition,” says Fitch analyst Jeremy Zook.

Zook adds that “in our view, sustained fiscal stimulus will be deployed to support growth, amid subdued domestic demand, rising tariffs and deflationary pressures. This support, along with a structural erosion in the revenue base, will likely keep fiscal deficits high.”

At the same time, Zook notes, “we expect the government debt/GDP to continue its sharp upward trend over the next few years, driven by these high deficits, ongoing crystallization of contingent liabilities and subdued nominal GDP growth.”

In other words, China has fiscal space to protect its 5% growth. But it’s not unlimited and deploying the stimulus “bazooka” yet again could come at a high cost in the long run.

The US, meanwhile, is carrying a US$36 trillion-plus national debt into this fight as recession talk heats up. Even worse is the self-inflicted nature of the US reckoning to come, one punctuated by a $10 trillion stock market loss so far.

As Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, notes, it “feels like we’re being pushed into recession – it’s recession by design.”

Dexter Roberts quoting Ryan Hass…

If Trump really believes China is panicking rather than instead showing their readiness to wage trade war, he is in for a rude surprise. Beijing has been preparing for this day for a long time, including by strengthening legislation to punish foreign firms and diversifying its reliance on agricultural goods and other essential products.

“Anyone expecting President Xi to come calling and seek a call with President Trump following [the] April 2 tariff announcement is being dangerously naive. Anyone advising Trump that Xi will beg for forgiveness is committing malpractice. That is not the mood or the plan in Beijing now,” writes Brookings scholar Ryan Hass.

Don’t miss the cum Police exhibition…

The SCMP reports…

Lawmakers have questioned the need to create three more positions in the office of Hong Kong’s leader amid the budget deficit, but an official has stressed the roles will support a “new culture” of better informing the public about policies.

The planned recruitment involved two information officers and a driver, who will cost taxpayers HK$2.66 million (US$342,000) annually in total.

…Kevin Choi, permanent secretary from the Chief Executive’s Office, sought to justify the new positions…

“The work [to be performed by the new hires] could support the chief executive under the new culture and try to make the public and citizens directly informed of the policy,” he said.

…Choi added the term length of the two information officer positions was limited to three years, with plans to review their duration and explore opportunities for reduction.

Lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun told the Post that some people perceived current government communication as one-sided, reflecting only the viewpoint of authorities.

“Unless hired employees are able to facilitate two-way communication, they should not be employed,” he said.

The government could tell patriotic-but-mildly-curious lawmakers that their questions indicate ignorance of policy and therefore confirm the need for the new high-paid PR bims.

Helpfully, the SCMP photo shows the three hirees (possibly) plodding unenthusiastically towards their new jobs at Tamar. But there the keen journalism ends. The reporters appear not to have asked the government what the two new ‘information officers’ will do all day, how they can possibly need their own driver, and what sort of salaries the three will be getting.

We can sort of guess that their salaries will be around a million bucks each for the IOs, plus half a million for the driver – since the other overheads must be minimal. At HK$83,000 a month, this would be barely 2.8 times the mean household income for Hong Kong, which is an insulting pittance by civil service standards.

More important – what exactly is this ‘new culture’? If it’s not new, it’s just another in a long line of attempts (dating back to Tung Chee-hwa’s time) to convince the public that the government is right and everyone else is wrong. If it is genuinely different, that’s perhaps even worse.

The Development (sic) Bureau announces plans to cover coastal areas in the New Territories and outlying islands with oh-so original tourism/luxury housing eco-concrete, starting with southern Lamma… 

The site – a disused quarry on Lamma Island covering an area of around 25 hectares, including a five-hectare artificial lake – would be “suitable for development as a high-end lakefront and hillside resort,” the bureau said.

It would be accompanied by a marina, as well as low-density luxury housing, it added.

Obvious question: why? 

