Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Statement from Samuel Bickett about the Court of Final Appeal’s brusque (three-sentence) rejection of his application to have his conviction overturned.

A week ago, Hong Kong health authorities announced plans for more random-sounding micro-relaxations of Covid restrictions. Among the measures, people entering the city could go to skating rinks and cinemas upon arrival, rather than only after three days. But then, officials changed their minds – keeping movies and ice-skating off-limits to new arrivals (as with restaurants). Whatever, right? But the interesting thing is the Health Bureau’s explanation for the backtrack: 

The bureau said it was “to facilitate differentiation by members of the public and avoid public’s confusion during actual operation.”

What would they do if they were trying to create confusion?

A recent summary of Hong Kong’s various not-confusing-at-all Covid regulations.

Motor Moron of the Month Award surely goes to the idiot who tried to drive a Hiace van along Lugard Road (the walking path below the Peak overlooking Victoria Harbour). More pix here.

A few items for the weekend…

The Art Newspaper on the gloomy outlook for China’s cultural scene following in light of Xi Jinping’s party congress speech’s call to…

…“promote confidence in [China’s] culture, cast new glories of socialist culture”. 

How to write a half-decent, semi-stimulating editorial: the Guardian on South Korea’s soft power. 

Completely out-of-area and off-topic, but too strange (and wittily written) to miss: the ‘Judas’ goats that led sheep up into the slaughter chambers of Midwestern US meat-packing plants in exchange for cigarettes.

Downloaded Kevin Carrico’s Two Systems, Two Countries (available here). 

Published by UC Press – an intro by the author here. His theme dates back to a short column he wrote following the disqualification of lawmakers in 2016. 

The full title includes the ‘N’ word. Wonder if any physical bookstores in Hong Kong will carry it. Indeed, given that Carrico tackles the forbidden concept head-on, will we see an eruption of fury from the government denouncing (and publicizing) the work? Will they issue a NatSec fatwa, with threats to extradite him for conspiracy to incite secession or whatever? 

The contents look slightly daunting (‘ethnogenesis’?), but a quick flick-through suggests enlightening and even entertaining reading. Will report back.

The Incheon rugby anthem crisis reaches its peak (he says optimistically).

Half the rugby associations in Asia point fingers at one another over who had what music file, while the HK Rugby Union warns that “Future errors of this type shall necessitate the team’s immediate withdrawal from competition.” (NatSec Law aside, are sports organizers breaking music copyright?)

An Internet expert explains that the only way to change the Google results would be to get Glory to Hong Kong removed from YouTube. Surprised the pro-Beijing people haven’t suggested it yet. (Good luck: there must be hundreds of videos of the tune, from live singing in shopping malls to choral performances in multiple languages to bagpipe, banjo and euphonium adaptations.)

If the contrived over-reaction to the incident was intended to attract attention, loyalists have succeeded, with the mass freak-out being picked up by the BBC, Guardian and CNN.

Regina Ip meanwhile wins the Most Extreme Outrage Contest, proposing the extradition of ‘suspects’ from South Korea. (Second place goes to those calling for athletes to be given special guidance on how to react when the wrong anthem is played – something about visibly expressing horror, frantically making T-signs with their hands and storming off the field. Watch out for teams rehearsing this within a month.)

And – surely proof that Anthem-gate is drawing to a close – the SCMP pulls out its template more-insipid-than-thundering editorial demanding a something something full investigation something something must never happen again.

Needless to say, it – or something equally inane – will.

I had to play rugby at high school – running up and down the field shirtless, being hurled to the frost-frozen ground by massive low-IQ brutes. It taught you to brush off trivial slights. But in Hong Kong, where we accept worker deaths with a stiff upper lip, hurt and humiliation from the South Korean sevens tournament Anthem-Gate outrage continues. 

It seems a ‘junior staff’ up in Hermit Kingdom googled ‘Hong Kong anthem’ and used the – indisputably anthemic – protest song. Whoops.

HK Rugby Union, Asia Rugby and The Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China all join the mass panty-wetting. Lawmakers too. A whole litany of mouth-frothing here, in which: Starry Lee wants an apology to the Chinese nation; Junius Ho demands that the Hong Kong Rugby team be disbanded (for not reacting with appropriate horror when Glory was played); other legislators and pro-Beijing groups insist on a diplomatic confrontation with Seoul, suggest suspension of rugby sponsorship by HSBC, and march on the Korean consulate. The Standard story adds that the Chief Secretary has complained to the Korean consul, while all-seeing Ronny Tong says the choice of tune was ‘definitely not unintentional’. And the government orders the police Organised Crime and Triad Bureau to…

…look into the matter to investigate any breaches of the National Anthem Ordinance or any other legislation of Hong Kong, including the Hong Kong National Security Law.

