Big Lychee, Various Sectors

…Chow Hang-tung in the HK Alliance ‘inciting subversion’ trial. A translation of part of her closing statement is here.

From HKFP…

A Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil activist standing in a national security trial has urged the court to safeguard the “dignity and bottom line of the law,” as she warned judges not to become “accomplices” in an alleged government crackdown on free speech. 

Chow Hang-tung, a former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, said that authorities have been “reshaping” the city’s long-held values by prosecuting activists who advocate for democracy in China. 

…Delivering closing arguments on Tuesday, Chow said the crux of the case was whether the law protects the “perpetual rule” of the CCP or the rights of people to advocate democracy.

“Ending one-party rule means putting an end to the status quo, in which those in power are not bound by the law,” she said in Cantonese.

…She argued it was “unheard of” that a government would accuse its citizen of breaching the constitution.

“Any document that can be called a constitution in the world is to restrict the operation of power, not ordinary people,” she said.

The Standard…

Chow argued that the key question for the court was what the law prohibits and protects, what conditions the defendants sought to end, and what system the Constitution establishes. She questioned whether the law guarantees the permanent rule of the Chinese Communist Party and prohibits citizens from advocating political transition.

She said the defendants had merely advocated ending unrestricted power, and argued that the court could not criminalize the slogan “end one-party dictatorship” while claiming to uphold the rule of law.

Chow also argued that “subversion” should be interpreted as using external forces to rapidly, drastically and abnormally change an existing order, and that this was not limited to physical force. She said “destruction” carried an additional element of malice, involving unfair, unreasonable or unauthorized conduct, while justified criticism without malice did not amount to destruction.

She said the prosecution should directly prove what unlawful means the defendants had allegedly incited others to use, describing the prosecution’s argument that they had failed to call for constitutional amendment through lawful means as groundless.

Chow further argued that the prosecution must prove not only that the defendants broke the law, but also that they acted unconstitutionally, which she said required a much stricter standard.

AP reports…

In previous hearings, the prosecution has focused on “ending one-party rule,” one of the alliance’s core demands, arguing that the group’s advocacy was about inciting others to use unlawful means to overthrow the leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party.

Chow, a barrister who defended herself, said Tuesday that her trial was a “very strange case,” because the defendants neither denied anything they had done nor argued that what they said didn’t reflect their thoughts.

Chow said that “ending one-party rule” means ending a state where power is unrestricted, and that a key question in the case is whether the law is really safeguarding the Chinese Communist Party to rule forever and banning the people from pushing forward democratization.

Chow argued that the standard for determining right and wrong has been turned upside down in this case.

“Speaking the truth has become inciting hatred, seeking justice has become exploiting suffering, limiting power has become violating the constitution, and returning power to the people has become subverting the state,” she said.

She said that if the court fails to gatekeep over the reasonable effects of their statements, it could easily become an accomplice by tolerating the crimes committed by those in power.

Ouch. How will the NatSec judges address these points when they deliver their verdict in around a couple of months? Perhaps just with a simple: “No, you’re wrong.” It’s hard to imagine a response as convincing as Chow’s own argument.

Most people appearing in court under Hong Kong’s national security laws (incitement, subversion, sedition, collusion, etc) seem to be there for words rather than actions. But defendants or their lawyers rarely ask the judges to step back and view the alleged crimes as no more than expressions of opinion. Perhaps, given these courts’ near-100% conviction rate, it would be too provocative? We will now see. From HKFP…

Barrister Erik Shum, representing Lee Cheuk-yan, spoke before a three-judge panel on Monday as closing arguments began in the national security trial of Lee and Chow Hang-tung. Both are former leaders of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. 

…The calls to end one-party rule – one of the group’s five tenets that also included the democratisation of China since its founding in 1989 – were demanding a change in the country’s political system rather than targeting any specific political party, Shum said.

