Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Samuel Bickett’s NY Post piece (here)  on conditions in Hong Kong prison’s doesn’t go down well with the city’s Corrections boss, who says it is ‘completely false, baseless and malicious defamation’…

In his letter, Wong [Kwok-hing] stated the department is committed to ensuring a safe, humane and healthy custodial environment while providing appropriate rehabilitation programs to help offenders reform. He said allegations of widespread abuse, medical negligence or poor living conditions in correctional institutions were entirely unfounded.

Wong emphasized that Hong Kong has no so-called “political prisoners” and all persons in custody are treated equally without discrimination based on background, political views or nature of offenses. The department strictly adheres to fairness and professionalism in all operations, with any illegal acts by persons in custody or staff dealt with seriously and referred to law enforcement agencies for investigation.

…Wong explained that in recent years, some radical offenders convicted of serious crimes have entered correctional institutions, many influenced by extremist ideologies or misconceptions. To address their rehabilitation needs, the department launched the “PATH” program to help persons in custody understand Chinese history and culture, develop national identity, rebuild positive values and restart their lives. All persons in custody may participate voluntarily, and the department condemns any demonization of rehabilitation programs as “indoctrination.”

No angry government press release about the Committee for Freedom in HK Foundation report itself. But there is one on the European Commission’s ‘so-called’ annual report on Hong Kong, which apparently disputes every point in detail…

 “As regards the interim injunction relating to a song granted by the Court of Appeal, the HKSAR Government reiterates that the interim injunction covers four types of specified criminal acts in relation to the concerned song. The injunction pursues the legitimate aim of safeguarding national security and is necessary, reasonable, legitimate, proportionate and consistent with the requirements of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights. Internationally, many jurisdictions also have legal mechanisms in place to prohibit the dissemination of information that is illegal, offensive, incites violence, incites hatred or harms the public interest. For example, the EU’s Digital Services Act stipulates that upon the receipt of an order to act against a specific item(s) of illegal content, providers of intermediary services shall inform the authority of any effect given to the order without undue delay ; it also requires providers of hosting services to put mechanisms in place to combat illegal contents and respond to notices received in a timely manner, including removing and disabling access to the relevant content. The unreasonable criticisms made by the EU against the legitimate legal actions taken by the HKSAR Government shows clearly the double standards held.

An SCMP op-ed complains that the West deliberately ignores the Nanjing massacre…

[The reason] Chinese scholar Dai Jinhua has observed, lies in Western discourse itself.

To Western scholars, the Nanking massacre was just “not technically sophisticated”, she said. “It’s not special, not surprising, not worth writing about, while Auschwitz represents that kind of efficiency, order, modern technology that is truly terrifying. And Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where a single bomb destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives – that’s worth writing about.”

Every country focuses on its own World War II experiences. So, where Europe is concerned, the UK and US focus on D Day as the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler, while overlooking the fact that 90% of the soldiers killed fighting the Germans were Soviets on the Eastern front. Similarly, people in Manila, Singapore, Borneo and Burma no doubt remember the Japanese massacres of civilians in those places, which many of us probably know little about. When did we last hear Chinese academics or politicians mention those Nanjing-type slaughters in Southeast Asia? If you don’t hear Southeast Asians mention them that much, it’s probably because they do not use those atrocities to stir up hatred of present-day Japan.

A Brookings Institute essay on Beijing’s World War II narrative…

Russia uses a generous interpretation of the Soviet role in defeating fascism to bolster the assertion that it is entitled to a say in NATO and European Union expansion.

…The PRC has jumped onto this “memory war” wagon with its increasing attention to the commemoration of the victory over Japan that occurred not merely in the Pacific Theater but also in the land war fought in China proper.

…The implications of … reinterpretations [of diplomatic history] are far-reaching. Recentering Cairo and Potsdam as legitimate international agreements bolsters the PRC’s justification for its sovereign control of Taiwan [and] a springboard for broader discussion in China of “international order.”

Modern-day officially sanctioned Chinese ‘discourse’ sidesteps the fact that the PRC did not even exist during World War II, and that China’s military effort was largely marshalled by the KMT-run ROC. And (as with the USSR and the UK), the ROC depended on one key contribution that probably did more than anything else to defeat Germany and Japan: the USA’s astounding industrial mobilization, which produced, among much else, 300,000 aircraft in a roughly three-year period. 