(The hoo-ha occurred in Incheon.)

For my part, I will not start my next batch of kimchi until next week (waiting for weather to cool a bit, anyway.)

The Standard editorial reminds us that a Kuwait sports event once accidentally played a mock Kazakhstan national anthem from the movie Borat.

Did this really happen, or is it dubbed? Glory to Hong Kong played as city’s anthem at a rugby tournament in South Korea. The government issues a ‘strongly deploring’ statement demanding a ‘full and in-depth investigation’ – so it seems it did. The vacant-but-solemn looks on the players’ faces suggest they had no idea anything was amiss. (One of those accidental slip-ups, presumably. How do events organizers pick anthems? Do the teams email an mp3?)

Financial Secretary meanwhile bemoans the state of the economy. How much of the government’s HK$100 billion deficit comprises expenditure on quarantine camps, compulsory testing and other (allegedly) pointless Covid outlays?

How Mainlanders avoid online censorship by criticizing government Covid policies in Cantonese.

A woman is given three months in prison for waving the wrong flag while the national anthem is played on a TV broadcast in a mall. Magistrate says she ‘seriously disparaged the anthem and damaged the nation’s dignity’.

You would think the public broadcaster would interview the security chief – but it’s the other way round. Needless to say, RTHK’s boss gives all the right answers.

Pro-Beijing figures blast the ruling to allow Jimmy Lai to use British barrister Tim Owen, who…

…may bring “Western viewpoints” that create “bias and unfairness”, lawyer Christopher Wong was quoted as saying in Wen Wei Po.

More quotes at the SCMP.

Samuel Bickett post on why the authorities don’t want an overseas lawyer representing Lai. Basically, he won’t be intimidated or care what Ta Kung Pao says.

Some other reading for the weekend…

Pity about the gimmicky overdesigned text/graphics, but an otherwise must-read in-depth Reuters report on Chow Hang-tung – ‘now arguably the most prominent dissident voice in Hong Kong’ – in jail for 14 months, with 15 bail applications rejected…

“Force can only achieve so much. The state can lock up people but not their thinking, just as it can lock up facts but not alter truth. The use of force is indeed a sign of weakness, a failure of authority. The state simply has no other means to produce compliance.”

…Convincing the judges isn’t necessarily Chow’s aim. It is “about seizing on the few spaces left to publicize the goals and position of the movement,” she said. “So long as the state is not yet willing to abandon the legitimacy that comes with an open court, the courtroom will remain (one of) the few public spaces where officially ‘criminal’ thinking must be given air time.”

Some additional comments from Kevin Yam.

Wang Xiangwei, former SCMP editor, has a blog mildly critical of Beijing…

Have many people really read the English version of [Xi Jinping’s 20th CCP Congress] report from the beginning to the end? I did but even for someone who writes and reports about China for the past three decades, I find it a tough going as the translation of the party’s favorite jargons, littered through the report, make them even more difficult to understand.

As for China’s state media, their reports reek of pure propaganda and lack credibility … 

ASPI Strategist piece on how China’s censorship regime – in Hong Kong as well as the Mainland – relies on fear…

By wiping their digital identity, Beijing wants citizens to know the repercussions of speaking out. Placing censors in Chinese social media companies isn’t enough; users must be proactive in censoring the information they receive. Without self-censorship, the system would soon be overwhelmed and news would spread to the point of no return. For the system to work, people need to be aware of what content is shareable and be frightened of the consequences of sharing or receiving ‘prohibited’ content.

From CSIS, translation of a lengthy 2021 ‘analysis’ of the Taiwan situation by Mainland academic Tian Feilong, with extensive reference to Hong Kong. Much of it delusional…

…the more the cross-Strait power balance shifts to mainland China, the more Taiwan authorities rely on the United States and Japan, causing Taiwan to transfer more actual “governance authority” to external forces, shifting to a “quasi-colonial” state. With this, the basic conditions for cross-Strait political consultation are weakened, resulting in the actual rise of the “proxy” of the United States and Japan in Taiwan, creating obstacles to the peaceful reunification of the two sides of the Strait.