Shum told the court on Monday that prosecutors had failed to present evidence that the Alliance sought to incite the public to revolt against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

…Prosecutors have argued that there are no “lawful means” to end CCP rule after a 2018 constitutional amendment stipulates that the party’s leadership is the “defining feature” of China’s socialist system.

Shum argued on Monday that prosecutors presented a “tautological theory.”

“We ask: How exactly did the Alliance incite others to overthrow the CCP? And my submission is that the prosecution has always reverted to the claim that ending CCP rule is illegal,” Shum said.

Shum urged the court to draw a boundary for what is considered an acceptable political expression and what is not.

“The court must not pay lip service to human rights protections,” he said.

…The Alliance … was not exercising any power, and its calls should be considered civilian political criticism, Shum said.

In the decades since the HK Alliance was formed, did anyone in Hong Kong (or anywhere) try to end one-party rule?

Meanwhile, the government allocates another HK$5 billion to its National Security budget…

Classified as non-recurrent expenditure, the payment brings the total amount dedicated to national security spending to date to HK$18 billion.

According to official records, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po previously allocated HK$8 billion in December 2020 and a further HK$5 billion in March 2023.

Assuming the HK$13 billion committed so far has been spent in the last 65 months, they’ve burnt through HK$50 million a week.

You don’t recall any actual threat to the national security of the PRC coming out of Hong Kong during that time? Maybe that shows how effective that 50 million a week has been! 

Following Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing, the NYT looks at (VPN-equipped) Chinese netizens’ comments on overseas social media platforms…

Mr. Xi, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, is on the front page of the official People’s Daily nearly every day. He dominates the prime-time television news. And yet he remains a mysterious figure even to his own people. Unlike Mr. Trump, who posts constantly on social media and regularly takes questions and even unscheduled phone calls from the press, Mr. Xi is always choreographed. He reads from a script and strikes the same pose in every photograph with world leaders. 

During the summit, some social media users mocked this predictability, commenting that Mr. Xi appeared to be exactly the same height as Mr. Trump — and nearly every visiting world leader he has appeared with in photos. As a 32-year-old tutor in southern Fujian Province put it on Threads, “I’d be much more interested in seeing Yao Ming meet Xi Jinping,” referring to the former N.B.A. player who is 7 foot 6 inches tall, “just because they’d be the same height, too.”  

…Some people joked that, having listened to Mr. Xi’s speech, Mr. Trump could now appreciate what it was like to sit through Xi Jinping Thought classes in college. 

…“Is China moving backward?” [one poster] asked. “A society that is truly confident doesn’t need children chanting slogans to prove its enthusiasm. A country that is genuinely open doesn’t need to repackage diplomatic events as collective performances.” 

One astute commenter noted that the children wore ‘staged-event’ clothing from a bygone era…

A Michael Korvig piece in Foreign Affairs a week before Trump’s visit to Beijing…

Trump should lead [the West] by example, eschew the mistakes of other visiting heads of state, and refuse ephemeral deals that deepen the United States’ dependence on China. Rather than seeking superficial adulation from Beijing, he should use the upcoming visit to strengthen deterrence by coordinating in advance with allies and setting redlines that none will cross, signaling he will impose costs for Chinese coercion that targets any of them, and conditioning any concessions on verifiable follow-through. That would diminish Beijing’s confidence in its strategy of compelling accommodation from individual countries. 

By accepting the terms Xi sets and performing in his authoritarian pageantry, these prestigious [Western] visitors are gratifying his yearning to be recognized as the world’s foremost strongman. Over time, such displays add up, and when combined with acquiescence on material matters such as Western leaders’ reluctance to sanction Chinese companies that support Russia’s war on Ukraine, they can shape other countries’ assessments of geopolitical power and legitimacy. 

…few of these deals buy economic resilience for the visiting countries. Instead, they reorient trade in ways that impede the development of their own economies. Exports to China are increasingly dominated by agricultural commodities, processed foods, and natural resources—fiercely competitive industries that require heavy investment in logistics, making substitution easier for Chinese buyers than foreign suppliers. Cases of CCP coercion targeting Australian wine, Canadian canola, and Norwegian salmon illustrate the imbalance: Beijing can rotate suppliers and leave unfavored ones to absorb years of losses. To stay in Beijing’s good graces, these countries must accept ever more imports of China’s increasingly advanced manufactured goods while their own industrial and technological bases wither. 

