Big Lychee, Various Sectors

A Canadian businessman decries the Hong Kong government’s adoption of Mainland-style rabid and delusional public statements…

The true meaning and objectives of some government communications, and even the intended audience, are becoming harder to divine. Combative overtones can be detected in communications that seek to deny and deflect rather than deal directly with the issues at hand.

Examples include officials’ choreographed mouth-frothing over Nancy Pelosi, the claim that ‘external forces’ were behind the 2019 protests, and the insistence that press freedom is still protected. As the author says, this saps the administration’s credibility and undermines public trust. He suggests that, under ‘One Country, Two Systems’, the local government has the freedom to change course – but of course the descent into CCP-speak comes with the ending of that ‘high degree of autonomy’. Someone has to insert the ‘wolf-warrior’ ranting into the press releases and speeches, and they are not from this side of the border. The only audience that matters is Beijing.

It’s not that government communications were once forensically rigorous and bursting with integrity. Go back 10 years, and you’ll find ‘lines to take’ brazenly declaring such bullshit as ‘the bridge to Zhuhai is essential infrastructure’, or ‘the housing problem is due to a shortage of land’. But that duplicity was rooted in bureaucrats’ condescending colonial-era belief that the population were infants. The new practice of PR-by-propaganda-slogans reflects Mainland-style ideology, where everyone must loyally recite the same fictions, however disconnected they are from any sort of objective truth. 

Or science. While Singapore scraps mask mandates everywhere except public transport and health-care facilities, Hong Kong cancels a 10-km race and possibly the cross-harbour swim because of Covid.

A 68-year-old man gets prosecuted for playing an erhu ‘without a permit’ at a bus terminus. You might wonder why the Justice Dept would bring such a minor infringement of the law to court. He was playing Glory to Hong Kong. How many other streetside erhu-players – there are lots – have been prosecuted lately?

The magistrate let the guy go. Another glimpse of judicial independence occurs at the High Court, where the judge gives Albert Ho bail (plus a string of patronizing warnings). This comes after last week’s lifting of reporting restrictions in NatSec cases. Signs of some pushback among the judiciary?

Could/would/do you get arrested for having Glory to Hong Kong as your phone ringtone? Or for whistling it? For singing it in the shower at home?

Final post-op stuff tomorrow, so some mid-week links…

The SCMP’s tech editor is in need of some rectification…

The sight of a hazmat-suited medical worker in the Chinese city of Xiamen sticking a cotton bud into the mouth of a fish to test whether it had coronavirus was saddening.

It is a sign that common sense and pragmatism in China are retreating, giving way to self-destructive madness, where political correctness trumps basic reasoning.

The ridiculous conduct in Xiamen received no official reprimand from the provincial or state authorities because, politically speaking, it was seen as the right move towards implementing Beijing’s strict dynamic zero Covid-19 policy.

In Atlantic, Richard McGregor looks at the ‘radical secrecy’, along with the rewriting of history, of Xi’s China…

Xi Jinping has never given a press conference … he does not have a press secretary … His office does not preannounce his domestic travel or visitor log. He does not tweet … What are billed by the official media as important speeches are typically not released until months after Xi has delivered them in closed forums … Beijing’s radical opacity has real-world consequences.

One of the more amusing aspects of shoe-shiner-watching in Hong Kong is the way local ‘heavyweights’ – members of the National People’s Congress or Mainland think-tanks – pontificate on Beijing’s thinking, when they are just as clueless and out-of-the-loop as anyone else.

Brian Hioe explains Taiwan for the Guardian. Michael Turton explains the language behind the US position on Taiwan (perhaps every journalist and columnist should read this). 

Making a change from the ‘exodus’ stories, the latest trend in Hong Kong media coverage is the ‘lipstick on a pig’ article – critiquing the local authorities’ attempts to boost the city’s ‘image’ rather than fix the reality. Best example is this Bloomberg op-ed. The SCMP does it timidly (and addresses the HK Police’s own plan to restore its reputation).