Some perhaps less so…

…the structural changes in the concept and system of “One Country, Two Systems” brought about by the central government’s decisive action in response to the changing situation in Hong Kong have been stigmatized and misunderstood on the island [Taiwan], resulting in a weakening of the demonstration effect of the Hong Kong experience on Taiwan.

The bottom line…

…the “return of people’s hearts” in Hong Kong is still a severe challenge and an incomplete task. The practice of “One Country, Two Systems” in Hong Kong still needs to go through a difficult process of institutional transformation and mentality reconstruction.

The Guardian’s obit for Bao Tong.

Fun illustrated look at Hong Kong’s bilingual street names. Did you know Hiram’s Highway is named after a brand of nasty military-issue canned sausages? The author also repeats the theory that Rednaxela Terrace was the result of someone accidentally – rather than deliberately – writing ‘Alexander’ backwards. But wouldn’t it have come out ‘ecarreT rednaxelA’? (Yes it would. After walking down the lane every day for years, I just know.)

For an impoverished backwater, Guizhou has some big brands. One is Kweichow moutai – the incomprehensibly high-priced and disgusting sorghum spirit. The other is the far more palatable Lao Gan Ma chili oil – a global success celebrated in the Guardian, which quotes an academic paper as saying…

“Lao Gan Ma deliberately places an extraordinary average-looking and old Chinese female on its product package, which conversely arouses strong curiosities of foreign consumers.”  

Recommended time-wasting TV (you might have to hunt around to find them) – not great, but more amusing than silently eating bananas alone…

Akai Nurse Call (Japan) – tasteless and grotesquely violent but sort-of tongue-in-cheek murder mystery set in a hospital where patients (and others) are murdered, episode after episode. Among other weirdness, one patient is a TV crime scriptwriter who starts drafting a drama based on what is happening; at one stage, nurses wonder who should play their characters if the show is produced, and one suggests her own (real-life) name to portray herself. The two lead characters are insipid (perhaps deliberately?), but everyone else is deranged – right up to the gruesome end. 

Gaus Electronics (Korea) – not on a par with Squid Game or Amazing Attorney Woo, but a genuinely funny satire on young salary-persons’ office life, complete with impressive editing and quirky sound-effects. Starting (a few episodes in) to get a bit romance-drama-ish, but still mostly quite witty.

The ICAC – supposedly an anti-corruption agency – charges four people for sharing social-media posts urging a boycott of the last LegCo elections. The charge is ‘inciting others to cast blank votes or not to vote’. Seems almost anything the government doesn’t like these days is ‘incitement’.

Has anyone worked out how it can be illegal to urge others not to vote, but perfectly legal to urge them to do so? Or why urging others to do something absolutely lawful – abstain from voting – should itself be illegal? How can you ‘incite’ someone to do something legal? (“Mother, can I incite you to have another scoop of ice cream?”)

High Court judges reject the Justice Department’s appeal on barring Jimmy Lai from hiring an overseas lawyer to defend him. The government’s arguments were as apparently desperate as they were varied. One was that Timothy Owen KC has insufficient experience in NatSec Law matters – but who does? And surely that’s the defendant’s problem, not the government’s. Another was that a Cantonese speaker would better ‘advance the language’ of the NatSec Law, though I would have thought Putonghua would be preferable. The judges cited a need for ‘public perception of fairness’ and the high profile of the case, which brings us back to why the government would prefer local counsel.

David Webb digs up some interesting stats…

…the number of unconvicted people on remand (innocent until proven guilty) in HK jails at 30-Sep has reached a record this century of 2,751, or 35.41% of the jail population.

It was around 10% in 2000.

More on the Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s real-estate and other activities. Having bought a half-billion-dollar house, they seem to be settling in.

Even NatSec judges are getting impatient with the prosecutors apparently dragging out the case of the pro-democrats who tried to win an election, with masses of non-specific evidence and a trial estimated to take over 90 days – but not until after late January. Or later. Summary from the estimable Su Xinqi… 

…nearly 3 months since the 17 [pleading not-guilty] defendants in the 47 activists “conspiracy to subversion” case [was] last in court and it’s been 21 months since the NSL offence was first charged, but time seems [to have frozen] as disputes still surround what exactly [Justice Dept] is alleging.

Read down for judge’s comments and a guest appearance by Regina Ip.

Anyone who flicks through the Standard knows the paper loves eye-catching property transactions. Today it gives front-page treatment to Beijing’s locally based NatSec agency purchase of a five-bedroom 7,170 sq ft villa at Mont Rouge just north of Kowloon Tong, including a 5,000 sq ft garden and 700 sq ft terrace. For HK$508 million.