I don’t think Trump read this article.

Trump himself says he made ‘fantastic’ trade deals.

Peter Frankopan…

So we had the White House official account tweeting about ‘American strength back on the world stage’ – against a montage of Trump being welcomed by Chinese soldiers and children.

When you see the US present itself as though they are lucky to have their leader come to China and to be back in business, you start to wonder whether getting rid of so many State Department officials was such a good idea after all.

…It did not need to be this way, of course. Poor preparation; lack of expertise; the total conviction that business deals are the way to do foreign policy all play a part in what will go down one day as a set-piece of how not to do a summit. 

Thomas Juneau…

Trump’s performance in China has been a unique, extraordinary and embarrassing combination of weakness, obsequiousness, lack of preparation, amateurism, and incompetence. It just seems normal because we’ve become desensitized by the constant circus. 

And, on video, John Bolton.

China Daily’s front page for May 13…

Joshua Wong appears in court on a ‘collusion with foreign forces’ charge…

He was arrested in June last year while in jail. Wong is currently serving a four-year-and-eight-month jail sentence for his involvement in … election primaries in 2020, in which he pleaded guilty.

In the present case, the 29-year-old stands accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and “other persons unknown” between July 1 and November 23, 2020, to request foreign countries, organisations, or individuals based overseas to impose sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.

…Magistrate Victor So said in August last year that Wong’s [foreign collusion] case would be transferred from the magistrate’s court to the High Court, where the maximum penalty is life imprisonment. At the magistrate’s court, the maximum penalty is two years, or three years when a defendant faces more than one offence. 

What’s going on? If he is released, he could (in the view of worry-prone people in authority) become the focus of a rival power structure – so he must stay in prison.

Weekend reading for economics geeks: from Elias Rutten – a history of how Japan became a manufacturing powerhouse, then entered decades of stagnation…

It is impossible to look at contemporary China without seeing Japan’s shadow. China is living through the earlier stages of a comparable exhaustion. Japan, thirty-five years ahead on the curve, shows what the late stages look like. 

Who can resist some bad news about New World? Drawing on a Bloomberg scoop, Reuters via the Standard reports that…

Blackstone has walked away from a proposed US$4 billion (HK$31.2 billion) tie-up with Hong Kong’s New World Development after the indebted property developer refused to cede control…

…The Cheng family has been in talks with a handful of financial institutions to sell an equity stake in New World, and Blackstone was the most advanced party in the process, Reuters reported in March.

Any investor would have to align their interests with the family and a change of control would be unlikely, they said at the time.

So why did Blackstone get this far in the negotiations? As for New World – was losing control just too much loss of face, or were they panic-stricken by the reality that someone bailing them out might expect to call the shots?

The Chengs are now scrabbling around trying to sell off choice family jewels, like Rosewood Hotels and the weird-smelling K11 Nausea mall. Apparently other investors – presumably with a greater appreciation of the wondrousness of the Cheng gene pool – are thinking of getting involved. 

Meanwhile, the Airport Authority is reportedly taking over the retail space at 11 Skies…

…with the mall’s positioning to be aligned with the overall development of SKYTOPIA to create synergies…

Synergy by SKYTOPIA. Sounds like a synth-laden 70s prog rock album.

New World won the design, build and operate contract for the project in 2018, with a total investment exceeding HK$20 billion. Under the existing agreement, New World is required to pay the Airport Authority an annual guaranteed rent of HK$1.8 billion from 2028 to 2066, or up to 30 percent of the project’s annual gross revenue, whichever is higher. The huge investment in 11 SKIES has been cited as partly responsible for New World’s debt crisis.