The government press release says…

Its tranquil seaside location in a rural island setting, wealth of tourism and recreation resources particularly a large man-made lake, and proximity to the urban area have rendered this site suitable for development as a high-end lakefront and hillside resort, to be complemented by a world-class marina and low-rise luxury housing. The initiative aims to help promote yacht tourism on the one hand, and also help support the development of island hopping in Hong Kong. For this EOI, we will consult the market on ways to optimise the use of the site by suitably incorporating the above-mentioned elements in its overall development and synergising with other attractions in the area. On implementation, it is proposed to adopt a single-developer approach for this project.

You might have thought the various attributes would have ‘rendered’ the site suitable for leaving alone. But no.

Being charitable – I put Saint Francis of Assisi to shame sometimes – if you were a Hong Kong bureaucrat ordered to fix the economy by next week, could you come up with anything better? Remember: no radical reforms are welcome, and you’re hitting retirement age in six months.

On the subject of tranquility, the Standard reports the silence of some all-patriot District Council members…

District councillors were silent during meetings to avoid redundant remarks and save time to serve their communities, Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak Mei-kuen said.

This came after media reported that after more than a year into their four-year tenure, 33 district councillors did not speak in 80 percent of their district council meetings, and among them, six remained silent in all of the meetings they attended last year.

Mak told reporters yesterday that district councillors or lawmakers do not wish to repeat what others have said as it is not an efficient use of limited meeting time.

“For a council with over 30 members, if everyone repeats the same points, it does not make efficient use of the meeting time…

Why would they all be repeating the same points?

And where have we heard the phrase ‘island hopping’ before? Well, yes, it was during World War II, when the US Marines clawed back Japanese-occupied dots in the Pacific. (Read Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.)

Which sort of brings us to the latest bout of panic – because there’s not enough mayhem in the world right now. Anyone spending too much time on the wrong websites will have noticed some vaguely thoughtful people confidently predicting a Chinese invasion of Taiwan within a few months, supposedly to take advantage of all the other international tariff-related chaos going on. (They are prompted by this.)

This would mean Xi Jinping choosing to outbid Donald Trump in the stupidity stakes. It would entail a massive and crippling economic embargo on China leaving markets even more wiped out than they are already. Among various possible sideshows: the Internet cut off; a coup in China if it failed; executions of hundreds of Taiwanese splittists if it didn’t; martial law in Hong Kong just to be safe, etc, etc, etc. You don’t want to think about the worst-case scenario.

We don’t need any more excitement right now.

On the off-chance anyone wants it – think-tank type Matt Turpin bravely sort of explains what the US administration is perhaps attempting to do tariffs-wise, assuming there is some underlying logic. My hunch is we are in ‘make it up as you go along’ territory.

None of them about Speed or Coldplay… 

SCMP op-ed by a couple of academic/think-tank types suggests that the government sell public housing units at (pluck random number out of thin air) 25% below their market value in order to tackle the budget deficit…

A potential answer [to the budget problem] lies in one of Hong Kong’s underutilised assets: its 850,000 public rental units, which house about a third of its population. Selling these units to tenants could generate transformative revenue. Even at a 25 per cent discount off the market price – which is roughly HK$2 million per unit – a decade-long sell-off could yield up to HK$1.3 trillion, which is enough to cover more than 14 years of the current deficit of HK$87.2 billion.

This assumes there would be takers. If you are sitting pretty in a small but HK$2,000-a-month unit, why would you want to spend HK$2 million to carry on living in it while also assuming responsibility for maintenance costs? If you’re retired, perhaps you could rent it out and move to the Mainland. But with bigger private-sector homes costing at least double or treble the resale value of the housing estate unit, it doesn’t offer most tenants much of an upside.

The authors point out the standard socio-economic advantages of encouraging home-ownership – ‘empowerment’, building equity and enabling greater mobility. The last point is especially valid, as being stuck in a distant housing estate almost certainly reduces job options. They don’t mention the possible drawbacks. For example, with less subsidized rental housing stock, where do the poor live? But these pros and cons have nothing to do with the article’s supposed concern of solving the fiscal problem.

