Big Lychee, Various Sectors

More on the ‘important speech’ study sessions… HKFP counts no fewer than 60 such events in the month since Xi Jinping’s historic oratory. Organizers include local and central government departments, pro-Beijing groups and schools. Participants range from senior civil servants to kindergarten kids.

“I believe this is a gradual transfer of the mainland’s political culture to Hong Kong. Hong Kong was not used to having to learn about a leader’s speech. That [practice] has a long history in the mainland though,” [academic Ivan] Choy told HKFP.

…“Those who used to criticise Hong Kong for being too political now support these political learning sessions,” Choy said.

Not sure whether ‘gradual’ is the right word. The NYT has also picked up the story…

In a government news release describing the [study] session, the term “important speech” was used 10 times, in nearly every paragraph.

…While Hong Kong has long had to abide by Beijing’s decisions over major issues, the bureaucracy’s conspicuous embrace of Mr. Xi has crystallized the city’s new identity as a territory firmly in Beijing’s grip. The performance of loyalty to Mr. Xi is the latest feature of the Communist Party’s assertive approach to Hong Kong and its efforts to tame the city’s defiant political streak.

It’s one thing to have all these loyalty-focused rituals in the Mainland, where the practice goes back decades (centuries, millennia) – but surely different to impose them almost overnight in a previously free and pluralist environment.

If officials try too hard to appear avid in the eyes of Mainland overseers, they risk looking farcical to much of the public. That said, one possible side-effect of forcing Hong Kong’s local elites to perform overt patriotic rituals will be to drive a symbolic ‘values’ wedge between them and their erstwhile peers overseas. It must be tough to hobnob as an equal with your Western buddies while clutching a copy of Xi’s latest must-read volume.

I could think of more effective ways of winning hearts and minds – especially in a city with serious inequality and ample resources. But, as a multitude of observers remind us, the idea is not to gain sincere admiration from the populace, but simply to force them to acquiesce, if not kowtow. That is the way to create harmony, progress and thousands of years of civilization.

Your daily whiny outburst-tantrum comes courtesy of the official response to the UN Human Rights Committee, which has modestly requested Hong Kong to repeal or at least suspend the NatSec Law. (Did Luxembourg get this upset as well?)

But that’s nothing compared to the ballistics we can expect if overseas activists go ahead and set up a Hong Kong parliament-in-exile. Cynics might doubt such a body would have any credibility – but that’s before the mouth-frothing rants start.

Hong Kong’s last remaining radical group gets the Wen Wei Po treatment.

Where to get a copy of Chris Patten’s Hong Kong Diaries (hint: not Bookazine).

But if you want to read whiny defensive letters from Hong Kong officials complaining about overseas news coverage – they’re everywhere.

A good interview with Michael Davis, formerly of HKU, on what has happened to Hong Kong.

CNN on apparent Chinese surveillance and monitoring activities in the guise of telecoms and other sites in the US…

Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure … and stonewalled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities. 

A thread by Michael Pettis on why – despite what some think – China is on course for Japan-style long-term stagnation.

Axios on the new report on the modern-day role of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. Intro to the report by one of the authors.

Andrew Batson on China’s hard-to-believe statistics on self-employment levels.

Proof that vaccination makes you more intelligent!

A poll in Austria found that most vaccinated Austrians believe Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine, while the unvaccinated mostly blame the US and NATO. 

OK – the common denominator is people who swallow Russian disinformation crap.

Speaking of which… Maybe of interest to those enjoying some heated debate in the comments, a look at how Christian nationalism has taken over evangelical churches in the US. This isn’t really about ‘Christianity’ so much as how the faith has been hijacked by a campaign to con bitter and gullible people into voting for tax-cuts for billionaires. It works.