The government’s efforts to regain control of the narrative are easily mocked – it’s obvious that Mainland officials are involved in rebutting overseas criticism, hence press statements loaded with shrill slogans guaranteed to alienate the audience. John Lee is also imploring young people to tell Hong Kong’s story well…

“It is paramount for the global community to know our achievements and unique advantages for us to continue to shine as the Pearl of the Orient.”

Business groups AmCham and the British Chamber join in with events supposedly aimed at improving Hong Kong’s international standing. These voices could be more nuanced, admitting that the human-rights and rule-of-law situations are – as the SCMP would put it – ‘raising questions’, thus giving their messaging some credibility. But expect slightly milder versions of the official rhetoric insisting everything is fine; to the business sector, ‘telling the Hong Kong story well’ is a shoe-shining exercise like conferences taking Belt and Road and Greater Bay Area seriously. Even corporates’ objections to Covid quarantine requirements, which are inflicting direct commercial damage, echo official lines claiming that Hong Kong remains a dynamic hub.

It’s almost as if feigning concern about Hong Kong’s reputation and determination to correct the problem has become another patriotic performance.

Meanwhile, the reality…

Samuel Bickett explains why many Hong Kong pro-democracy politicians are ‘pleading guilty to crimes they didn’t commit’. Full article by him here…

What did this alleged coup consist of? Not much, it turned out. The 47 were accused of participating in a party-organized primary election and vowing, if elected to the Legislative Council, to veto the government’s budget—a right explicitly granted to the LegCo by Article 52 of the Basic Law …

Minors, including a girl aged 15 at time of arrest, plead guilty to threatening national security (hell of a thing to put on your resume in the years ahead)…

The seven were accused of organising street booths and press conferences, as well as using social media, to spread seditious messages and incite others to subvert state power…

Margaret Ng’s mitigation plea before receiving a suspended sentence for unauthorized assembly. HK Rule of Law Monitor discusses the case – classic ‘lawfare’…

There was little dispute about the facts. The key challenges were constitutional: a) at the systemic level, that criminal offences relating to unauthorized assembly were  disproportionate restrictions of the freedom of assembly and of procession; and b) at the operational level as relating to the facts on the day of 818, including that the assembly was peaceful, the police had not told the crowd to disperse, and making arrests only 8 months after.

China Digital Times looks at Hong Kong’s creeping censorship, with arrests of online forum administrators and bans affecting film and book producers.

Speaking of shoe-shining exercises – HK University’s compulsory National Security course looks absurdly easy to pass. If I were a Mainland official, I would demand something more ‘sincere’-looking.

Some thoughts from a Westerner returning to Shanghai after missing the lockdowns – compare and contrast with Hong Kong.

From Al Jazeera, a general overview of how courts are operating in Hong Kong. HKFP explainer on the recently-lifted reporting restrictions in NatSec trials. Thread by Xinqi Su on the same subject.

These serve as a backdrop to some high-profile cases, notably the prosecution of politicians for subversion via primary elections. All have life sentences hanging over them. Many have spent nearly a year and a half in detention. Reporting restrictions have kept pre-trial procedures out of the public eye. There will be no jury (as with Jimmy Lai). The authorities have managed to turn some of the accused against the others. The 29 pleading guilty are following cold logic, assuming that a NatSec court will automatically accept that the primaries were a plot to undermine the government. Many of those pleading not guilty are among the minority who actually got bail. This is ugly.

A few weekend links…

From Matthew Brooker, a thread illustrating the importance of the ‘important speech’.

For economics wonks, Michael Pettis looks at China’s mortgage crisis.

Willy Wo-lap Lam on how the 20th Party Congress will consolidate Xi Jinping’s power…

Xi is not known as a brilliant or skilled policy-maker in either the economic or diplomatic arenas, but the supreme leader is a master of personal empire-building, particularly in enlarging the influence of the so-called Xi Jinping Faction in CCP politics.