And would it actually do that? If successful, it would provide the government with a helpful windfall. But it would not generate longer-term recurrent revenues, which – along with lower expenditure – is the only sustainable way to solve the budget deficit. It’s like the West Kowloon Cultural Hub-Zone selling luxury flats to make ends meet: once you’ve burnt through the cash, you’re still losing money.

Speaking of the SCMP, Zichen Wang of Pekingnology has some points to make about the paper. As a former Xinhua staffer, he likes to think of Jack Ma’s organ as occupying a unique and noble position connecting China and the West. But he can’t help tearing into some of its Mainland science reporting …

Regrettably, alongside its wealth of credible reporting, SCMP has also developed a distinct genre of science stories based entirely on a single paper published in a Chinese (sometimes quasi-) academic journal. A recent prime example is a recent article, China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order, which has since spread widely, misleading Bloomberg, CNN, MERICS, and Lowy Institute, as well as top China experts on Twitter.

Among the faults he finds…

These reports exaggerate early-stage findings, concepts, and designs, presenting them as finished deployments without sufficient scrutiny despite the well-documented low conversion rate of academic research to actual industrial application … [They] sensationalize and politicize the research by taking it out of context and linking it to current events … A key tactic is attributing everything to the actions of the Chinese government … the SCMP fails to adhere to best practices followed by reputable English-language outlets, which often consult external experts in relevant fields to provide readers with a more comprehensive and impartial view of scientific developments … Another issue is the overwhelming focus on research with potential military implications … The descriptions and narration in these reports are so hyperbolic that they sometimes sound like science fiction.

He surveys eight examples. In the case of the ‘undersea-cable cutting’ thing…

…the Chinese [academic] paper was published on Feb 24 in a pay-to-play journal churning out admission decisions within a week and only available in a subscription-based database, until being drummed up by the SCMP a full month later on March 25. It’s mindblowing that “China unveils” and “officially disclosed” it, as the SCMP story fictionalized, quickly translates to the “very public unveiling” received [overseas] where some “strategic communication” is now speculated.

Other examples include the stories ‘Was doomed US submarine caught by a monster whirlpool in the South China Sea?’ and ‘How China is solving F-22’s stealth coating cracks with 3,000-year-old silk weaving tech’. (Competition idea: write an absurdly far-fetched China tech headline, SCMP-style.)

Why is SCMP management pushing this sort of coverage? Is it to get clicks, or out of over-eager patriotism?

China Digital Times summarizes online debate about Li Ka-shing’s patriotism, or lack of it…

…many online articles and comments supportive of Li have been deleted by platform censors. CDT Chinese editors have archived ten recent essays and articles on the subject, at least three of which have since been censored. A now-deleted satirical essay from WeChat public account 捉刀漫谈max (Zhuōdāo màntán max, “Ghostwriter Chat max”) posed the facetious question “How About If Li Ka-Shing Just Sells the Ports to Russia?” and mocked the blind nationalism of those urging Li to ignore business fundamentals and bend the knee to Beijing. An article by WeChat blogger Xu Peng noted the irony of those who would criticize Li for not being “patriotic” enough—despite his decades of generous donations to charitable causes in China—while conveniently overlooking nationalist pundit Sima Nan’s rather unpatriotic record of tax evasion. A now-censored article by science and current-affairs blogger Xiang Dongliang pointed out that CK Hutchison’s proposal only involves the sale of usage rights to the ports—because the ports themselves are under the sovereignty of the nations in which they are located—and that the company does not plan to sell the usage rights to any ports located in China or Hong Kong. Xiang argued that the proposed sale is motivated by CK Hutchison’s need to hedge economic and geopolitical risk, and that absent other Chinese buyers (who would be subject to the same challenges), it is only rational for the company to offload usage rights to the ports to American consortium BlackRock. If the Chinese government and online nationalists are genuinely concerned about port control falling into American hands, Xiang wrote, they should encourage so-called “patriotic” Chinese companies such as Huawei or Hongxing Erke to bid for the ports instead.