Xi Jinping’s ‘important speech’, delivered to four people at a rail station and containing nothing new, has been the subject of study sessions for hundreds of Hong Kong public-sector employees. Initium’s (paywalled/Chinese) analysis calls the sessions…

…”political learning” – a kind of leader worship, party-state political culture and ritual, and a method of ideological governance…

Patricia Thornton’s synopsis here. One point is that, even if participants are cynical about it, the exercise still establishes compliance – a Leninist ‘the medium is the message’.

Schoolchildren are also included…

“All young people must grasp the important concepts [in the speech] so that they understand their goals and dreams in life must be closely related to the future of the country,” [Education Secretary Christine Choi] said.

Yet what was that we just said about cynical participants?

Meanwhile, several lawmakers cast doubt over the effectiveness of mainland study tours on promoting national education.

Subcommittee chairwoman Priscilla Leung said the mainland tours aren’t as good as those offered in other countries.

“In fact, many students have come back from these visits [saying] they don’t believe in what they saw, [they claimed] everything was staged,” she said.

Damn kids. (Who pointed out that the emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes? It wasn’t a civil servant.) Meanwhile, patriots are urging schools to teach more about the ‘contribution of war heroes to the struggle against Japan’, and HKU is making (on-line, self-learning, non-credit) National Security classes compulsory.

Seems we are entering the everyone-knows-it’s-futile performance zone. Keep an eye out for posters promoting Xi Jinping Thought alongside the ‘Don’t feed wild boars’ and ‘Look after your old folks’ teeth’ ads everywhere.

In the Diplomat, Charles Mok has some good background on the genuine need to update Hong Kong’s outdated computer crimes law, and the dangers of such a revision in the NatSec context – including likely new laws on disinformation, foreign interference and privacy, and a rubber-stamp legislature.

RFA raises the possibility of the new laws leading to a Mainland-style great firewall. On the face of it, the proposals do not envision wholescale banning of overseas websites. But in an increasingly Mainlandized environment, free access to the Internet is looking like a loophole waiting to be plugged. Given what has happened to rule of law, pan-dem politicians, Apple Daily, RTHK and so on, how can Google and YouTube not be on the NatSec system’s to-do list? 

More from Lokman Tsui.

HK Rule of Law Monitor on the Justice Dept’s demand that the court order Tong Ying-kit to pay costs after his appeal…

This means that in effect, nobody can avail themselves of the protections that the law provides on its face. Not only will the courts deny your rights, you will be punished for even trying. Not only will you be kept in prison for years on end, you will be bankrupt if you try to put up a fight.

…The Department of Justice has evolved into a mere tool to carry out the regime’s political mission of bringing Hong Kong to heel. 

Patriots are fighting back against foreign criticism. In China Daily, Grenville Cross is mightily unimpressed with Samuel Beckitt and his ‘squalid threats to [Hong Kong] prosecutors and judges’…

…the US should never forget that Hong Kong’s prosecutors love their city and their country, and that they are valiant professionals. Like the judges, they will not be deflected by threats from doing their duty and upholding the rule of law. Although Hong Kong is a small place, its people know how to stand up to the bully boys of the West, whatever skullduggery they deploy.

And in that spirit, the Law Society has produced a song by children ‘dedicated to the learning and protection of the rule of law’. All together now…

What can we do to protect Hong Kong

From unfounded wrong allegations 

Tell the world we’re working well

Rule of law is strong 

Based on law and evidence

Have faith in years to come

Comments, sadly, are turned off.

Note, among other cringy things, the clunky phrasing/stress/scansion of the lyrics within the melody – eg ‘to protect Hong Kong’, allegations’. I’ve heard a suggestion that the voices are synthesized. You have to wonder if it’s a parody, or a deliberate act of sabotage that the organizers were too gullible to notice.

I have downloaded a copy – in case they tragically have the brains to remove it…

Hong Kong civil servants are attending study sessions on the spirit of Xi Jinping’s ‘important speech’…

[CE John] Lee said that President Xi’s speech was an important milestone of high significance and serves as crucial guidance on governance by the HKSAR Government in the coming five years. It is incumbent on the top echelon and civil servants of the HKSAR Government to grasp in full the core essence of President Xi’s important speech and build it into their own work. 

