Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Hong Kong’s incoming Chief Executive John Lee’s ‘election’ platform will be ready within a  week. Odd that no-one had already bothered to cut and paste something from his predecessors’ pseudo-manifestos – but it’s always very much an afterthought, for show. 

(The only seriously drafted policy plans were those of CY Leung, who mysteriously got on the ballot when Beijing’s Jiang-era leadership prepared to appoint tycoon Henry Tang as a Tung Chee-hwa Mk II. It actually contained some well thought-out initiatives on welfare and other issues. Then Xi Jinping emerged as China’s new leader, Tang’s illegal basement conveniently came to light, and CY got the job at the last minute – and promptly embarked on a different hyper-patriotic agenda.)

A fawning SCMP op-ed lists all the things Lee should do as CE: reopen the city post-Covid, tackle housing, heal social divisions, etc. It duly notes that Lee has no experience in economics. Indeed, his only skill-set is raiding, arresting and jailing opponents and critics. If Beijing wanted someone with different expertise, it could have found such a person. If Beijing had wanted a CE to fix land/housing, it could have told Tung, Tsang, Leung or Lam to do so anytime over the last 25 years. Lee is not here to return Hong Kong to its old free and pluralist ways.

For an idea of Lee’s mission, consider the story of the viral video Voices of April…

“It’s just a record of actual events, what good does it do to censor it? Originally, we were just sad, not angry. Now it’s a revolt of the people. A cover-up only makes matters worse.”

In their desperation, censors ended up declaring the video a ‘color revolution’.

(Among the weirder vids from the Mainland – workers in hazmat suits bludgeoning bundles of green onion to death. Reportedly in Shanghai as a pretext to toss the veg for some reason.)

Would you be surprised to learn that China’s Covid ‘tsar’ has ties to the company making the quack voodoo medicine the government sent us all? Or would you be more surprised to learn that he hadn’t?

HKFP op-ed on the absurd wastefulness of the quasi-election.

Major rants beckon. Beijing and supporters get exceptionally worked up over Google’s closure of John Lee’s YouTube channel, with the Foreign Affairs Ministry saying the US is undermining…

…freedom of expression, freedom of information dissemination and the fairness and impartiality of the internet [and] “trying every trick in the book to intervene in Hong Kong affairs with the evil motive of obstructing the chief executive election…”

A Hong Kong government statement makes the same point, albeit at greater length.

Almost as if YouTube were available in the Mainland, and the ‘election’ were, well, an actual election open to manipulation by outside forces. Not sure where the ‘accusation is a confession’ quote comes from, but it could be the motto of China’s official spokesmen.

(More contrived rage and fury courtesy of a Standard editorial. The SCMP in its parallel universe worries that the ban will impact Lee’s ‘campaign’ fundraising efforts.)

And a group of academics nominate political prisoners Jimmy Lai, Lee Cheuk-yan, Joshua Wong, Gwyneth Chow and Chow Hang-tung for the Nobel Peace Prize. Expect an outburst of official mouth-frothing any minute. Watch out for references to ‘blasphemy’ against the ‘sacred’ Nobel Prize institution, or similar verbal pyrotechnics that draw global attention to the very things Beijing wants to downplay.

Some weekend links…

A qualitative study on why Hong Kong old folks won’t get vaccinated. Includes the phrase ‘peripheral information processing’, which I had to look up. It means being persuaded by the style rather than content of a message. You’re welcome!

ZolimaCityMag on the Chi Ma Wan Trail, which features – among other attractions – a fascinating abandoned prison with an old canteen you can peer into. One of the hike’s big draws is that not many people go on it – so don’t feel you have to check it out.

AP casts a skeptical eye on Shanghai’s low Covid death figures.

Taiwan’s National Defense Handbook in English.

War on the Rocks presents eight ways Taiwan can make itself impregnable against a Chinese invasion.

Foreign Policy on how China could continue expanding its military even as its economy slows…

…military power is often a lagging indicator of a country’s trajectory: It takes time to turn money into military muscle, and massive buildups often persist even after a country’s economic fortunes begin to flag … The China of the 2020s will be a country whose coercive capabilities are more intimidating than ever as its economic dynamism fades. That could be the worst possible combination for the world.