From Politico, China’s ambassador to the US on how everything is the West’s fault, plus other ambitious/delusional claims.

Andrew Batson on China’s fixation about surpassing the US…

…some Chinese politicians have realized it does not actually display great self-confidence to obsess about your country’s standing relative to other countries

China Media Monitor investigates weird fake pro-China documentary films winning awards at fake film festivals. Two things going on here. First, various bodies feel a need to obey instructions to ‘tell China’s story’ overseas, so they produce junk propaganda as a performative, box-ticking display of obedience. Second, there are budgets for these projects – so someone’s making some money out of it. I’m inclined to say good for them!

A commenter writes:

I’ve never experienced or heard about a hospital bill totting up to 20% of a flat deposit. Even if the flat was purchased a couple of decades ago that’s still a couple of million.

It was 30 years ago, and apartments (small, old, out of the way) for under HK$1 million were a real thing. Sounds crazy, but true. (According to the title deeds, if I recall, the original price of that place around 1970 had been HK$35,000.)

Back home. Place where they chopped around hurts – but I guess it must. A stretchy corset thing around the waist helps, plus Panadol.

So the grand finale of my first-ever hospitalization took place at the Accounts Dept. In pain, clutching bags of pills and huge envelopes of photos of my innards. Just mail me the bill? No – the Christian charity will not let you leave until you settle in full. I had arrived with one credit card. In two swipes, that was maxed out. Still less than halfway there. Over the phone, I maxed out someone else’s credit card. Finally scraped the rest together via EPS. At one point they offered to escort me to an ATM.

It was the most I’ve ever paid for anything in (more or less) one go. A little more than the 20% deposit I paid for an apartment in 1992. The itemized bill sort of looks padded out, but then a hospital is obviously very expensive to equip and run, and it needs hundreds of highly trained people. Even if the surgeon drove a Honda and used a public golf course, it still wouldn’t be cheap. Not an expert on this. 

I apologize to the thousands of people who have told me over the years, while my mind drifted, that they have ‘been in hospital’ and ‘had an operation’. I never realized it was such utter misery.

Never again, if I can help it. But do read the less-jaundiced view of colonoscopy here.

Surgeon who did reconstructive work swings by at midnight. Peels off five mega-adhesive dressings from tummy, pulls out the daiquiri drain, does a quick stitch, replaces dressings with clean, slimmer ones. Says pain will subside, and is partly because he took my appendix out while in there. ‘It was in the way’. Tells nurse to remove final (unused) plastic IV device from arm. Free of these repulsive encumbrances at last.

They had just moved a new patient into a nearby bed. Even a non-medic can diagnose his condition: sleep apnea. Like a geyser erupting in a regular cycle of silence, approaching tremors, a massive whoosh, and a full-on 80dB explosive warthog snort, then a sort of spluttering subsidence. Over and over. When I complain, nurse gives me a sleeping pill. My first one ever. Another revelation – never realized how effective these things are.

Still clueless about how a hospital works. Most nurses have limited functions, like emptying bags of urine or taking blood pressure, and know nothing about your case. One or two will helpfully explain what is planned for you, but they’re basically guessing. Occasionally a busy one comes in and makes an executive decision – let’s remove that second plastic IV attachment. There is a hidden power guiding things somewhere out in the corridor. In terms of presence, doctors make up about 0.02% of the staff.

And on cue my colonoscopy guy drops by. Ten minutes to organize some meds, two hours to add up the bill – and I’m out.

Enjoying the view one last time…

Now allowed toast and congee. Catheter and IV removed, leaving just one tube gently oozing strawberry daiquiri lookalike into drain bottle. Amount of time silently raging about (allegedly, arguably, possibly, maybe-pure-mishap) botched colonoscopy leading to first ever surgery/hospital-stay in life, down 1%.

Remind myself of worse injustices around us. Nun’s advice is to take it as an opportunity to talk to Jesus. Or did she say ‘a good lawyer’? Didn’t quite catch it.