… Various bureaux and departments will also conduct sessions on the President’s important speech for their staff so as to enable more colleagues from different ranks to grasp the core essence of President Xi’s important speech, build the spirit of the speech into their own work, and see to its manifestation in the policy objectives and initiatives under their respective purview.

Poor bastards.

Positive energy from the Standard: emigration boosts job opportunities for those left behind.

The government’s Covid experts are to ‘unite views to avoid confusion’. Why does this sound more like enforcing a line-to-take to promote unscientific policies rather than seeking ideas for improving the measures themselves?

Cue an anguished farewell message from the proprietor of a Disco Bay bar.

First they came for the Taiwanese mangoes… Macau orders daily Covid tests – for all Philippine citizens in the city… 

“Our epidemiology research found they tend to have more gatherings, like meetings among friends,” Leong said. “It’s likely that they have more interactions within their own ethnicity, so we need to find out whether there are hidden sources of infections among them via frequent testing.”

Holmes Chan on Hong Kong’s Anglophone poets…

The massive citywide democracy protests three years ago — and Beijing’s subsequent crackdown — proved a watershed.

The movement included violence that some experts say left many quietly traumatised, while solidarity between protesters gave rise to outbursts of creativity.

I don’t think anyone has been jailed for poems. Yet.

What does Hong Kong have in common with North Korea, Afghanistan, Burma and other regimes? It’s on the US Do Not Travel advisory.

From Politico, activists in the US target the Smithsonian for its partnership/sponsorship deals with the Hong Kong government’s trade office…

And those D.C. efforts are just a warm-up for a nationwide drive to brand official Hong Kong tourism, business and cultural outreach as propaganda for a repressive regime. Those activists point to HKETO as the chief lobbyist against the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which stalled after passing the House in 2019.

Willy Lam on the economic challenges facing Xi Jinping…

Over the long term, whether Xi can extend his tenure matters less than the sustainability of the Chinese way of running the economy and the country.

China Media Project on the China Press Awards – sort of Pulitzers for glowing Xi Jinping coverage…

The “Award Goals” also specify that works should serve to “enhance the ‘Four Consciousnesses,’ firm up the ‘Four Confidences’ and achieve the ‘Two Protections.’”

No word on whether the SCMP is a contender.

Also, CMP examines how ‘global credibility still eludes’ the World Internet Conference, set up by Beijing as a quasi-international body to legitimize state censorship. Watch for international useful idiots joining up. (On a similar but more techie note, Oiwan Lam on Chinese authorities censoring documents on cloud-based co-editing platforms.)

In a move likely to anger… the Czech Republic hosts a Taiwanese legislative delegation.

Time on China’s mortgage boycotts.

And an entertaining US law professor on why you shouldn’t talk to the police. (Advice applies mainly in places with rule of law.)

Not great with anniversaries, but I always remember the evening of 7-21. I was in a Taipei hotel room with a bottle of Shaoxing wine from Family Mart, watching with (naive 2019-era) disbelief the footage from Yuen Long coming through Twitter on my tablet, while on the big screen opposite my bed, giant robots were destroying Hong Kong in Transformers: Age of Extinction. (Links to other documentaries here.)

On a more trivial note… In order to confer regal/presidential status upon its first Chief Executive when he quit, Hong Kong gave Tung Chee-hwa a personal secretariat in a fancy old building in Kennedy Road. After the two subsequent former CEs received similar perks, the premises were declared full – so Carrie Lam now gets a separate office. To the delight of Swire shareholders, it’s in Pacific Place and will cost a mere HK$377,000 a month in rent alone.

How much do ex-CE’s use these elaborate facilities? Does each ex-CE need separate dedicated secretarial and admin staffs? What do these assistants do all day?