Chief Executive John Lee declares Sunday’s subsector by-elections for the Election Committee as ‘fair, just, honest, smooth, safe and orderly’, adding that the Committee is ‘broadly representative’ and showcases ‘balanced participation’.

Some stats. There were 3,534 voters – a 97.33% turnout. Between them, they picked 21 winners from a total of 28 (pre-screened) candidates on six subsector ballots. Another 72 candidates from other subsectors won by default because there were no competing candidates. The winners join a body of 1,500 people otherwise selected or appointed who will elect 40 (pre-screened) lawmakers and the next Chief Executive (probably from another ballot of just one candidate). The exercise cost HK$233 million. Officials explaining this figure in the HKFP report sound rather defensive, as if deep down they realize the weirdness and pointlessness of it all. (If there are surplus all-patriot types wanting these positions, just choose the ‘winners’ by lot, like Mark 6 numbers. Who would notice the difference?)

Asked Grok for 10 more adjectives similar to John Lee’s. It suggests: ‘great, excellent, superb, fantastic, wonderful, pleasant, delightful, admirable, impressive, positive’. AI has a long way to go. (Prompted it impeccably, by the way.)

China Media Project takes a look at the diminishing image of Wu Jing – star of the macho-patriotic Wolf Warrior movies…

…Wu is the face of the government’s ideal of a more assertive Chinese nation, one that is ready to stand tall in the world and fly its flag high — the same muscular nationalism on full display this week as state-of-the-art weaponry rolled through Beijing and soldiers goose-stepped to commemorate the 80th anniversary of World War II’s end.

…But last week, in the run-up to this week’s display of military might in Beijing, mocking videos of Wu that inexplicably went viral had state media pundits furiously scratching their heads. It was perhaps for some a jarring reminder that not everyone in China takes what Wu Jing represents as seriously as propagandists would like.

…An op-ed reposted by the Shanghai based online outlet Guancha (观察) noted Wu’s unpopularity among Chinese women, who perceive him as “oily and chauvinistic.” 

…Former Global Times editor-in-chief and public commentator Hu Xijin (胡锡进) speculated that the mocking of Wu might be at least in part about young people venting their frustration with poor job prospects and extraordinary life pressures, which according to Hu had “partially weakened the passion of the ‘Wolf Warrior’ spirit.’” 

A (probably paywalled) FT piece on Mainlanders moving to Tokyo is attracting attention…

There is a code at these dinners, which signals a desire to turn the conversation to the topic, according to another Run-ri, Zhang Jieping, a Tokyo-based journalist and entrepreneur who has founded a Chinese bookstore in the city. The way to do it is to ask one’s fellow diners: “How long do you plan to stay?”

“That signals that you want to talk about visas,” Zhang says. “The conversation is always about emigration. Of every three-hour dinner, two will be spent talking about other countries’ visa requirements, how to get out, how to marry a local, how to get an apartment, how to get your parents over there and how to get cash out. Every dinner, every lunch,” she says. “And everyone talks about Japan.”

In these conversations, there is a tacit admission that, for all its “lost” economic decades and flagging dynamism, Japan has got a great deal right. It ranks highly on global indices of peace, economic freedom and property rights. In politics, the nation has kept its poise as others have thrown tantrums, remained supple as others stiffened. It has reliable medical provision, free speech, safe streets, incredible service and astonishingly good food.

Beyond these practicalities, there is an almost ideological element to the movement, says Zhang. “The Chinese mindset for the past 30 years has been that leaving is always better. You leave the country for the town. You leave the town for the city. You leave the city for a big city. You leave the big city for the US. Now, you leave for Tokyo.”

…“very important, they want properties with a parking space big enough for an Alphard,” Guo says, referring to the imposing Toyota people carriers that have become the favourite Run-ri vehicles. A new Alphard would cost the equivalent of $130,000 in China and commands extraordinary status. In Japan, the same car costs the equivalent of $40,000. “They have seen celebrities in China being driven around in them. They want to buy all of that prestige but for a really low price in yen.”