ScaryMommy on the ‘no shoes indoors’ debate. A bit like the ‘face masks during Covid’ hoohah, but with more racial undertones.

Also about footwear, sort of… A fairly long academic read on Sugarcane Cultivation and the Demise of Foot-Binding in Taiwan in the early 20th century. Touches on Japanese colonial rule, industrial rail lines and the costs/benefits for women of being able to walk properly. (Either you’re into this sort of thing or you’re not.)

On more distant matters, a 1968 UK TV documentary featuring liberal anglo white women in apartheid South Africa, like Nadine Gordimer and Helen Suzman – plus some very laid-back businessmen.

Do you really want to go there, Erick? Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Secretary Tsang says last December’s 30% turnout in the patriots-only legislative elections was not low, compared with New York state and French regional polls. As for the more obvious comparison – the over-70% turnout and eradication of pro-Beijing candidates in district elections in 2019 – he opines…

“When we look at the so-called higher voter turnout previously, we shouldn’t forget that it was when society was the most divided and experiencing its darkest time with violence raging across the city, and many anti-China disruptors had attempted to enter the legislature, or even the establishment.”

Is a (‘so-called’) high turnout the cause or effect of a ‘darkest time’? 

‘Fast Beat’ Tam Tak-chi gets 40 months in jail for ‘seditious words’. As with prosecuting suggestions of election boycotts, this is plain criminalization of opinion. John Lee meanwhile complains that YouTube has taken down his channel. Pro-Beijing lawmaker Holden Chow waffles…

“The move involves foreign forces blatantly interfering with Hong Kong’s election. I am strongly condemning the social media platform which completely turned a blind eye to the importance of a fair and just election.”

Which brings us to the HKFP Editor-in-Chief on how impartial news media should describe the quasi-election.

If it is editorializing to describe the process as a sham, isn’t it equally editorializing to adopt the government’s phraseology, at least without quote marks? But isn’t it in fact entirely objective and accurate to call the process a sham? The evidence being a century of Leninist practice: the CCP core by definition does not allow other people, even a ‘small circle’, to choose senior state office-holders; thus a process like John Lee’s appointment cannot logically be a genuine election – even if there were more than one ‘candidate’.

I think if I were trying to have journalistic integrity (God forbid) and if brevity were not an issue, I would take the same approach as the European Union’s tedious authentic foodstuffs labeling requirements and call this an ‘imitation election-type exercise that contains no democratic ingredients’.

Incoming Chief Executive John Lee’s ‘election’ ‘campaign’ announces an ‘advisory committee’ of mainly male, mainly elderly, wealthy pro-establishment stalwarts including tycoons Li Ka-shing, Lee Shau-kee and Henry Cheng. 

To the naive, it looks like the new CE will be in the pocket of developers. But anyone who knows how these things work (and that the CCP distrusts these plutocrats) will understand that the aim is to make the tycoons publicly align themselves with Lee. Any advising will be from the regime to the old shoe-shiner ‘elites’ – not vice-versa. A separate ‘presidium’ contains similar figures, but mostly with NPC/CPPCC membership. Lee, of course, will be answering to ‘advisors’ from Beijing. (Standard story.) Bear this in mind when CE Lee (or his ‘advisors’) pick Executive Council members.

Two people get suspended two-month sentences for sharing a Facebook post by exiled activist Ted Hui urging a boycott of the December Legislative Council election (turnout: 30%). This now counts as ‘incitement’. The next step presumably will be to prosecute people merely for reading a Ted Hui post.

Wow – this’ll work. Hong Kong Correctional Services are attempting to deradicalize political prisoners by making them watch TVB documentaries about the glorious motherland. Former inmates…

…told VOA Cantonese that while serving their sentences, authorities forced them to watch video clips praising China as government social workers tried to change their political views.

Cruel and unusual punishment? Or a cunning subversive plot to reinforce dissidents’ hatred of the CCP (or at least TVB)? (Is it ethical for social workers to take part in this? Do the authorities use pro-Beijing social workers?)

Will the same fate await Mainland expert Zhong Nanshan, who published a short article in National Science Review saying that China cannot continue with ‘zero Covid’ in the long term and recommending the use of Western vaccines? Authorities have censored it in translation in local media. Dry, academic article here. More Mainland Covid censorship here.