Also from HKFP, some of the latest NatSec horrors… The Justice (‘morale is high!’) Dept asks an appeals court to rule that, in the case of political opponents, social distancing between groups is not regarded as social distancing… 

The DoJ refuted the appellants’ argument that they had maintained a 1.5-metre distance between the two groups, saying that the court cannot presume that they were in two separate groups just because there was enough distance between them.

(Not with government officials at banquets, though.) And a NatSec judge rejects Albert Ho’s bid for bail, refuses to lift reporting restrictions, etc.

HK And Macau Affairs Office boss Xia Baolong issues fierce-sounding warnings against ‘anti-China forces’ and anyone who ‘dares challenge the bottom-line of One Country, Two Systems’. Pro-Beijing figures Tam Yiu-chung and Regina Ip clarify that this doesn’t apply to all democrats, but just those who collude with foreign forces. But…

“The central government has emphasized time and time again that patriots must rule Hong Kong. If the Democratic Party wishes to reenter the legislature and be involved in governance, they must be able to adhere to this gold standard. The central government does not have an obligation to accommodate differences in opinion,” [Ip] said.

(Love that perhaps-unintentionally candid last sentence.)

This overlooks a couple of details. First is that most of the once-elected pan-dem politicians are in jail. Second is that, under a one-party system, genuine involvement in ‘governance’ or ‘politics’ is off-limits to all but a small group of self-selected power-holders behind closed doors in Beijing. Even the local Hong Kong officials they appoint are kept on a tight rein, and others allowed into the Legislative and Executive Councils perform only a ceremonial role.

Some mid-week links… 

Good thread on Xi Jinping’s recently renewed claim that Uighurs and other ethnic minorities are all part of one ‘Chinese’ bloodline. How does this idea deal with the fact that huge numbers of people outside the PRC’s borders have cultures, languages and even genetics that match those of ‘Chinese’ Uighurs, Kazakhs, Mongolians, Koreans, etc? Or don’t we want to know?

From the Guardian, Jackie Chan’s latest ‘best possible taste’ (yet another ‘wolf warrior’) movie, using a war-devastated Syrian city as a location. Hey – you want a realistic set, right?

The BBC with more on MI5’s naming of Christine Lee as a Chinese agent…

Gardiner’s friend was about to be accused not of being a spy but something more hazy – an agent of influence carrying out “political interference activities on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party”.

From CNN, an interesting personal and nostalgic account of the decline of Taiwan’s waishengren. 

The prosecution aren’t exactly holding back in likening sedition to treason in the speech therapists’ cartoon sheep book trial…

The defendants … were said to have “indoctrinated” readers with separatism, incited “anti-Chinese sentiment,” “degraded” lawful arrests and prosecution and “intensified” Hong Kong-China conflicts.

It would be interesting to see some evidence. Did the books’ authors ‘incite’ anti-Chinese sentiment or merely reflect it? Did they actually ‘intensify’ Hong Kong-China conflict? How is ‘degrading’ arrests a crime? And so on.  (And this, and this.)

Also not pulling any punches, Ben Cowling says quarantine for inbound travellers – whether in a hotel or at home – is pointless and should just be scrapped…

Noting that the justifications for home quarantine are the same as those given for hotel quarantine – namely to reduce the burden on Hong Kong’s healthcare system and stop new sub-variants from arriving in the city – Professor Cowling said merely changing the type of quarantine would be “illogical”.

“The sub-variants are already here,” he said. “Switching to home quarantine makes no sense to me. If the reason for home quarantine were the same as hotel quarantine, it would be illogical.”

(Compare such forthrightness with the inane and insipid blather of the SCMP’s editorial on the subject.)

Seditious sheep and compulsory quarantine are both examples of Beijing’s political dogma overriding reason. Rational people assume that, at some point, this must stop. They look for signs that common sense will return.

Some commentator somewhere recently floated the idea that China might allow BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine into the country ‘after Xi Jinping gets appointed to his third term as core leader at the CCP Congress’. Why is there this widespread assumption that Beijing will relax its zero-Covid policy after the gathering around October-November?

