Big Lychee, Various Sectors

The government’s appeal to bar an overseas lawyer from defending Jimmy Lai takes place tomorrow. Commentary in the state-owned local press rails against foreign counsel as NatSec threats and suggests sending Lai to the Mainland for trial.

Hong Kong’s NatSec enforcers have a big budget and manpower. They must find more than Jimmy Lai and pro-dem politicians to arrest and prosecute, even the obscure or pitiful. From yesterday, anthem-related ‘sedition’ (commenting and sharing posts online) cases in which an 18-year-old pleads guilty and a 42-year-old courier is denied bail. Among other things, how much are these trials and detentions costing taxpayers?

Is it more than Covid testing, or less? Weird statistic of the day: Hong Kong produces 55 tonnes of used RAT tests per day. (Trying to picture how big a pile that would be – the kits can’t weigh more than an ounce a piece. What’s the total for China? On a related matter, things getting wild at the Foxconn plant. Background here.)

With hopes of a quiet Friday so I can finish Kevin Carrico’s book – some weekend reading…

Diplomat interview with Andrew Small, author of No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War with the West. 

Journal of Democracy on Xi Jinping’s move away from prioritizing the economy…

Had [Xi] chosen to continue the economy-centered program rather than introduce the “struggle for security,” he would have had no excuse to stay in power, and the Twentieth Party Congress would have witnessed his handover of power to someone else. 

CSIS paper on why invading Taiwan would be more trouble than it’s worth for Beijing.

Like the proverbial rottweiler with its throat-clamping jaws, Hong Kong’s Justice Dept goes to the courts for a fourth time to prevent Timothy Owen KC from defending Jimmy Lai at a trial due to start next week. The department is applying directly to the Court of Final Appeal for leave to appeal the last rejection.

Why the determination to bar overseas counsel? Six of Lai’s former media staff are pleading guilty to ‘conspiring to collude with a foreign country or foreign elements’ at a NatSec court with its handpicked judges and possibility of sentence-reduction. Some will testify against Lai. Evidence heard involves ‘lunchbox meetings’ and planning for ‘seditious’ news and comment articles calling for public participation in protests and foreign sanctions against China and Hong Kong. (More here.) What many would consider fairly typical Apple Daily editorial work is being presented as a threat to national security. What will a foreign lawyer, with few local ties but a potentially sensitive or influential overseas audience, have to say about this, in or out of court, if he is permitted to defend the high-profile Lai? 

An even bigger question is how the authorities will react if the CFA denies the attempt to bar Owen. Is the whole judicial system getting into a situation where higher powers see fit to impose whatever ‘enhancements’ it takes to ensure it does not conflict with the sovereign’s ‘comprehensive jurisdiction’?

Seems to have been undergoing ‘maintenance’. A few things in the news…

The Court of Appeal dismisses the government’s latest attempt to prevent Jimmy Lai from having an overseas barrister in his upcoming NatSec trial. This looks like the Justice Dept’s last chance. But someone seems to be very keen to make sure Lai does not use KC Tim Owen. Will Beijing directly override the judges’ decision? Or at least issue some sort of ‘interpretation’ that bars foreign lawyers from defending persons accused of future NatSec offenses?

(Samuel Bickett’s thread on why the authorities have been so determined to keep Owen away from the case.)

Just as we thought it might be dying down, rugby Anthem-Gate becomes a HK Police Organized Crime and Triad Bureau investigation…

Members of the Hong Kong Rugby Union on Monday were interviewed by police, and records of the group’s communications seized…

…[police are] also investigating whether the incidents constituted breaches of the National Anthem Ordinance, the National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance or any of the city’s other laws.

The cops also separately make an arrest over the anthem outrage-horror – not for playing the wrong tune at a Korean stadium, but for reposting a video of the incident with a comment thanking the games’ organizers, which counts as ‘incitement’.