Girl in pink summer dress suddenly appears. Anaesthetist. Just dropped by to check I’m OK.

The drainage bag after emptying. Looks just like a bloody mary. And a visit from a friendly nun, very impressed by my knowledge of Catholicism.

Just doing this for the challenge of posting – especially uploading pics – on a tab.

My tummy right now…

What was supposed to be a routine out-in-two-hours colon/stomach check turns into a mega-nightmare (actually a tear in outer layer of colon and leakage of gas – very painful). So, semi-emergency surgery yesterday evening and now several days more in hospitalon broth only, maybe congee from tomorrow.

First time ever in my life in hospital, let alone under general anaesthetic. (Pretty amazing stuff – zero recollection of ever being given it. Apparently the reason I felt freezing cold in bed afterwards.) Now strung down with massively obtrusive IV drip feeding into right hand, a drainage bag (looks like ketchup), and a catheter. Insertion of catheter more a mental than physical trauma.

Moral: avoid routine checks. Will they bill me for the extra unplanned procedures. Stupid question, right?

Anyway probably not much going on here til later in the week.

A cheerful start to Friday: the HK Science Museum and MTR hold a ‘MTR x dinosaur’ painting competition for kids. Check out the entry by Chung Kwok-ching with its mind-warping perspective.

Children’s pictures aren’t – yet – censored in Hong Kong. Unlike movies…

OFNAA ordered the film producers to delete a scene that it said had “reconstructed the illegal occupation movement.” If they did not comply, the film would not be allowed for public screening.

What about a film that ‘reconstructs’ a case of domestic violence, a bank robbery, or cops having sex with an underage girl – all illegal incidents?

The population of Hong Kong has dropped by nearly 230,000 since end-2019. This includes deaths outnumbering births, but the bulk of it (note big drop in 20-somethings) must be emigration. (See also Standard story.) HKT notes emigration as a factor in slow broadband business growth.

Weekend links…

UK magazine The Critic on leaving China after 10 years…

…by 2022, China had become an impossible place to live. China’s initial COVID response was admirable, but it had descended into a mad authoritarian nightmare. 

Prospect reacts to the framing/arrest of Drew Pavlou in London.

From Bloomberg – Beijing offers Taiwan the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula and drops its old promise not to station troops there. Don’t all rush!

After peaceful reunification, Taiwan may keep its current social system and enjoy a high degree of autonomy — the same promises that were extended to Hong Kong. The words that follow merit attention: “One Country is the precondition and foundation of Two Systems; Two Systems is subordinate to and derives from One Country; and the two are integrated under the one-China principle.”

Essentially, Beijing is saying ‘screw it’.

ABC Oz on China’s problems in convincing ‘Wan Wan’ to return to the fold…

Beijing has failed to create conditions conducive to the “thorough settlement” of the issue.

And those conditions, in large part, haven’t occurred because the people of Taiwan can express their own views, a dramatically different situation to the 1970s and 80s, when a dictatorship still claiming to be China’s rightful government ran the island. 

Since China’s strongman leader Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, Taiwanese voters at successive presidential elections have chosen, by landslide, a government that rejects Beijing’s relentless pressure for closer ties on China’s terms. 

George Magnus on how China can’t afford to invade Taiwan. But don’t say ‘invade’! Tanky Martin Jacques gets publicly corrected by a Chinese government official.

China Media Project introduces you to the ‘Two Establishes’ – a phrase that has cropped up in People’s Daily a mere 33 times this month…

The phase is essentially a giftbox of loyalty to Xi, establishing him as 1) the unquestionable “core” leader of the CCP, and 2) his ideas as the bedrock of China’s future under the CCP.

Unpacked, the “Two Establishes” is a claim to the legitimacy of Xi Jinping’s rule, and a challenge to any who might oppose him. As such, the phrase is an important part of the process of “loyalty signaling,” or biaotai (表态), the registering of support for the top leader.