…The 11 SKIES project, located near Terminal 2, was originally designed to accommodate more than 800 shops and would become Hong Kong’s largest shopping mall upon opening. However, most storefronts are currently boarded up, with only two restaurants operating.

Sounds like a 0.25% occupancy rate. The boy Adrian, who masterminded 11 Skies, was last heard of a few months ago planning a mega-retail project in… Dubai. Talk about timing.

There was a time when Beijing might have arranged some help for a local tycoon in distress. But that was several decades ago. Hong Kong developers are of no further use now. Meanwhile, the Mainland’s developers have surpassed Hong Kong’s in vision and growth. Evergrande’s debt, for example, is probably 10-15 times bigger than New World’s. 

China’s chances of successfully invading Taiwan anytime soon look slim. Military and logistic challenges aside, there are daunting social and political problems. For example, in a country of one-child families, every dead Mainland soldier means the end of his parents’ lineage. But even if they managed it – what then? Lowy Institute paper by Richard McGregor and Jude Blanchette on how Beijing would try to run the place…

Beijing’s thinking on Taiwan has shifted decisively from peaceful accommodation to absorptive control. As Taiwanese identity and democracy have become entrenched, Xi Jinping’s unification terms have hardened, demanding full political integration rather than offering genuine autonomy. Drawing on PRC academic and policy literature, this paper finds that Chinese scholars see a form of phased subjugation for the island: an immediate security crackdown neutralising political opponents; institutional restructuring beyond what has taken place in Hong Kong; and a decades-long psychological re-engineering project so Taiwanese come to identify with the CCP’s China. Millions of Taiwanese would be excluded from public life and many current political leaders would be jailed.

Yet PRC thinking on integration is riddled with unresolved contradictions. Autonomy without credible guarantees generates no trust; coercion achieves stability but not legitimacy; economic integration cannot substitute for consent. Beijing understands the scale of the challenge it would face — governing a consolidated democracy against its will — but remains ideologically constrained from resolving it.

…these writings reveal persistent anxieties about legitimacy and capacity, and the long-term sustainability of rule over a society that has developed outside the PRC’s political orbit for more than seven decades. 

…To many PRC experts, a core challenge is Taiwan’s democratic political identity and its shaping over decades outside the PRC’s ideological system. As a result, resistance is expected to persist even after formal sovereignty transfer, particularly among younger generations, civil society networks, and professionals. Taiwan’s thicket of institutions — including media outlets, social organisations, professional associations, and local governments — is seen as providing fertile ground for covert or indirect forms of opposition. Taiwan’s international connectivity is also expected to sustain external attention and support for dissent.

Speaking of decades-long psychological re-engineering projects – a HKFP op-ed on the latest Hong Kong government publicity campaign…

…It seems we are urged to “Pro-actively align with the 15th five-year plan” and “Follow a holistic approach to development and security”. 

I hesitate to criticise the work of other writers, but I cannot resist the thought that the author of this offering needs to give some thought to finding the sort of language which means something concrete and sensible to the man in the street, who is rarely told to proactively align with anything, or indeed to follow a holistic approach to it.

Most English people of my generation are not bowled over by the idea of five-year plans. This is partly because rigid adherence to erroneous five-year plans caused two of the 20th century’s most catastrophic famines: in Ukraine in 1932-33 and in China in 1958-62.

…it is far from clear what the average Hong Kong person can do to further the doubtless laudable aims of the national plan. 

Donald Trump is about to visit Beijing. Inspired by Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to sucker the tragic dementia case into launching a pointless war against Iran, Chinese officials will no doubt lure him into an irresistible ‘deal’. In return for withdrawing all US bases from Korea to Guam and declaring Taiwan Chinese territory, China will buy one million metric tons of American soybeans, give Jared Kushner a real-estate project in Urumqi and let Trump stand on a gold-trimmed red carpet to have a selfie with his ‘good friend, Jeejee Bing’.

(Post from Desmond Shum on who has the upper hand in US-PRC relations.)