…It works like this. The banks convert renminbi into yen via a complex network of laundering facilities that include dollar-generating Chinese import businesses in Africa. The customer then arranges for funds to be delivered to a representative of the bank at premises in China, and sets up an appointment to receive the yen at various locations in Japanese cities. Cash is couriered in huge quantities — one agent said that a North Face waterproof rucksack is currently the favoured receptacle — with the underground bankers taking as much as a 100 basis point margin on each transaction.

A lot of time, says Guo, is spent counting out cash on tables in anonymous upstairs offices. The transfer of a million dollars’ worth of renminbi into yen, say those who have used the services, takes about a day. “It has to be very discreet. A lot of the customers are the families of Chinese government officials,” says Guo.

Many of these upper-middle-class Chinese are taking advantage of business/investment visas that require an outlay of less than US$50,000. There are calls in Japan to raise the bar.

‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these courageous couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds’. Except in Hong Kong. Yet another day when the whole city shuts down because a passing cyclone is technically a ‘Number 8’, even though most districts experience only unremarkable wind and precipitation. 

Thankfully, the Election Committee Subsector By-elections went ahead smoothly yesterday. Full results were being posted live over at the government’s press releases. A couple of things stand out. Turnouts were all 90%-plus (perhaps electorates are so small that your absence will be noticed). And looking through the results (Tech and Innovation, for example), it seems that in most of these polls every candidate but one wins. Strange.

Someone isn’t going to like this – the Committee for Freedom in HK Foundation report on ‘systematic abuse and control in HK prisons’, which…

…reveals a prison system that has normalized abuse and neglect, suppressed dissent, and violated both international and local legal standards.

Hong Kong’s prisons have become a hidden front in the city’s broader assault on civil liberties, where unchecked power and secrecy prevent accountability. 

…. Compulsory political indoctrination through “Project PATH.” The Correctional Services Department (CSD)—with direction from the Beijing controlled Committee for Safeguarding National Security—uses political “rehabilitation” programs to indoctrinate prisoners with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) views and dissuade them from pro-democracy advocacy … Assaults by CSD staff. Prisoners described specific locations in the prison system where CSD staff regularly take prisoners to beat or pepper spray them … Solitary confinement as a routine form of punishment and control … Chronic medical neglect. Former inmates report widespread difficulties obtaining proper medical care, including untreated seizures, broken bones, and full-body rashes. We document the case of a prisoner who died due to official neglect after showing severe signs of psychological distress … Weaponized psychiatric detention … Squalid infrastructure and hygiene…

Co-author (and former guest at Lai Chi Kok) Samuel Bickett also does an op-ed in the NY Post…

Arrested in 2019 — purportedly for stepping in to stop two men beating a teen in a metro station — and convicted in 2021 in an absurd show trial, I found myself jailed for what appeared to be retaliation against the United States for its actions against Hong Kong officials.

After two months, I was released but barred from leaving the city, after which I remained outspoken in my criticism of Hong Kong’s government and its abuses.

A few months later, an appeals court put me back in prison, which is where I found myself that evening in February 2022, witnessing the bloody beating of an inmate.

A jury acquits seven people of conspiracy to commit bombing, while three are found guilty of a lesser charge of conspiracy to case explosion…

…three bomb plots involved planting explosives at a site near the Lo Wu border crossing point; Caritas Medical Centre, a public hospital in Sham Shui Po; and a car park in Tseung Kwan O, where a memorial was planned for a student who fell to his death amid a police-protesters clash in November 2019.

If convicted, the defendants would have faced up to life imprisonment.

Some echoes of the ‘Dragon Slayers’ case: also a bomb plot, also dating from late 2019, also tried under the UN model anti-terrorism law, and all but one of the seven defendants were found not guilty last year. Nowadays, the suspects would be charged under the local NatSec law, and tried without a jury by NatSec judges who hardly ever deliver ‘not guilty’ verdicts.

Another ‘not guilty’ decision, in the case of an LSD member charged with displaying an unauthorized poster at a street booth in 2022…

The poster featured pictures of the party’s detained members Leung Kwok-hung, better known as “Long Hair”; Jimmy Sham; and Figo Chan, alongside a Chinese phrase meaning “helping the needy, proceed without hesitation.”