The SCMP on Beijing’s Covid dilemma. As well as a practical challenge in terms of health-care capacity, there’s a major problem with public perceptions… 

…every step China now takes to coexist with the virus, such as ending mandatory PCR tests, will fly in the face of its own words. The logic is simple: if the state has been insisting that the measures are necessary to protect peoples’ health, then how can the measures be abruptly recalled?

…the state never informed its people that Covid-19 had evolved into variants that were much milder, but more contagious … If Chinese were told six months ago that humans can coexist with Covid-19 and that the country has to search for a way out, the current relaxations would have gone smoother.

Instead, China doubled down a one-sided propaganda campaign to enhance perceptions that the virus was “a deadly threat to everyone”, offering advice to “stay away from the virus whatever the cost”. These perceptions are so deeply entrenched that it will be a big challenge to undo them.

Slowly proceeding with Kevin Carrico’s book…

Still recovering from the weekend’s gluttony/money-squandering/guilt trip – a HK$2,500-a-head sushi dinner. The most pleasurable part of the experience was the company of eight foodie veterans of the 2019 marches who had the tiny Uehara restaurant to themselves. Other highlights included: oyster tempura, a range of sake, and a highly respectable lady ecstatically describing the creaminess of sperm in her mouth (that’s fish sperm). But there’s only so much exquisiteness you can cram into handmade morsels of seafood, and I have had equally good sushi for half the price elsewhere (namely Sushi Masa). Would I do it again? Probably.

More rugby anthem woes – with the mislabeling of the correct tune as Glory to Hong Kong on TV broadcasts at two games in Dubai. The Chief Secretary is sorely vexed (’ridiculous and unbelievable’). So is the Culture and Sports Secretary (‘unacceptable and unbelievable’.) (More on ‘no-nonsense’ letters to sports authorities here.) And – as predicted – the HK Sports and Olympics body will release guidelines on the correct hand signals for athletes to make if they find themselves listening to the wrong anthem…

SF&OC will be responsible for keeping review on whether the guidelines were conducted accordingly, [Hon Sec Ronny Wong] added.

“If the Hong Kong team did not follow the guidelines, they could be suspended from the tournament, ” said Pui Kwan Kay, chairman of the Hong Kong Football Association.

“We will also consider boycotting the tournament if the organisers are responsible and conduct the offences repeatedly or deliberately,” he added.

Hong Kong team athletes should stop the “misconduct” of the match on the spot, Pui noted, claiming it is reasonable for athletes to quit the game.

The SCMP reports that, as Chinese officials want to ensure good relations with Seoul right now, pro-Beijing camp might mute their horror and outrage over the South Korean incident.

Some leftovers from the weekend…

Concerning a non-rugby anthem-related case – a woman convicted of insulting the official tune  in 2021 – a HKFP op-ed says…

[The magistrate] went on to show a worrying tendency to imitate one of the worst features of recent political cases: a mysterious compulsion to dismiss at length and in detail anything offered by way of mitigation.

As chief economist with Nomura in the late 1990s, Bill Overholt did some amazing analysis of Hong Kong’s property mess. He’s still around. In comments at a recent seminar, he explains why Xi Jinping will not enjoy his third term and China faces major problems…

…we Americans tend to exaggerate the present and future prowess of anyone seen as a rival. We did it with the Soviets and we did it with the Japanese. We’re doing it again.

A London School of Economics academic on the total absence of women in the latest CCP Politburo.

And the Economist (probably paywalled) describes China’s Covid strategy as ‘steampunk’. A quick video clip showing the ‘zero Covid’ policy in action.

To make me feel better about that sushi bill: major banks, a Canadian pension fund and others absurdly invested millions in FTX – the crypto magic-beans exchange run by the hairy kid in shorts. Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek issues a statement trying to rationalize its decision to join in the idiocy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few items for the weekend…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(The hoo-ha occurred in Incheon.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More quotes at the SCMP.

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

Some other reading for the weekend…

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

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

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

Some additional comments from Kevin Yam.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some perhaps less so…

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

The bottom line…

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

The Guardian’s obit for Bao Tong.

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

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

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

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

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

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