Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Whatever its artistic merits, the Pillar of Shame was always a symbolically highly charged work – and no more so than at its end. Under cover of darkness and plastic sheeting, HKU dismantles and removes the campus exhibit, which sculptor Jens Galschiot claims as his personal property. Because of safety and colonial-era laws, not pressure from Beijing officials, obviously. Now it’s probably more famous than ever. Thread of the removal here. 3-D image of the piece here. 

A thread of June 4 art.

A Tsinghua U expert explains Beijing’s Hong Kong-version of democracy outlined in the recent white paper…

By making elections more broadly representative, politically inclusive, ensuring balanced participation, guaranteeing fair competition, and focusing on candidates’ policy agendas and capabilities, the central government also pushed for Hong Kong to shift from Western-style democracy – characterised by confrontation and vicious competition – to a democracy that suits the region and with its own characteristics.

(From CNN several years ago, a reminder why Britain ‘never gave Hong Kong democracy’.)

Only in Hong Kong – court convicts people for wearing face masks.

Some holiday reading…

CMP on the fate of a teacher who deviated from the CCP’s line on the 1937 Nanjing massacre.

Variety on how Hollywood is being frozen out of China…

“The partition between politics, political agenda and content-making is completely eroded there. No matter what talent or corporations want, it’s always at the behest of what the Party is pushing for and asking for…”

“Xi Jinping’s goal is absolutely to have Chinese films play worldwide just like Hollywood movies, so that China can exert soft power and replace Hollywood. There’s no way they’re going to be cooperative going forward, allowing U.S. films into China,” he explains. “Some films will get through, but they’ll be ones China likes, when they want, and there’ll be fewer and fewer until the tap gets shut off completely, the way it’s being shut off this year.”

…Once the China market is no longer such a governing factor, storylines and scripts will change, numerous interviewees predicted. “They might finally cast Richard Gere. There might finally be a Chinese bad guy,” jokes one producer source.

And some seasonal cheer from Zolina City Mag: soy-sauce Christmas dining – a 70s-90s thing. (Compare and contrast with American Jews’ tradition of Yuletide meals at Chinese restaurants.) Back in the days when we were poorer but happier, colleagues of my age all loved this holiday because their parents ignored it, so they could have fun with their friends and – the main thing – didn’t have to visit grandparents. Years later, my old colleagues were dragging their kids out for Christmas festivities.

According to the official narrative, with no more dastardly pan-dems in LegCo mysteriously forcing the government to push housing prices up, Hong Kong can now finally enjoy better governance. It should be interesting to see how the all-patriots system delivers new improved policies in the coming year or so. For example…

The latest batch of subsidized homes for sale include units as small as 186 sq ft – or 1.5 car parking spaces. Hong Kong can have affordable, decent-sized homes any time the government allows land to be used for residential housing rather than for revenue-raising. Don’t hold your breath.

In an (apparent) state of panic after the death of a pedestrian when an illegally parked car rolled into her, the ever-more malignant Transport Department (apparently) deletes online material about (apparently) previously abandoned pedestrianization plans. Transit Jam reported the deletion earlier; the damning timing is new (apparently). Key words: ‘agitated’ and ‘prickled by criticism’.

(More transport-related misgovernance here – drivers use cycleways to park cars.)

And an artist goes undercover to reveal conditions for outsourced cleaners on minimum wage at the MTR. Maybe labour activists should step in – except they’re in jail and their unions have been closed down.

So much scope for ‘better governance’. More likely, ongoing NatSec horrors (jailings under fake-news laws, extra brainwashing for kindergartens, etc) will distract everyone’s attention from continued failures in basic quality-of-life and livelihood issues.

Some mid-week links…

From SCMP, an interesting – not to say telling – breakdown of the collapse in voter turnout in individual polling stations…

Chi Fu Fa Yuen polling station in Pok Fu Lam recorded a decline of 43 percentage points, down from 2016’s 70 per cent to 27 per cent…

[At] Tai Koo Shing Post Office, only 1,049 voters cast their ballots on Sunday, down by 69 per cent from 2016’s 3,333.