Magistrate Kestrel Lam ruled that Yu was not guilty, saying the poster was small in size – measuring 1 metre by 2.5 metres – and was not especially eye-catching in the colourful streetscape of bustling Causeway Bay, according to The Witness.

The poster was only displayed for around 40 minutes and did not obstruct pedestrians walking past, he added.

Some weekend reading…

More on the symbolism of this week’s huge military parade in Beijing from China Media Project…

…in the days ahead of this week’s parade of high-tech weaponry, ideological moves of equal or greater importance have prepared the way for the CCP’s new historical consensus. This view rewrites the history of global war and peace to firm up the narrative of China’s centrality. It was the CCP, the story goes, that decisively won the war for Asia and for the world.

…As the soldiers, tanks, missiles and drones goose-stepped and rolled along Chang’an Avenue on Wednesday, and Vladimir Putin had his smiling moment with Xi Jinping, some might have felt a sense of America sliding out of contemporary relevance. But behind the physical demonstrations of military might and the cementing of partnerships, there was an insistent narrative effort on all fronts to re-position China — and by extension, the CCP — at the center of the global historical narrative. For the leadership’s vision of a “new type of international relations,” nudging American leadership out of contemporary geopolitics is only half the battle; ensuring that it slips out of the history books may be equally important.

George Magnus summarizes China’s mercantilism in a tweet…

1) the brazen pursuit of economic policies that result in huge [balance of payment] surpluses 2) Reserve asset accumulation fetish 3) Currency undervaluation and 4) … industrial policies that are unprecedented in scope and reach. All symbols of or leading to national greatness 

In Engelsberg Ideas, he writes an in-depth essay on the subject…

China was happy to take the outstretched arm of the US and others to join the World Trade Organisation in 2001, and benefitted enormously. The WTO, however, was not adequately equipped or empowered to deal with or discipline China, whose trade and industrial policy idiosyncrasies were tolerated for far too long. The long march, as we might say, of industrial policies embraced from the mid-2000s onwards included an array of initiatives spanning a special status for state enterprises, subsidies, direct grants and lending, below-market borrowing, state-directed credit, and technology transfer and procurement policies, all of which sustained China’s status as a ‘non-market economy’, notwithstanding understandings that these policies would not persist.

…Just over 80 years ago, a generation that had suffered the consequences of a fractured global economic and political order in the 1930s and then the Second World War, set up important institutions at Bretton Woods in 1944 so as to prevent the kind of commercial conflict that has now once again erupted. Yet, how is such a pinnacle of international collaboration to re-occur, when the world’s two major powers are adversaries? China wants to game the system, and the US has – for now at least – decided to replace the commitment to rules and alliances with transactional relations based on favour and patronage.

We are up to our ears in ‘reverse Nixon’ articles at the moment. The basic idea is that Trump is trying to pull Russia closer to the US in order to isolate China – the opposite of Henry Kissinger’s strategy in 1972. It’s nuts, but even assuming Trump really thinks on that level, the difference is that Russia is running rings around him as it deepens ties with Beijing. Francesco Sisci in Asia Times explains…

Putin is the total winner of the day. He can frame Trump’s erratic behavior as proof of influence, boasting to Xi and Modi: “I control Trump, stick with me, no need to talk with the Americans.”

Whether true or not, the narrative may seem believable, and if so, then anything can spin out of this spiel. Indeed, the next Trump-Xi summit, apparently scheduled for October, could take place under a Russian cloud. Is the US cornered? Trump now needs to prove that Putin is not in control. It could be very tricky.

For good measure, Trump is also driving India closer to Beijing…

…What many Asian diplomats find mind-boggling is the reason behind the betrayal [imposition of a 50% tariff]. Reportedly, it stemmed from a testy phone call, where Trump insisted Modi nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, as the US president had helped resolve the recent India-Pakistan clash (see here). The damage to the US is compounded by how trivial the cause appears, casting a deep shadow over its reliability as a partner.

Russia can now boast a political victory greater than any it has achieved in Ukraine, gaining significant political leverage points from which it can upend the current world order.