A WashPo editorial considers Trump’s chances of getting Jimmy Lai released to be fairly limited…

The former publisher of the shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, for years one of Hong Kong’s most widely read publications, was sentenced in February to 20 years in prison for bogus charges of sedition and colluding with foreign forces, meaning the United States.

The 78-year-old is in poor health, so two decades in prison, with no likelihood of parole under China’s draconian national security law, is tantamount to a death sentence. Lai holds a British passport and could live out his days there.

Hong Kong is now as cowed as any mainland Chinese city under Communist rule. Independent media has been silenced. Opposition parties have disbanded. Civil society, once vibrant, has been stifled. Many people have voted with their feet and left.

Xi releasing Lai would be a welcome humanitarian gesture and remove an impediment to more normalized U.S.-China relations. Refusing to do so, which unfortunately seems the likeliest outcome, would reflect the rot inside the Chinese system. It’s telling that Xi is so scared to let a 78-year-old ailing newspaperman go free. 

An op-ed in the Times by Chloe Cheung of the CFHK…

Peter Wai was exposed as a spy who had served in the UK’s armed forces, police and Border Force. Longstanding connections between the Chinese authorities and organised crime are now a matter of court record. And evidence revealed Hong Kong’s London “trade office” to be a hub for transnational repression.

The office’s manager, Bill Yuen, acted on Beijing’s orders to covertly gather intelligence on Hong Kong dissidents and British parliamentarians. The former Hong Kong police superintendent funnelled almost £100,000 through the office’s accounts — payments to Wai and others for surveillance and intimidation operations.

…Remarkably, the London trade office enjoys diplomatic immunities granted when the promise of 50 years of post-handover autonomy for Hong Kong was still taken at face value. That era is over.

The national security law transformed Hong Kong into an extension of the CCP’s security apparatus. The Crown Prosecution Service treats China and Hong Kong’s authorities as one and the same.

Continuing to grant diplomatic status to the trade office is to pretend that the repression of Hong Kong never happened. The security minister, Dan Jarvis, often says that the government “will not tolerate” transnational repression. If that is true, then London’s Hong Kong trade office must be closed without delay.

UK government statement upon summoning China’s ambassador after the conviction of two men for spying for China…

It was made clear that the UK will not tolerate any attempts by foreign states to intimidate, harass or harm individuals or communities in the UK, and that such activity constitutes a serious breach of the UK’s sovereignty. We will continue to use the full range of tools available to protect our security and hold China to account for actions which undermine our safety and democratic values. 

Standard report on China’s position…

China denounced on Friday convictions of two men in the United Kingdom for spying on Hong Kong dissidents as a “political farce”, accusing the country of “erroneous practices”.

…”The United Kingdom’s arrest and prosecution of Chinese citizens in the United Kingdom on groundless charges, its abuse of the law and manipulation of judicial procedures for conviction, its blatant support for anti-China and Hong Kong-destabilising elements and its unreasonable accusations and smears against China are a typical political farce,” Lin said.

“We urge the UK to correct its erroneous practices… and safeguard the hard-won positive momentum of China-UK relations,” he added.

…An earlier statement on Thursday by an unnamed Chinese embassy spokesperson in London said that Yuen’s conviction in particular “is nothing but a political move of abusing the law and manipulating the judicial process by the UK side”.

The “sole purpose” of the decision is to “embolden those anti-China elements who are hiding in the UK and bent on destabilising Hong Kong, and to smear the Chinese government”, the statement added, calling it a “so-called verdict”.

“We deplore (the conviction of Yuen) and have made solemn representations with the UK side,” the Chinese embassy statement said, calling on London to “immediately stop the anti-China political manipulation”.

The Chinese statements: support the convicted man employed by the Hong Kong authorities; declare the UK residents who were subjects of the surveillance to be enemies of Beijing; and do not claim that Beijing was uninvolved.