…turnout at the polling station in Lai Chi Kok Community Hall, which covers four major middle-class residences including Liberte and the Pacifica, also dropped from 66 per cent to 28 per cent, marking a decline of 38 percentage points.

A nice succinct thread by Michael Pettis on China’s overvalued housing…

…the price of real estate in China is probably 2-3 times higher than what can be economically justified, which implies that there is RMB 200-230 trillion of fictitious wealth collateralizing loans and propping up spending.

Business Insider on how the latest in the Peng Shui saga follows Beijing’s celebrity-disappearance playbook.

Linking to Teen Vogue is no biggy, but how about Sports Illustrated? Why did the WTA risk everything for Peng Shuai?

More on sport: for at least ten thousand years, humans have crafted footwear to make their lives better. A Hongkonger decides they were wrong.

CMP on Beijing’s new restrictions on online vids…

There is no room for latitude or a sense of humor in the CNSA rules.

Amazon deletes reviews of Xi Jinping’s fab book.

George Magnus on the disappearance of Chinese companies from the global top 10 market-cap chart.

For nostalgia buffs, a glowing documentary (in Mandarin) on the prosperous modern ‘high-tech’ Republic of China in the mid-70s, at the height of Taiwan’s grimy, polluted sweatshop-era glory. (Basically about infrastructure and industry – no food or people. Aviation fans can jump to 23.10.)

HKFP editor on how the outlet tried to maintain neutrality when covering the quasi-election. One key measure is to add explanatory detail to the official phrasing to ensure readers understand that, for example, the ‘election’ is in fact one in which many would-be candidates are barred from participating.

By contrast, the SCMP largely presents the new LegCo at official face value, even suggesting that the chamber will contain exciting!!! competing factions. In reality, proceedings – like the selection of the body’s membership – will be stage-managed. 

A Beijing loyalist commentator confirms that the all-patriots rubber-stamp LegCo will be mind-numbingly boring…

In an article published in China Daily the day after the elections, Lau Siu-kai said the revamped Legco means it will no longer “degenerate into a den of anti-China, anti-communist and secessionist politicians”, and “agents or proxies” of “adversarial external forces” will be shut out.

LegCo never had much power anyway. Hong Kong’s courts, on the other hand, were genuinely independent before the NatSec regime came along. A law professor laments the Court of Final Appeal’s latest retreat…

…some had hoped that the CFA might have a mediating effect on the Hong Kong government’s aggressive implementation of the NSL. Instead, this ruling suggests that CFA judges may in fact follow the lead of their lower court counterparts, who have generally issued a steady stream of government-friendly verdicts.

…The CFA’s ruling is an important one. Instead of seeking to curb the impact of the NSL on Hong Kong’s legal system, the CFA has expanded its influence, creating a clear pathway for further intrusions by the NSL into other areas of Hong Kong law. 

There are cases coming that will test the courts’ willingness to take a stand where charges make little sense. People who participated in a primary election with a view to winning enough seats in LegCo to force the Chief Executive to stand down, in line with Basic Law provisions, will be tried for ‘conspiracy of subversion’. Those who reposted Facebook posts calling for spoiled ballots will be tried for ‘inciting’ others to do something that is not illegal.

Judges could take a stand and kick out such charges as baseless. Or they might accept the government’s case without question. (Or such trials could be preceded by an NPC ‘interpretation’ declaring a specific new meaning to the relevant passage in the Basic Law, to which the courts will defer automatically.) 

The answer to Friday’s question is ‘yes’ – by a whisker, with the ‘election’ turnout (in geographical constituencies) hitting a just, barely, too-pitiful-to-be-fake 30.2%. Sighs of relief in government circles that the figure wasn’t 20-something, but still ‘hugely embarrassing’. Thank heavens for those 17,000 voters living across the border.

However, if you exclude invalid/spoiled ballots, it apparently comes to 29.6%.

Full reports here and here.

The low turnout was because of evil foreign forces stopping citizens from voting, right? But no – it was because of the free bus rides that were designed to encourage people to go to the polling stations. Or maybe it was because of a reluctance to lend legitimacy to a rigged process, or because there were no candidates for most of the public to vote for.