Brian Kern lists imprisoned pro-democracy Hong Kong figures by former political position, length of sentences and number of arrests…

225 pro-democracy leaders have been arrested 380 times. Some have been arrested as many as seven times each.

128 pro-democracy leaders have been convicted 184 times. Some have been convicted as many as six times each.

75 pro-democracy leaders have been imprisoned, receiving a total of 125 sentences, with five sentenced to a total of more than 100 months (eight years and four months) each.

A report from a Brookings Institute guy following a recent visit to China…

There appears to be a widely held view among China’s policy community that Trump’s [tariffs] announcement is designed to undermine China’s economic competitiveness, rather than as a source of leverage for negotiations to resolve specific trade irritants. This colored PRC response.

Asia Times looks at the repercussions of the recent earthquake-related construction mishap in Bangkok…

China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects are being scrutinized in Thailand after Myanmar’s 7.7 earthquake pancaked a 30-floor building 966 kilometers (600 miles) away that Chinese engineers were constructing in Bangkok.

The incomplete skyscraper was the only building to collapse in the lightly damaged Thai capital. But the disaster exposed allegedly substandard steel reinforcing rods that had snapped, reducing the building to a huge rubble pile that crushed about 87 construction workers, including 15 confirmed dead and 72 who disappeared.

…The investigation began with a bizarre, troubling sight. Two days after the March 28 quake, four Chinese men were filmed grabbing in their arms as many construction-related documents as they could carry and running away from the rubble site.

A must-see interview with historian Frank Dikotter, of HKU and elsewhere. Some of what he says you might already know, but there is a ton of fascinating stuff here. 

A man is imprisoned for 10 months for writing graffiti on and around pedestrian walkways…

[Ernest Lee] stood accused of “destroying” lift doors and banners in multiple locations, including pedestrian bridges in Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, between May and December last year.

He wrote slogans in Chinese like “Taiwan independence,” a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping as Winnie the Pooh, and claims that the Chinese Communist Party had brought “disaster” upon Hong Kong, the prosecution said.

Lee, a logistics worker, was charged with one count of committing acts with seditious intention and eight counts of criminal damage. He pleaded guilty to the sedition charge and four of the criminal damage counts, with the other four dropped by the prosecution.

…Judge Victor So, a designated national security judge, said the court could not ignore the defendant’s aim of expressing dissatisfaction with the government and venting his inner hatred.

The slogans he wrote also involved cursing the central government and using insulting names to refer to the “motherland,” So said.

Is the crime defacing public property or expressing dissatisfaction with the government (which accounts for the sedition charge, a NatSec offense)? Ten months is relatively light for a NatSec sentence. 

Lee’s opinions are hardly out of the ordinary. Most Taiwanese would say that the controversy isn’t about whether they are independent rather than should cease to be. Non-Taiwanese are free to visit and judge for themselves. ‘Xi as Winnie’ memes are all over the place. And the idea that the CCP has brought ‘disaster’ to Hong Kong is no doubt provocative but ultimately a matter of opinion, even taste. (Is Trump ‘bringing disaster’ to the US?)

Vandalizing public infrastructure is potentially a greater national security risk than expressing hatred for the government. Discuss.

Badiucao celebrates Hong Kong’s art week with appearances on LED billboards in Mongkok.

On the subject of disatsres, China Media File looks at the response to the recent collapse of a half-built tower in Bangkok…

Shortly after the collapse, the China Railway No. 10 Engineering Group removed a post from its WeChat account that had celebrated the recent capping of the building, praising the project as the company’s first “super high-rise building overseas,” and “a calling card for CR No. 10’s development in Thailand.”