John Lee wins Hong Kong’s Chief Executive ‘election’ before it even takes place. Being the sole ‘candidate’ makes life easier for him, and for ‘voters’ and ‘polling station’ staff, not to mention forecasters. (And yes, there will still be a ‘polling station’ at the Exhibition and Convention Centre, in which ‘elites’ will humiliate themselves trying to look important while pretending to cast ballots.) 

In the absence of a policy platform (one is coming), Lee has embraced the phrase ‘result-oriented’ – apparently in connection with getting the civil service to fix outstanding problems. He takes the opportunity to expand… 

“What I will do is, first of all, I will create this team spirit and I will be asking them to do things that will create results. And then through this process of seeing results and then reinforcing with more results, the culture will be built. It will be progressive. That is important.”

Yup – consider housing, health, welfare and education woes solved! (The new CE’s written communication can be fixed, but we will have to learn to love his leaden police/Beijing-loyalist style of speech.)

Let’s see how the international media who slavishly (and inexplicably) use the official fictional nomenclature of a Hong Kong CE ‘election’ with a ’campaign’ and ’voters’ handle the only-one-’candidate’-’running’ charade. Will they finally stop calling it an ‘election’ and find a more accurate description of a CCP appointment ceremony? And if not, why not? Where are the fact-checkers on this? 

More of the backlog of links that accumulated over the long weekend…

Simon Lee on the life and times of his former boss, Jimmy Lai.

The woes of the decrepit-iconic Star Ferry.

Three books – all touching on the 2019 uprising, often drawing on personal experience and/or deep historical contexts: Kevin Carrico’s Two Countries, One System on the changes in identity in Hong Kong since 2011; Karen Cheung’s Impossible City, extending into memoir; and Lousia Lim’s Indelible City, examining the city’s historical sense of self (dedicated to…). 

And for younger readers, from HKFP, a free online kids’ book on Covid, Bobby Baboon.

Even though the Hong Kong (and Shanghai) authorities have sent residents millions of boxes of Lianhua Qingwen quack voodoo dried-toad anti-heaty pills, the company’s shares collapse.

Minxin Pei on the biggest likely losers from deglobalization…

One cannot blame Western democracies or their autocratic adversaries for prioritizing security over economic welfare. But they must brace for the economic consequences. And a middle-income autocracy like China will bear a far larger cost than rich democracies like the US and its European allies.

Thread on United Front and similar activity against Hong Kong migrants in the UK.

Chinese state media have become amusingly obsessive about online translation of embarrassing ultra-nationalist Mainland social media posts that expose the gap between Beijing’s overseas and domestic messaging. Global Times alone blasts the practice as ‘intentionally misreading, misinterpreting Chinese materials’, a ‘despicable smear campaign’, and depicting Chinese people as ‘arrogant, populist, cruel and bloodthirsty’.

As one commentator puts it…

#TheGreatTranslationMovement enrages Beijing b/c it’s 1) spontaneous, decentralized activism CCP can’t abide 2) anonymous, so smear campaigns lack bite 3) led by overseas Han, whom PRC considers ‘property’ (4) popular and beyond its control (5) very hard to logically refute.

Former Chief Executive CY Leung claims that people leaving Hong Kong because of the NatSec regime are ‘relocating’ rather than ‘migrating’… 

Leung said the authorities could help to clear up misunderstandings such people may have about political developments in Hong Kong.

Of course – it’s because they’re stupid.

“They don’t want to give up their Hong Kong identity, and this shows that they want to keep the option of returning one day,” he argued, adding that those leaving have “relocated” to other countries but not migrated.

The telling points are that he implicitly accepts that NatSec is convincing people to go, and that it would be desirable that they return. But unlike the pre-1997 brain drain, today’s movement is not about individuals qualifying for a passport as a family insurance policy – they are selling homes and taking their kids away to start new lives.

Factwire looks at the business connections of John Lee’s sons. In fairness, it would be hard to work in any major local companies that do not have ‘Election Committee’ members among owners or senior management. Indeed – without wishing to sound like a snobbish former Company Gwailo – the Lee boys’ connections are rather underwhelming. (Sniff.)

Oiwan Lam on the next CE…

If Carrie Lam’s mistake is bad political judgment, John Lee would not repeat that mistake as he is more unlikely to make his own political judgment.