The ballot in most two-seat GCs comprised one DAB candidate, one from the FTU (or other Beijing loyalist group), plus a designated loser to make it look like there was a competition of some sort. Needless to say, the latter ‘non-establishment’ people all lost. This pattern looks to have been repeated in the functional constituencies. FCs with broad electorates (teachers, medics, lawyers, etc) showed clear signs of a boycott by pan-dem voters (more here).

That leaves the Election Committee, in which 1,500 (mostly) Beijing loyalists elect 40 of the 90 seats in the new all-patriots Legislative Council. The authorities deny suggestions that Beijing circulated a list of preferred candidates, but this segment of LegCo members is obviously designed to be hand-pickable, and with only 51 candidates to fill 40 seats, it would be easy to arrange a specific outcome. Winners included former members from the now-reduced GCs (Priscilla Leung, Elizabeth Quat, Junius Ho, etc). Among the losers were the two token whites, Allen Zeman and Mike Rowse.

In short, multiple layers of rigging and micromanagement produce a 100% pure rubber-stamp LegCo.

The word now is that Beijing will issue a ‘white paper’ imminently. That of 2014 emphasized ‘comprehensive jurisdiction’ – that Hong Kong was Beijing’s to treat any way it wished, with no rights of its own. A second one might in theory discuss some sort of further constitutional ‘improvements’ to build on the patriots-only ‘election’ system. Probably not worth losing any sleep over. Like the question of whether Carrie Lam gets a second term.

(Update: white paper here – just a massive 57-page Word doc press release justifying rigged elections.)

Among snippets from Twitter: Pan-dem/protest imagery on pro-Beijing/voting banners; some of many photos comparing yesterday’s turnout with the lines outside polling stations in 2019; at mid-afternoon, pro-Beijing workers are knocking on doors in a Tsuen Wan estate trying to get people to turn out; even Beijing’s loyalists were frustrated at the lack of voters; and ‘19.15: In Taipo, campaigner Wong Shing-chi is talking to thin air as it gets cold and dark’. (With tragic photo.)

After decades of trying, does Nury Vittachi finally manage to be funny in this vid on the frenzied excitement of election day? Or is he trying too hard – as if desperate to please someone who might turn nasty without warning? Supercilious or petrified? Either way, you know that he knows he’s talking crap.

Among SCMP’s rolling updates, tycoon Charles Ho lashes out at Carrie Lam (scroll down), and this…

Post reporters stationed at polling centres in Sham Shui Po, Tai Kok Tsui, Kennedy Town and Yau Ma Tei throughout the day have observed that voters have been mostly elderly or middle-aged, with very few young people coming out to cast their ballot. 

Absolutely! Passing my local polling station this morning made me feel sprightly and lithe again. Though the pro-Beijing workers picking up elderly voters in buses missed one. 

Some last-minute commentary on the quasi-elections…

Hong Kong Watch…

Johnny Patterson : “These sham elections are a farce. The Communist Party in Beijing decided that an easy way of winning the election would be to lock up the entire opposition and rig the rules. This is not a democratic vote, it is a propaganda exercise which has no legitimacy.”

Human Rights Watch.

After banning, putting behind bars, and forcing pro-democracy candidates into exile, there is – for the first time – no genuine competition in the LegCo elections.

In classic doublespeak, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam – who owes her own political rise to profoundly undemocratic processes – praised the “overhaul” of the LegCo electoral system for enabling “broad representation” and “political inclusion.”

The Diplomat…

Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her cabinet cannot convince Hong Kongers that taking away their right to nominate LegCo candidates is an “improvement.”

Your final reminder that the Hong Kong government desperately wants you to vote in the ‘election’ on Sunday even though it has put the most popular candidates in jail – the ICAC charges two people with ‘inciting others’ to boycott the poll or cast blank ballots’. Meanwhile, Beijing seems to be adopting the line that to disagree or not participate with the patriots-only elections process is to be a tool of foreign forces.

The Hong Kong government – the one planning a law against ‘fake news’ – plays dumb when caught peddling misinformation. (Speaking of which, a comment on police claims about the power of airguns they seized in their pre-election anti-terrorism bust.)

And more on the disappearance of plans to make Hong Kong streets more pedestrian-friendly.