The Global Times story is slightly more subtle…

During the Cold War, a very typical political pattern between the UK, the Soviet Union, and Eastern European countries was the constant arrest of “spies”, the search for “suspicious individuals” and the construction of related accusations. Today in the UK, from some members of Parliament to certain government departments, this “Cold War mentality” remains quite evident, Cui Hongjian, professor at the Academy of Regional and Global Governance at Beijing Foreign Studies University, told the Global Times on Friday. 

The UK security and intelligence agencies have been hyping so-called “spying activities” from China in the last several years.

HKFP on the Hong Kong government’s denial of any involvement…

“From the outset, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government has been clearly stating that the allegations in this case are absolutely not related to the HKSAR Government and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London (London ETO), nor are we party to the case,” a government statement sent to the media on Friday morning read. 

Kevin Yam on that denial…

The Hong Kong Government’s response has been that it is not a party to and has nothing to do with this case. And yet, one of the convicted men was the Office Manager of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, while both men had their legal costs covered by the Hong Kong Government. It is difficult to imagine the Hong Kong Government being willing to fund defence costs if it had nothing to do with the whole case. It is now untenable for the HKETO to deny that it is every bit as much of a spy hub as its masters at the Chinese Embassy.

And a comparison of NatSec trials…

…The trial of these two men and the national security trials in Hong Kong could not be more different. The two men were released on bail pending trial. They were able to get the cream of the London criminal bar to defend them while the likes of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong were denied legal representation of his choice. They were tried by jury before a judge that was not a Government hand-picked judge who can be “trusted” to rule the right way. 

The Guardian quotes Nathan Law…

In a message in which Wai used a derogatory term for pro-democracy protesters, the court heard that the dual British-Chinese national had boasted he was able to tally up monthly totals of “cockroaches” entering the UK.

“He had access to the system that contains information on us,” said Law. “I think there’s a part of the evidence showing that he used those systems to search for addresses or any other sensitive personal information for me.

“I can only do so much to protect myself. I can try to spot anyone following me and take different routes and do different things to sort of like get rid of them. I can hide my digital footprints. But I can’t not give details to the [British] government, and if their databases are so accessible and there are no safeguards to protect people like us, who are obviously targets of intelligence and secret operations from hostile governments, then that is a worry.”

Bloomberg on the HKETO’s role…

HKETO office manager Bill Yuen Chung-biu, 65, and another man, Peter Wai Chi-Leung, 38, were convicted at the Old Bailey in London on Thursday of assisting a foreign intelligence service. Yuen, a retired Hong Kong police superintendent, gave tasks to Wai, a UK Border Force officer and City of London Police special constable, that included carrying out surveillance on Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners in Britain, the court was told. Wai, who used his access to the UK immigration database to track the dissidents, was paid from the HKETO bank account. 

…The convictions underline how the role of these once-apolitical trade bureaus has evolved since China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020. They call into question the future not only of the London office but of 14 other HKETOs around the world, including the three US branches in New York, San Francisco and Washington DC.

In the SCMP, various people rush to assure us that the ETO in London won’t be shut down. One says the UK values old ties with Hong Kong too much. But as the Bloomberg piece suggests, the ETOs around the world don’t come out of this looking good. Following the erosion of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ insulation between Hong Kong and the Mainland in recent years (remember ‘high degree of autonomy’?) host countries were already increasingly questioning the offices’ status. And now this.

Book Punch – the store previously punished for serving sake at a book-reading and holding Spanish classes – gets fined again for hosting a stand-up comedy event last year. Was it a ‘staged event’ even though the venue did not have a stage?

[Magistrate Andrew Mok] said he did not think “stage performance,” as stated in the ordinance, applied only to performances with a stage.

Mok said that [store owner] Pong showed no remorse during the trial, and therefore, there was no reason to give a lighter penalty. But he noted that Pong’s attitude during the trial was “pragmatic,” and that his past convictions all had to do with promoting culture.

So if you ever hold a standup night – show remorse! (Is the magistrate showing a slight queasiness, imposing fines on a bookshop owner for ‘promoting culture’?)