The struggle to eliminate threats to national security now extends to school activities…

According to updated guidelines published for the new school year, schools should review the details of activities held by external organisations or individuals, including the nature, background, and mode of the activities, as well as the identities and background of the organisers or guests.

…“There should also [not be any] … sensitive or controversial issues involved,” the bureau said, without specifying what contents would be considered as such.

The 313-page document, which mentions national security about 50 times, also [now] requires that all reading activities “on campus and organised in the name of the school… do not lead to situations that endanger national security.”

Existing provisions in the updated guidelines include vetting school library materials to ensure their collections do not have elements that endanger national security.

Jimmy Lai has spent 1,600 days in jail and could get life in prison if he is found guilty of endangering national security by lobbying American officials to impose sanctions on Hong Kong. What happens if a British populist politician flies to the US to lobby for sanctions on the UK? He incurs the wrath of Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Parliament. And that’s it. (OK, he also gets shredded by a Congressman for his pro-Putin putridness.)

Hong Kong marks the ‘Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War’…

Dozens of mostly elderly people gathered at the APM shopping mall in Kwun Tong on Wednesday to watch a live broadcast of the parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

And Lau Siu-kai, quasi-official pro-Beijing spokesman, tells us that Beijing’s military parade yesterday shows the nation’s ‘desire for peace’…

…he stressed China has no intention of pursuing hegemony or bullying other nations. Instead, he said the display was a warning to countries, especially the United States, not to underestimate China.

Lau also pointed to the participation of more than 20 world leaders in the commemorations.

He doesn’t list them, but they include Vladimir Putin of Russia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, and the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar, Belarus, Syria and other fun places.

The Too Simple, Sometimes Naive substack on the parade’s meaning.

RTHK news gets a scoop – Security Secretary Chris Tang is thrilled about attending today’s military parade in Beijing… 

Tang is part of a 360-strong delegation from Hong Kong, led by Chief Executive John Lee, which is in the capital to mark the anniversary of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War.

Arriving at a hotel in Beijing, the minister told reporters that he was looking forward to the occasion.

“I’m excited. It’s my first time in the capital attending a military parade. I’m really honoured to take part in such an occasion,” he said.

“I believe the parade will be visually stunning.”

…War veteran Lam Zhen, who fought as a member of the Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Battalion of the East River Column, is also part of the delegation.

“We can’t forget this part of history, about our struggles. We need to be able to tell the actual circumstances of this history with full clarity,” she told RTHK.

“In doing so, we can let our descendants pass down the legacy of the struggles for future generations.”

Other delegation members who arrived in Beijing include the police commissioner, Joe Chow, and Olympic gold medallist and former fencer Vivian Kong.

I hope they all realize that they will need to turn up at 6.30am for a five-hour wait for security checks. 

Not on the invitation list, perhaps, is Housing Secretary Winnie Ho – but she gets a trip to Sai Kung…

…In a social media post on Tuesday (Sep 2), Ho shared her visit to Sai Kung’s Ng Fai Tin in Pan Long Wan Village—a former site of the Urban Detachment base under the Hong Kong and Kowloon Independent Brigade.

The group began their journey at the Pan Long Wan Village Office, where they examined an information board created by the Home Affairs Department. This board details the activities of a squadron established in 1943, which played a crucial role in the urban district’s resistance efforts.

…Their exploration continued at the historic site, where they unexpectedly met a local villager whose 92-year-old uncle, also named Lau, was one of the little messengers.

Recalling his memories at just nine years old, Lau shared stories of how he [or his uncle?] transported messages between Sai Kung, Central, and Causeway Bay.

His anecdotes included advice on folding and preserving intelligence notes, traveling barefoot, the moment Fang asked him to become a messenger, and the difficulties of cutting off touch with his family at the time.

An SCMP headline today: ‘Hong Kong auxiliary policeman arrested for alleged indecent act while driving taxi’. Yes, but was his mind distracted by a case he was working on?