…the political purge will likely continue and may further be extended to major social institutions in the name of counter-terrorism and counter-external forces…

You do not choose an ex-cop if you want someone who has his own ideas – just someone who snaps to attention and says ‘Yes sir!’ Looking at the public discontent in Shanghai, I can’t help wondering if Carrie Lam and her (non-ex-cop) colleagues countered Beijing officials’ insistence on a lockdown by warning of another 2019-style uprising if Hongkongers were forced to go through such a nightmare. Which brings us to…

Anne Stevenson-Yang in Forbes on China’s ‘governance implosion’…

Even the 1989 Tiananmen uprising did not affect as many people as the Covid lockdowns.

…Venerable as they may be, the “theories” of General Secretary Xi do not cure COVID.

Unfortunately, rather than forcing the government to make the most obvious adjustment to the visible realities of the situation, the backlash is more likely to reinforce the Party’s sense of being under siege.

…The Party is locked down in its own self-made policy claims and propaganda. The botched lockdowns and flow of damaging videos and testimonials undermine Xi’s core messages: infallibility of the Party and total focus on the welfare of the people.

However, a CNN op-ed believes that Beijing will propagandize its way out of the mess…

…some argue that China has painted itself into a corner where it now needs to uphold its stringent policy, after reveling for two years in the success of “zero-Covid,” while scaremongering about the virus and generating broad support for the policy.

Huang puts it this way: “We should never underestimate the government capacity to redefine its narrative to sustain the public support. And we should never underestimate the people’s tolerance, even for policies that harm their interest.”

Given that the Chinese people have meekly absorbed disasters like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, I would guess the CNN prediction will be right. Blame it all on evil foreign forces.

Also Forbes on China’s apparent manipulation of Covid statistics…

Even sticking to [data officially reported by the Chinese government], obvious problems emerge. In some cases, the data is incomplete. In others, it is highly implausible. And some of what is reported cannot possibly be true. 

…One might wonder how China can claim a Covid mortality rate 30 times lower than Korea’s, 50 times lower than Singapore’s? Or 73 times lower than New Zealand’s (since April 2020)? 

…Tens of thousands of officially reported Covid cases throughout China (since April 2020) that have not resulted in a single death attributed to Covid? This is not possible, and not believable. China’s countermeasures, however extreme, have no effect on mortality once someone is infected. 

Interesting thread on the topic. A grim graphic of deaths in Shanghai from Covid-measures. And the BBC on deaths among the elderly.

(The latest word is that authorities in Shanghai are now admitting a handful of Covid fatalities.)

Even the SCMP’s laboriously pro-Beijing Canada-based Alex Lo finds fault…

China’s zero-Covid success in the past two years is proving to be less than meets the eye. Its relentless and cruel application in Shanghai, the country’s richest city, is showing the world the ugly side of locking down millions. It is also looking increasingly pointless. 

The (probably paywalled) Economist’s intro to a story on Beijing’s zero-Covid fetish in Shanghai… 

It is often said that China’s government plans decades ahead, carefully playing the long game as democracies flip-flop and dither. But in Shanghai right now there is not much sign of strategic genius.

…The zero-covid policy has become a dead end from which the Communist Party has no quick exit.

It is one of a trio of problems faced by China this year, alongside a misfiring economy and the war in Ukraine. You may think they are unconnected, but China’s response to each has a common root: swagger and hubris in public, an obsession with control in private, and dubious results. Rather than being the product of statecraft with the Yellow Emperor’s time horizon, China’s actions reflect an authoritarian system under Xi Jinping that struggles to calibrate policy or admit when it is wrong

Beijing’s gullible apologists have long pushed the idea of Chinese leadership’s profound mystical oriental wisdom and ultra-long-term thinking in dimensions beyond barbarians’ comprehension. Others have known for decades – they’re making it up as they go along.

Your daily dose of pessimism about Beijing’s choice of new Chief Executive for Hong Kong, from the Diplomat…

Despite the false optimism that has been expressed by some in the international community who seek to find a positive story in Lam’s exit, her successor will likely be worse. 

NatSec horrors du jour: the HK Journalists Association considers disbanding, the disciplining of teachers in the wake of 2019, and a guy gets 16 months in prison for protesting against the (never really punished) Yuen Long mob attack on MTR passengers on July 21, 2019.