A few questions… First – yes it’s big and oh-so ‘luxury’, but is someone padding this price a bit? Half a billion seems kind of steep, especially for Kowloon-side. Second, what on earth does a humble Office for Safeguarding National Security want it for? Having friends over for barbecues? Third, are they spending Mainland or Hong Kong taxpayers’ money?

Following more workplace deaths, Transit Jam says Hong Kong’s construction sites have worse safety records than Qatar’s, not least because of…

…the lax enforcement culture and casual disregard for human life shown by Hong Kong’s gluttonous developers.

(And that’s before he starts on the government.)

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee hails rule of law in the city. His comments to a conference also emphasize judicial independence – even though Beijing’s rulers explicitly reject the notion of separation of powers.

Meanwhile, former leader of the Tiananmen Square vigil group Chow Hang-tung is barred from seeing full details of the prosecution’s case against her…

The evidence caught the court by surprise and prosecutor Laura Ng Shuk-kuen admitted she had only realised the existence of the 300 backups during the trial.

Eric Lai comments…

This is an absurd situation. The public prosecution appears to act in contrary to the prosecution code that, they have a duty of full and timely disclosure of all relevant materials available or known to the prosecution.

In the Stand News ‘criminal ideologies’ sedition case, it emerges that the prosecution didn’t even disclose the existence of some evidence…

Senior counsel Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, for the defence, said on Monday prosecutors had failed to disclose six boxes of unused documentary evidence amounting to more than 1,500 pages until their existence was revealed during the cross-examination of a police witness last week.

Defendant Patrick Lam gets bail after 11 months in jail.

And former RTHK journalist Bao Choy loses her appeal on accessing public data on vehicle registrations while reporting on the Yuen Long attack on June 21, 2019.

You can, however, see the non-paywalled (click through it) WSJ editorial of the financial summit that few would have noticed until Hong Kong officials complained about it…

Wall Street’s best and brightest … were used as props in the effort by Hong Kong officials to revive the city’s reputation as a commercial center amid their continuing purge of all dissent, and the destruction of a free press and independent judiciary.

1. A Security Bureau statement complains about a Ming Pao op-ed on the proposed legal ban on CBD products…

“The article, which questions the welfare sector, not only affects the morale of the workers in the anti-drug sector, but also arouses suspicion of inciting the sector to question the Government’s anti-drug efforts or to pull back its support…” 

Why is the Security Bureau concerned about a newspaper’s opinion piece on food/drugs/welfare matters? If there are factual errors in the column, shouldn’t it be health, welfare or perhaps justice officials who respond? Or is the phrase ‘arouses suspicion of inciting’ supposed to be a veiled threat to arrest and jail on a ‘sedition’ charge?

(In another hypersensitive response, Chief Secretary Eric Chan condemns a Wall Street Journal editorial’s ‘brazen disrespect’ for the bankers who attended last week’s financial summit.)

2. Why is the government so opposed to an overseas lawyer representing Jimmy Lai? Are they worried that an outsider will kick up a fuss – in or outside the court – if he perceives bias in NatSec judge’s handling of the high-profile case?

3. Why is BioNTech’s vaccine going to be approved for foreigners only in the Mainland? Is the product too good for the Chinese people to have, or not good enough?

4. And one from our own comments section: Is the Pan Pearl River Delta still a thing or has it been subsumed into the Greater Bay Area?

We can answer this: the latter. GBA is the new PPRD, with even more bonus extra added ‘integration’. The lure is even more much-vaunted ‘opportunities’. As with ‘Belt and Road’ at one stage, loyal public figures and businesses energetically display enthusiasm for the idea. 

The idea is symbolically bold, rejecting the fact that Hong Kong’s only reason to exist as a separate entity since the 1840s has been as a location for activities that can’t take place across the border – by definition the opposite of ‘integration’. If the GBA were a real thing (eg, if the whole region became a province-level municipality like Shanghai or Chongqing), it would mean the end of that role. 

As it is, the effort seems largely psychological. The phrase ‘Bay Area’ (which has no geographical basis) is an attempt to give the cross-border region a trendy identity of its own, echoing San Francisco or Tokyo. Promoters like to imagine that the whole concept of ‘Hong Kong people’ will fade away and everyone will proclaim themselves ‘GBA people’. There doesn’t seem to be a similar publicity campaign aimed at citizens of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, etc.