Some Sunday reading…

From Samuel Bickett – Hong Kong, you’re so extraterritorial – including a good primer on how countries apply laws outside their jurisdiction.

A paywalled article in WSJ on Xi Jinping’s micromanagement, issuing sometimes cryptic instructions ‘that officials go overboard trying to carry out’. Examples include the clampdowns on private tutoring and property developers, and the plan to punish Hong Kong companies that comply with US sanctions – initially supported by Carrie Lam but later abandoned after CH Tung appealed directly to Xi.

Some bureaucrats, unsure how far to push Mr. Xi’s priorities, err on the side of aggressive interpretation, 

“When loyalty is the critical measure for officials, no one dares to say anything, even if the instructions from the great leader are vague and confusing about what to do,” one official said.

Sounds familiar to anyone observing Hong Kong’s Covid policies, the campaign to stop people from encouraging an election boycott, and much more.

How singer and actor Julian Cheung’s 15-year-old son upset delicate Mainlanders…

…unhappy Chinese netizens questioned Morton’s political stance and even accused him of being pro-Hongkong independence, since his answer implies that Hongkong is not part of China.

Things apparently got so intense that his mum had to step in and issue a clarification.

A Hill op-ed proposing sanctions against the Olympic bureaucrats for helping Beijing obscure human rights violations…

To say that the IOC has become a tool of the Party is too generous – it is now a junior partner in the commission of an ongoing rights violation and thus shares responsibility for it. 

ASPI paper on China’s use of foreign social media influencers to push its bright-and-rosy picture of life in Xinjiang. Summary here.

The Guardian does a big feature on home-grown influencer/mega-bore Global Times editor Hu Xijin – including an interesting history of GT itself. Hu then gets ‘retired’, possibly for comments on the Peng Shuai affair (CMP article also includes an intro to his successor).

Beijing is further tightening controls over opinions and personalities online, now shutting down some 20,000 ‘top influencer accounts’. It’s all about ‘guidance’.

Asia Nikkei on Xi Jinping’s embrace of Bo Xilai’s Chongqing housing policy.

George Magnus in New Statesman on Evergrande and the coming difficult decade for China…

[The property sector] faces years of adjustment shaped by a kaleidoscope of excessive debt, rapidly ageing demographics, low marriage and fertility rates, historic overbuilding and the risk of falling prices…

China’s leaders have to choose, now or very soon, between two poor options: deflate the bubble by accepting debt write-offs, bankruptcies and weak growth (or even a recession); or allow inflation to rise and thereby lower the value and burden of debt, which may be no less disruptive as it could entail financial instability, capital flight and a significant depreciation of the renminbi.

Foreign Policy offers a fairly brutal analysis of why Pakistan’s Gwadar port hasn’t taken off as a Belt and Road mega-hub-zone…

Pakistan—like Djibouti, Kenya, and Sri Lanka—assumed that China’s Shenzhen or Shekou model is not only replicable but also plug and play. This discounts the fundamentally different natures of the Chinese and Pakistani states. China is an authoritarian, hierarchical, developmental state. Pakistan is a semi-democratic, disaggregated rentier state marred by criminality and incompetence from the top down … [which] simply lacks the will to create value in the global economy. It is largely focused on extracting from its populace and foreign donors. 

Brief author interview on a forthcoming book, Multiracial Britishness: Global Networks in Hong Kong, 1910-45, by Vivian Kong.

On an irrelevant subject – the The Jean-Paul Sartre cookbook.

More frantic and clunkily obvious reminders from the Hong Kong government that they are freaked out at the prospect of an embarrassingly low turnout at Sunday’s Legislative Council ‘election’. Security Secretary PK Tang suggests that ‘coercing people into not voting’ might be against the NatSec Law. He then piles on more reasons to stay clear of polling stations by adding…

“We’ll also target lone-wolf style attacks in strategic locations. Such attacks are hard to detect from intelligence monitoring. We’ll conduct searches of suspicious people.”

(Is it against the NatSec Law to repost anything about Joey Siu’s ReleaseMyCandidate campaign?)

There are more arrests of people ‘inciting’ others not to vote. And Beijing’s local officials are blaming hostile foreign forces for undermining the poll.