Hong Kong has just been through a ‘water-gate’ scandal, which I have ignored out of laziness/boredom. Full details here. A few questions… Why don’t civil servants want to drink the ordinary tap water that their employer, the government, says is perfectly fine for consumption? Why would these civil servants reject bottled water that they believe is from a Mainland supplier, when they are constantly urged to be patriotic? And what sort of repercussions, if any, will there be for senior officials responsible for the tendering process, which resulted in a contract going to a fake supplier? (Apparently a Hong Kong business pretending to be a Mainland one – don’t ask.)

Which leads us to a police inspector who was given a community service order for ‘causing grievous bodily harm by dangerous driving’ after running a red light in Mong Kok, hitting a taxi and causing serious injury to a pedestrian…

Concerning Iu’s argument that he got distracted because he was thinking about a drug case he was working on, the judge said no driver should lose concentration thinking about work or personal matters while driving.

The Witness reported on Monday that the police said Iu had been suspended. The police force added that it values the conduct of its personnel and that any officer involved in illegal behaviour would not be tolerated.

The SCMP has some more details…

The inspector, who received his probationary driving licence four months before the accident, told the trial that he had mistaken a green pedestrian light for the traffic light while being distracted by a narcotics case he was investigating at the time.

…The defence submitted mitigation letters written by senior police officers and said Iu deserved a second chance for his good background.

Selwyn Yu Sing-cheung SC said “over 90 per cent” of Iu’s senior colleagues had pleaded leniency on his behalf, noting that he was enthusiastic about his job and was genuinely sorry for the breach despite his not guilty plea.

Yu argued that a jail term would be disproportionate and devastating to his client, who had learned a bitter lesson after spending 32 days in custody pending the sentence.

[Deputy District Judge Raymond] Wong echoed those submissions and said Iu had a good background and excellent track record in the force. Pre-sentencing reports also showed the defendant was very remorseful, the deputy judge added.

Dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm is punishable by up to seven years’ imprisonment, a HK$50,000 (US$6,310) fine and a driving ban of at least two years.

More questions… Can the rest of the public avoid a prison sentence for dangerous driving if they are distracted by a narcotics case? What if they are distracted by something else important to them (a sales target at work, illness of a family member, etc)? Can everyone expect leniency if 90% of their senior colleagues tell the court he or she is enthusiastic about their job? Can other people before the courts (for shoplifting, participation in primary elections, zombie oil-possession, etc) avoid prison if they argue that ‘a jail term would be disproportionate and devastating’? Or that they are ‘very remorseful’? Is there a danger that the public might think judges treat cops leniently? 

See also the unconditional release a few days ago  of a customs officer who ‘tampered with’ a motorbike, resulting in the death of the driver.

Overseas coverage of Jimmy Lai will peak when the verdict comes through in the coming weeks or months (unless it’s ‘not guilty’). Meanwhile, it’s about the conclusion of the trial. To spare others the trouble, the SCMP summarizes some basic facts…

After more than 1,700 days in custody and a trial that spanned more than 1½ years, former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying is now waiting for a verdict to be delivered in his marathon national security trial.

And adds…

In the trial, Lai branded himself a political prisoner and insisted his grim predictions regarding the city’s economic slump and deprivation of residents’ fundamental freedoms had come to pass as Beijing was tightening its grip on the city.

Those comments did not move the three judges hearing his case, with one justice reiterating that Lai was in court “purely for legal reasons”. The judges also stressed they would not be intimidated by “foreign elements” attempting to interfere with their judgment through sanctions.

A Guardian report on the conclusion of the trial…

In court, Lai’s defence team said prosecutors had failed to provide sufficient evidence for the claims of conspiring with Li, Chan, or other alleged co-conspirators to request foreign sanctions after the NSL’s introduction.

Marc Corlett KC said that the prosecution’s submission that Lai stayed in contact with former US defence officials “goes in no way to demonstrate” their case because those individuals had not been named as “co-conspirators”.

The senior counsel Robert Pang had earlier defended Apple Daily, saying “it is not wrong to support freedom of expression. It is not wrong to support human rights.”

A Globe and Mail op-ed…

…Hong Kong was a symbol of what people could achieve if they were simply allowed a little freedom. It had a robust press; a professional civil service; an independent judiciary to protect property and individual rights; an open laissez-faire economy – in short, all the ingredients for dramatic success.