TVB’s cringe-making response to criticism that an ethnic Chinese actor in black-face played a Philippine domestic helper. People seem shocked – as if no-one would imagine that this dinosaur schlock-media company stuck in the 1980s would do such a thing.

And don’t these morons ever go away? Bunch of car bores again want the government to devote a huge chunk of land to the world’s second-most mind-numbing sport…

“We need a motor racing circuit as part of a modern city…”

Unserious question: can’t they combine a motor-racing circuit with a golf course? A tedious-pastime hub-zone that wastes land and wrecks the environment efficiently.

Some Easter reading…

Podiums are cool! The M+ museum looks at Hong Kong’s high-density residential design, and makes it sound quite visionary and trendy.

From ASPI Strategist, how China’s United Front system extends influence overseas.

And from CNN, Beijing tries to stop pro-Putin domestic propaganda from leaking out onto international platforms (notably this one) – the perils of sending different messages to different audiences.

A Taipei Times op-ed asks: have you joined the Kowtow Club yet? Sure, ‘public groveling may significantly affect your self-worth and damage your reputation’ – but think of the money.

On more distant matters…

Serious Atlantic analysis of the choices now facing the US and the West in Ukraine…

What explains the desperate throw of the dice by the Russian high command? One may assume that neither Putin, nor his senior advisers, nor even senior subordinate commanders have an accurate picture of the situation on the ground. They know that they have been humiliated, but they do not have a feel of the battlefield. As stewards of a military that cannot adequately care for its wounded and that abandons its dead, they don’t care about the human price they are paying. In a system built on lies and corruption, they receive or pass on falsely optimistic information. Having sought to upend the notion of truth in the West, they now fall victim to their own pervasive untruths.

Foreign Affairs on how Putin underestimated the West.

And a former US Army Europe commander on the transformation of the Ukraine military.

John Lee says…

…he has to finish writing his manifesto and that he may not be able to cover every area. But, he added, it … does not mean he is not concerned about whatever area is not mentioned.

Yeah, y’know, I really really care about, like, whatever, dude. Article 23, however, is to get priority treatment. It will presumably enhance the NatSec regime’s ability to punish criticism, currently limited to two-year sentences under the archaic but recently heavily used sedition law.

If anyone should be arrested for sedition, it must be John Lee’s hair stylist. But instead it’s activist Koo Sze-yiu, who gets prosecuted – for planning to protest against the Winter Olympics.

Nikkei Asia sees a depressing, security-obsessed future…

…the local and central governments seem afraid that a significant segment of the [Hong Kong] population is out to get them. Citizens, in turn, fear the Beijing-imposed national security law and the risk of winding up in prison for saying the wrong thing.

…The 64-year-old Lee’s career has focused exclusively on policing and security. He has little experience relevant to the finance and business sectors that power the economy, nor knowledge of social issues such as housing. His rise is unlikely to restore waning global confidence in the financial hub’s reputation, business executives and bankers told Nikkei Asia.

…Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, said Hong Kong was undergoing a process of “mainlandization” that cannot be challenged or reversed. 

If you thought the Great Plague-Spreading Hamster Slaughter was a one-off… Hefty penalties for quarantine patients not handing their pets over to the Covid Police for ‘follow-up’. Fines, too, for anyone helping furry friends avoid enforcement. As with flights and travel, Beijing insists that Hong Kong acts like a part of China, not like part of the rest of the world.

At the other end of the reputation-scale – can’t believe how good Ukraine is at PR.

Today’s headlines: journalist Allan Au arrested (translation of journalism students’ statement), pro-democracy local brand Chickeeduck to close, Yeung Sum out of prison. Also a rumour that another veteran journalist has had his passport seized. There are no passenger flights today into Hong Kong from the Americas, Europe, Australasia, the Middle East or Africa. That leaves Asia and Antarctica.

Writing in China Daily, often-candid academic and think-tanker Lau Siu-kai perhaps unwittingly conveys the extent of Beijing’s paranoia about Hong Kong and the world in general…

…the new CE must be able to unite, strengthen and empower the patriots so that the patriotic camp can function as a cohesive combative army in support of the HKSAR government and against the offensives of the internal and external hostile forces.

Doesn’t sound much like Asia’s world city/international business hub.