The private sector is joining in. Bus companies and the MTR are waiving all fares on election day. Some media and other groups are sponsoring ads encouraging the public to vote. And KPMG are offering staff an extra day’s leave if they cast a ballot – though the leaked email suggests that a mere declaration is the best they can demand as proof. 

KPMG’s last-minute pre-emptive shoe-shine was imaginative (for accountants) and likely to trigger panic in other companies now left in the position of not making a similar gesture, thus running the risk of appearing disloyal to the authorities. Is there still time for HSBC and others to hurriedly incentivize (incite?) local employees to vote?

As usual before a big exciting event – in this case the quasi-election no-one much cares about – the HK Police find a scary cache of weapons, including airguns, pellets and axes. The public are invited to assume the materiel might be connected to some sort of planned terrorist attack related to the snore-inducing poll. 

As with the free-transport gimmick, this will hardly encourage people to vote. Why go near polling stations if lunatic extremists with BB guns are plotting to target them? But it adds to the ambience of crisis, ever-present threats and lurking evildoers, and presumably justifies a massive police presence and overtime bill on Sunday.

Just in case you’re still not put off, the election also has a dress code.

The exercise will be so dull (nearly all candidates are pro-government while most opposition politicians are in jail) that overseas media find it interesting, at least a bit. France 24 is the latest with a report.

Many of the opposition figures in jail have not been found guilty of anything, yet have been denied bail since February. The Court of Final Appeal has decided that a near-automatic presumption against the granting of bail is OK, even if defendants are not charged under the National Security Law. Discussion and link to CFA ruling here.

After monitoring the Tong Ying-kit trial, the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s Trial Watch issues a report on how the NatSec Law is used to ‘supercharge’ cases (brief summary here). Tong’s trial also gets a mention in the UK government’s latest report on Hong Kong – denounced as interference blah blah by local and Beijing officials, who interpret the timing as another plot to undermine the ‘election’ no-one even cares about.

Traumatized-Kids-Gate continues to unfold (background here; Standard editorial reflects typical reaction). As the first NatSec horror to be inflicted specifically on small children, this has been the most embarrassing for the authorities. Or it would be if they had any shame or awareness. The Guardian notes…

Hong Kong’s education authorities sought to distance themselves from the incident.

…and indeed shift the blame onto teachers for not using their ‘judgement’. Most schools would no doubt love to distance themselves from patriotic brainwashing, but dare not in the NatSec-era climate. If a teacher deviates from the Education Bureau’s guidance notes for new political indoctrination classes, someone might call a secret police snitch line and report them. The education bureaucrats who wrote the materials also have Beijing’s NatSec officials breathing down their necks. Everyone is trying desperately to conform to the new order for fear of getting the Ta Kung Pao treatment. Not exposing the little kiddies to beheadings would have been a risk.

That NatSec ethos of people being too afraid to think for themselves extends well beyond teaching. Which brings us to Lai and other activists getting prison terms for ‘organising, taking part in, or inciting others to participate in’ the Tiananmen Massacre vigil last year. The prosecution and court maintain that it’s all about Covid and public health – nothing political, OK? For a different view, don’t miss the different but equally powerful statements in Jimmy Lai’s letter to the court and Chow Hang-tung’s mitigation.

Hong Kong’s Security Secretary warns that a nightmarish horde of evils – anti-China disruptors, destructive forces and lurking foreigners – are deliberately obstructing the holding of a successful election. Putting previous winning candidates in jail has nothing to do with it.

Even lurking foreigners who are lurking overseas are not safe. Hong Kong trade bureaucrats based in London, who used to focus on deepening economic ties with the UK, now threaten the Sunday Times with legal penalties for incitement to boycott the election.

Back in Hong Kong, officials remind schools to traumatize six-year-olds with care when making them patriotic. 

Lawyer Samuel Bickett critiques the guilty verdict against Jimmy Lai for June 4 vigil  ‘incitement’…

It is often the case that seasoned activists commit offenses to highlight the injustice of the law they are breaking. That may have been the case with Chow and Ho, two long-time activists who I admire deeply. But with Lai, there is no evidence whatsoever that he incited anyone to attend the assembly. Instead, Judge Woodcock appears to have convicted him simply for being a famous political opponent of the government. And in her written Reasons for Verdict, she did little to hide it…

…The ruling is plainly, insidiously wrong as a matter of law.