Now all of that is at risk. A stifling miasma blown in from the mainland has enveloped the teeming, vital, electric place I knew. The trial of Jimmy Lai, which wrapped up this week, is only the latest sign of this heartbreaking change.

…The charges against [Jimmy Lai] are ludicrous. He stands accused under Hong Kong’s national security law of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces.” At his 156-day trial, prosecutors claimed that he was at the forefront of an international drive to impose sanctions against Hong Kong and China for suppressing protest and free speech.

Mr. Lai’s lawyers note that his grand conspiracy amounted to little beyond speaking up for what he thought was right. In any case, his alleged conspiring happened before the security law took effect in 2020. The prosecutors pressed their case regardless.

The aim of all this was to make it seem as if, instead of a legitimate expression of anger, the Hong Kong protests were a foreign conspiracy to subvert the government. With his wealth, his unguarded views and his overseas friends, Mr. Lai was portrayed as the devious “mastermind” of this traitorous scheme.

The proceedings had the unmistakable ring of a Soviet show trial. Despite the sober setting of the Hong Kong courtroom and the trappings of British-style justice, the clear intent was to warn off anyone who might even be tempted to think about defying the government.

And a WSJ editorial…

Jimmy Lai’s drawn-out trial in Hong Kong on national-security charges finally concluded Thursday, and amid the wait for a verdict, China might consider what it has wrought. Mr. Lai, the former Hong Kong newspaper owner, is now arguably the world’s most popular political prisoner, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times. President Trump says he will press Chinese President Xi Jinping for Mr. Lai’s release.

The trial began in 2023. Heavily armed police surround the courtroom whenever Mr. Lai appears, as though the 77-year-old might bust out like Billy the Kid. Hong Kong could never have put Mr. Lai on trial without China’s approval, and far from destroying Mr. Lai it has made him a hero. Perhaps Beijing could come to regret that Hong Kong turned the persecuted newspaperman into a global icon.

…China’s smartest play would be to release Mr. Lai home to his family, unless it wants even more international grief, if it lets Hong Kong turn this political prisoner into a full-fledged martyr.

Another big NatSec trial is due to begin in November – the Tiananmen vigil organizers.

A Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission official and a lawmaker have dropped out of the Bitcoin Asia conference taking place in Hong Kong right now, apparently to avoid being seen near Donald Trump’s son Eric. 

Ideally, Hong Kong officials would keep their distance from anything to do with crypto, but they have never seen a financial fad-cum-potential hub-zone they didn’t like (Islamic banking, green bonds, etc). 

The Trump family has done well out of crypto – by inventing and issuing their own fake money. Oligarchs wanting to surreptitiously gift the president millions of bucks can do it by buying the $Trump coins for real cash. The family makes additional real real money through commissions from everyday suckers trading the ultimately worthless digital tokens. Trump’s sons will also be listing a Bitcoin mining company next month, while daddy pushes regulatory changes designed to boost crypto.

The Bitcoin Asia website. You can get a ‘Whale Pass’ for US$4,999. Note that the prices are in real money. It’s all about real money. The only way to acquire wealth through Bitcoin and other crypto is to sell it to or otherwise enable idiots who can’t tell a fake currency created out of thin air from an asset.

Also on the subject of the madness of crowds: in his blog, Paul Krugman’s asks why, with Donald Trump clearly planning to end Federal Reserve independence, markets are reaching record highs rather than panicking…

Nathan Tankus summarizes this by saying that the market is not, as stylized economic models would have us believe, a mechanism that pools the knowledge and informed judgment of millions of investors. It is, instead, a “conventional wisdom processor.” That is, it reflects views that seem safe to hold because many other people hold them — and the crowd only abandons those views when they become blatantly unsustainable.

If you wonder what researchers in the humanities do all day, here’s an academic paper (free to view) in the Journal of East Asian Studies …

Propagandists discredit political ideas that rival their own. In China’s state-run media, one common technique is to place the phrase so-called, in English, or 所谓, in Chinese, before the idea to be discredited. In this research note we apply quantitative text analysis methods to over 45,000 Xinhua articles from 2003 to 2022 containing so-called or 所谓 to better understand the ideas the government wishes to discredit for different audiences. We find that perceived challenges to China’s sovereignty consistently draw usage of the term and that a theme of rising importance is political rivalry with the United States. When it comes to differences between internal and external propaganda, we find broad similarities, but differences in how the US is discredited and more emphasis on cooperation for foreign audiences. These findings inform scholarship on comparative authoritarian propaganda and Chinese propaganda specifically.