The accepted wisdom is that after the Congress, Xi will be emboldened and strengthened, and thus able to do something – adopt a science-based public-health strategy – that he currently cannot. But so far as we can see, Xi is more powerful than any Chinese leader since Mao at his height. He rules over a system that airbrushes away disasters, scandals and inconvenient history and replaces them with new narratives. With his ability to create a reality of his choosing through official media and propaganda, suppressing evidence of a personally humiliating U-turn would be far easier than suppressing a virus. 

He can change policy while blankly maintaining publicly that it is not changing – who would dare contradict him? He can place blame on other leaders for devising and sticking with the original approach. He can claim credit for a miraculous breakthrough that enables a new direction. 

Abandoning zero-Covid could consolidate Xi’s image and position, and give the Chinese economy a badly needed boost. If he wanted to do it, he would have. It will be no easier after the Congress. 

We can only guess why Xi clings to zero-Covid. But the idea that a party Congress will make a massive difference sounds like wishful thinking.

Following recent overseas criticism about the decline of rule of law in Hong Kong (and angry government response), the Court of Final Appeal surprises many with its ‘zip-ties’ decision…

…If the wider interpretation applied, it would mean that “almost all articles or instruments can be considered as fit for some unlawful purposes,” the top court ruled.

“In other words, under this construction, section 17 is in reality a thought crime, depending on what a defendant’s intent was at the material time (subject to proof). There is simply no warrant to suggest that this was the legislative intent,” the judgement read.

The ruling clearly favours the protection of citizens against abuses of state power. However, Samuel Bickett is not too impressed…

DOJ’s use of this law was so clearly wrong that it was nearly impossible for the CFA to rule otherwise. This seems to be the CFA’s pattern in political cases: hear political cases & rule in favor of Hongkongers only when lower court practice is so absurd as to be indisputable.

Having been told that Hong Kong does not have separation of powers, the courts will usually refrain from exercising independence in order to forestall measures that overtly and forcefully bring them into line.

An SCMP story suggests that even a relatively gutsy CFA will be unable to withstand the imminent local Article 23 NatSec Law. This will, in effect, absorb colonial-era sedition, ‘incitement of hatred’ and other offenses into the NatSec framework of guilt-presuming pre-trial treatment and harsh post-trial penalties…

[Justice Secretary Paul] Lam also defended the recent sentencing of veteran activist Koo Sze-yiu to nine months in jail on a sedition charge, saying no one had been punished solely for hurling abuses against the government.

“You can’t take things out of context. Criticism is absolutely not problematic, as the law clearly states that it is not seditious if the intention is to point out defects in hope for improvements and remedy,” he said. “The recently convicted cases did involve seditious intentions to overthrow the regime.”

What if, like Koo, you believe the one-party system is a defect and call for it to end as a remedy?

Some useful Covid threads. Ben Cowling on why Hong Kong’s latest policy shift – home isolation with electronic tags for positive cases – could be more trouble than it’s worth. And Siddharth Sridhar on how policy – rather than actual disease – could swamp hospitals and damage overall community health. (Couldn’t those huge isolation camps be used to house patients for observation? Even import some more valiant Mainland nurses to monitor the inmates.)

A Ming Pao report (in Chinese) says that the CCP Party Congress (probably October or November) will formally give Xi Jinping the title ‘People’s Leader’ and the authorities will establish official standards for portraits of him. 

National Review looks at economist and China apologist Jeffrey Sachs.

CNN explains why Hollywood is defying Chinese sensitivities. It’s Mainland money – or the lack of it.

And a reminder of why democracy leads to chaos. The Ulster County, New York elections board is holding an ‘I voted’ sticker design contest among local high school students ahead of the November polls. Of the six finalists, two or three are mawkish, and one or two pretty decent, and one stands out as a clear winner, with 97% of online votes. You too can take part in the poll. Here.