Reading between the lines (a bit), Lau indicates that Beijing has picked John Lee as someone who will obey its directives without being distracted by outdated policies, tycoons, foreigners, and similar Administrative Officer foibles. Priorities are National Security, then integration with China, and – if there’s any time left – maybe sorting out those ‘deep-rooted’ housing and social problems.

Note the repeated references to ‘Eurasia’ – presumably a Sino-Russian anti-Western sphere Beijing’s visionary foreign-affairs fantasists expect to see forming. And take a very deep breath before embarking on the exhaustive, tortuous final sentence. 

If you haven’t seen it – Parts 1 and 2 of the video One Way, about the Chow family’s relocation from Hong Kong to grimy-looking Crewe, England. They look like the sort of people who rush to do something largely because others are doing it. Nonetheless, they are adapting, and their kid is enjoying a less high-pressure school life. Story here (includes links to YouTube). 

I saw a report that some emigre Hongkongers are shocked to find that harsh discipline of kids is frowned on in the UK, so they are resorting to threats to go back to Hong Kong’s schools and housing to keep the little ones in check.

The week starts with some light tawdry tittle-tattle gossip trivia from an international company’s office in Central. A woman working for the company lives with her father and has a cat. The father tests positive for Covid. Fearing for the well-being of the feline, she reports her beloved Dad to the authorities, who duly whisk him away for days and days in some isolation facility. Upon his release, the gentleman kicks the daughter out of the family home (and who wouldn’t?, you may feel). The woman also apparently has a small son, but there’s no more info on that. Maybe she’s sold the kid to buy cat food. I will spare everyone further details. Or pass on more as I receive them. Whatever.

How much taxpayers’ money does the Hong Kong government need to spend on a make-believe poll that produces a result decided – probably months ago – in Beijing? According to HKFP, the authorities budgeted HK$228 million this fiscal year for the Chief Election ‘election’, and the five-week delay (due to Covid) will somehow add another HK$50 million. 

Surely you can’t spend HK$278 million on an exercise in which 1,400 people pretend to cast a ballot? Nearly HK$200,000 per cosplay voter. But they can. It goes on hiring venues, manning polling and counting stations, mailing, and renting storage space.

The Diplomat on Beijing’s choice…

The central government’s selection of Lee clearly indicates that it puts a higher priority on security issues over Hong Kong citizens’ livelihood matters, as well as the city’s economy and its status as a global financial center.

…the selection of Hong Kong’s chief executive may just be the latest in a series of policy decisions by Beijing leading to self-inflicted hardship. Beijing appears driven by paranoia over security and absolute state control, with a high dose of insecurity, leading it to ignore all the side effects of its extreme and draconian measures.

The weird thing is that Hong Kong should not be a hard place to run. If its leaders just don’t do stupid things, a resourceful population and all those traditional advantages we can list by heart should make the place pretty successful. Which brings us to TransitJam on how the once-a-week ‘Water Taxi’ is essentially another ‘food truck’ dud – a minor but potentially positive initiative delivered in such a way as to make it useless. This time with government subsidies…

…[ferry operator] CKS has been subsidised with free pier rental, free vessel licensing and is allowed to earn income from sub-letting its pier space.

Yes – there has to be a real-estate boondoggle somewhere in there.

Some reports say that the lockdown mayhem in Shanghai is subsiding; others that Guangzhou and other cities are next. An AP report from Shanghai…

“[The government] bragged too hard to their own people about how wonderful they are, and now they’ve painted themselves into a corner.” 

And a SupChina interview with Geremie Barme on the ranting old Shanghai guy and the ‘empire of tedium’…

…the Communists present this façade of unbelievable unanimity and monolithic unity. A decade ago, some Party thinkers and leaders tried to edge their way towards substantive change that would allow China to develop a kind of social maturity that was more concomitant with its impressive economic achievements. Instead, Xi et al prefer a state of paternalistic infantilization. Now, the whole world is also held hostage to the tedious panoply of the past.

…Here is China, having achieved in the terms of its own modern history, unprecedented riches, hard-won (if draconian) social stability, extraordinary achievements in every major field of pursuit, yet it is as brittle, bitter, self-absorbed, and neurotic a nation as it has been at any other time since the end of the Qing dynasty.