I love that last sentence attempting to justify the endeavour. We’re complete nerds and it’s either this or memorizing pi to 1,000 places.

…Overall, sarcastic uses of so-called tend to precede ideas, claims, or criticism that the Chinese state finds objectionable. In some cases so-called is used to convey that the intended meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning in the text, for example, so-called respect for human rights in the US, or so-called genocide in Xinjiang. In other cases, so-called is used to signal that the concept/entity in question is not recognized or is not legitimate in the eyes of the Chinese state, for example, Taiwan’s sovereignty or Hong Kong democratic primaries.

In Carnegie China, Michael Pettis on ‘involution’ – Beijing-speak for ruinous price-cutting by manufacturing companies struggling to survive amidst over-capacity…

…leading to a zero-sum race to the bottom, marked by vicious price wars, large-scale losses, homogenous products, and improper business practices.

…as long as Beijing’s growth strategy prioritizes growth in production, even when that growth comes at the expense of domestic demand, the underlying pressures that lead to involution cannot be resolved. They can be addressed within specific sectors of the economy, but only by shifting excess capacity to other sectors. That is why, in the end, I expect “involution” will join the list of earlier words and phrases—like “rebalancing,” “dual circulation,” “supply-side structural reform,” “deleveraging,” and “excess capacity”—that had emerged in the past to express the same set of problems, and whose sudden surge in usage often faded away. 

Decreeing investment-led growth at all costs following the property market decline, Beijing incentivized massive expansion of hand-picked industries…

Polysilicon production for solar panels became a posterchild for this process. Before the property collapse, polysilicon and solar panel producers were already manufacturing more than the world could reasonably absorb, but after 2021-22, production capacity soared. In less than four years, the top four Chinese manufacturers alone added about two-thirds of the industry’s existing capacity globally, with Chinese producers eventually accounting for roughly 95 percent of global supply—roughly twice global demand.

In Cold War times, Communist central planning was associated with dire shortages of goods (memories of hitch-hiking through Ceausescu’s Romania and seeing stores with nothing but empty shelves). In China, it has led to hugely wasteful over-production. The situation is driven by debt, and it will take even more debt for the state to buy and dissolve surplus companies and factories

From the Diplomat – China’s official narrative of World War II (or, as Hong Kong now puts it, the Chinese People’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War)…

China’s understanding of its war against Japan has changed significantly over the decades. Alongside Japan’s changing historical narratives of the war, this has caused a divergence in historical memory that fuels tensions between the two countries

…The Maoist narrative of the war was dominant in China from the formation of the People’s Republic in 1949 until the early 1980s. It was rooted in communist ideology and blamed the war on a militaristic international bourgeois elite who tricked the Japanese people into a war against China. 

At the same time, the Maoist narrative portrayed China’s wartime Nationalist government as incompetent in resisting Japan’s invasion and highlighted the efforts of the CCP’s resistance, particularly those of the Eighth Route Army led by Mao Zedong. This is despite historical records from the war indicating that, out of 23 battles and over 40,000 skirmishes between China and Japan, the CCP’s forces only participated in one and 200 of these, respectively.

…[Today’s] narrative portrays the Japanese nation as inherently aggressive, placing blame for the war with the Japanese people. It acknowledges the contributions of China’s Nationalist government in fighting against Japan during the war, albeit portraying them as a junior contributor to the war effort to the CCP.

A video of a prominent Chinese archer spitting on and shooting an arrow through a Japanese flag.

Op-ed in a crypto mag by co-chair of the Hong Kong Web 3 Association…

China’s control over cryptocurrency liquidity in Hong Kong gives it unprecedented power over the Trump family’s crypto wealth. This leverage lets Beijing influence the family’s financial fate — and potentially US-China relations — through market moves. As Eric Trump visits Hong Kong, this crypto-political nexus signals a new era of global power.