Maybe at least the Court of Final Appeal will help protect citizens from abuses of power, right? Or maybe not. The Court refuses to overturn a refusal of bail for five speech therapists accused of sedition – ‘bringing into hatred or contempt or to exciting disaffection’ against the government – by publishing kids’ picture books about sheep.

Some apologists for the NatSec regime imply that the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms and rule of law are worth it because we will get better governance. Which brings us to a nasty accident in Central’s Staunton Street that leaves one dead. As with many parts of Hong Kong, if you go through this crowded area with its lack of sidewalk space, you might wonder why cars are allowed in it at all – let alone to go up and park in steep cul-de-sacs. Anyway, the key thing: the government has apparently disappeared a proposal to pedestrianize parts of Soho.

(Prediction: the Anti-Pedestrian Dept will erect signage throughout the area saying ‘Engage handbrake when parking illegally’.)

Some links to get us through to mid-week…

HKFP op-ed on the Hong Kong government’s fear that overseas domestic workers might get paid half-decently.

‘How the West invited China to eat its lunch’ – the BBC’s economics editor looks at the (with hindsight) naive decision 20 years ago to let China into the WTO.

The Economist (paywalled) columnist Chaguan on the CCP’s claims to have a more perfect and effective democracy than the West’s version… 

If controlling covid gives Mr Xi a mandate, were his predecessors illegitimate when officials spent months mishandling an earlier deadly disease, sars? If the economy slows will the party, by its own logic, still deserve to rule?

Glossy magazines for adolescent girls aren’t what they used to be:Teen Vogue looks at the women around the world urging a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

History Today on the creation of a national language for China…

To imagine the process of creating a Chinese national language as a close vote and a regional power struggle is to ignore how these men actually conceived of a ‘Chinese language’: not as one language among many, but a linguistic representative of the nation’s soul. The question these reformers were asking was not ‘which fangyan do we choose?’ but ‘how do we encapsulate what it means to be Chinese in a spoken language?’ 

At first the authorities seemed to fear a low turnout at Hong Kong’s December 19 quasi-election as a sign that the exercise lacks legitimacy. Then Carrie Lam suggested that she might welcome a mere trickle of voters as an indication of near-universal contentment with her administration. And now it’s Friday, and we’re back to denouncing the prospect of a poor showing at the polling stations… 

“Foreign forces using whatever means and excuses trying to interfere in Hong Kong’s Legco elections will be fought back by the Chinese government,” warned Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong Liu Guangyuan on Thursday.

And the ICAC is arresting more people who share a Facebook post containing forbidden ideas – ‘inciting’ voters to boycott or spoil their ballots (both legal actions). 

On the subject of ‘incitement’, Jimmy Lai, Gwyneth Ho and Chow Hang-tung are found guilty after pleading innocent to unauthorized assembly charges (aimed not only at pro-democrats but at the annual June 4 Tiananmen massacre vigil). 

Samuel Bickett on the verdict against Jimmy Lai…

“Incitement requires that there be actual communication.” See [this 1994 Law Reform Commission report] (citing R v. Banks, (1873) 12 Cox CC). This is a pretty fundamental black letter legal point that any first year law student can state. It is exceedingly unlikely the judge didn’t know this.

Which brings us to former lawmaker Dennis Kwok – on the end of ‘One Country, Two Systems’…

Hong Kong’s experience has taught us that freedom without democratic governance is ultimately unsustainable, and trusting those in power to act with restraint is futile. 

The Spectator looks at how China is turning in on itself.

A couple of out-of-area pieces for the weekend…

It’s not your ears – film-makers really are making movies with harder-to-hear dialogue. Why? Because, basically, they can.

And for fans of scathing reviews of restaurants – the ‘worst Michelin place we ever went to’…

Maybe the staff just ran out of food that night. Maybe they confused our table with that of their ex-lover’s. Maybe they were drunk. But we got twelve kinds of foam, something that I can only describe as “an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport”, and a teaspoon of savory ice cream that was olive flavored.