(Great Moments in Hong Kong Law Enforcement continues with the arrest of a 12-year-old kid for mixing vinegar and baking soda, which the police deem to be manufacturing explosives.)

The Hong Kong government denies that it has anything to do with the case of its London Economic and Trade Office manager, who has been found guilty of breaking the UK National Security Act by assisting a foreign intelligence service. Fair enough – but which foreign power was he working for?

The (probably paywalled) NYT summarizes the proceedings so far at the Wang Fuk Court fire inquiry…

Testimony presented at hearings suggest that alarms had been deactivated, windows removed from evacuation staircases and water tanks drained. When trapped residents called for help, they found emergency hotlines were quickly overwhelmed. 

…Before the fire, residents had contacted the authorities to express concerns about the foam boards, which were meant to protect the windows during the work.

Emails and phone calls showed that a Fire Department employee said the agency was not responsible for regulating window coverings. The Housing Bureau investigated but failed to take action.

…WhatsApp messages revealed that a Housing Bureau employee tipped off the renovation consultant about an inspection the day before it was to be conducted. The consultant then notified the contractor, whose workers installed fire-safe netting — but only in the areas that were to be inspected. The rest of the netting later turned out to be substandard. 

…The hearings are taking place in a heightened political environment. In December, Hong Kong’s government condemned “anti-China” forces for criticizing the response to the tragedy. 

A lot of buck-passing and collusion. Imagine what this process would be like if we had independent lawmakers, civil society and Apple Daily. 

Bloomberg on Donald Trump’s forthcoming visit to Beijing…

US President Donald Trump says he will raise the case of imprisoned Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai when he meets President Xi Jinping in China next week. It might seem implausible that Beijing would consider releasing the pro-democracy businessman, an arch foe who feuded with the ruling Communist Party for decades, only three months after he was given a 20-year sentence on national security charges. The obstacles are formidable and shouldn’t be underestimated. But there are enough reasons to think that a deal isn’t out of the question. 

…Beijing has vilified Lai for years as a “running dog” and “pawn” of Western forces, but at this point it would surely be to the Chinese government’s advantage to release him. For one thing, it has won the battle over Hong Kong. The city’s people have been cowed and large-scale demonstrations akin to the 1 million-plus who flooded the streets in 2019 are now inconceivable. Releasing the businessman, along with other peaceful democracy activists who remain incarcerated such as trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan, barrister Chow Hang-tung and former journalist and Legislative Council candidate Gwyneth Ho, would project magnanimity — and confidence. 

…China has already paid a price for the Hong Kong crackdown, in the form of loss of trust and reputation, removal of the city’s special economic treatment, its biggest population exodus on record and sanctions on central government and local officials. Calling a halt would remove the main irritant to better relations. Has the time not come to declare victory? 

From CSIS, a massive analysis of the Iran war’s impact on China.

Dr David Owens of Owens Trodd and Partners in Central (my physio/cupping place) writes on how athletes have managed to run a marathon – 26.2 miles – in under two hours. Brilliant geeky stuff…

This demands sustaining approximately 21 kilometers per hour while operating at the threshold of human cardiovascular and metabolic capacity. The physiological requirements—VO2 max around 80 ml/kg/min, and lactate threshold around 90% of VO2 max—appeared to represent the outer limits of human adaptation. 

Shoes have a surprising amount to do with it.

Former HK Police spokesman John Tse has become head of the Information Services Dept – the producer of the mouth-frothing ‘despicable’, ‘smear’, ‘slander’ press releases that so often brighten up our day. He was previously in the CE’s office, where according to HKFP he was…

…[formulating] public relations and media strategies. 

The government says Tse is the most talented and suitable PR whizz they could find. Which is possibly true. But, generally speaking, the personality type of a policeman does not usually overlap with that of a media/communication strategist. Cops tend to value obedience and rules, while eschewing abstract or creative thinking. For example: to most of us, 2019 was a massive society-wide protest movement against bad and unrepresentative government; to a cop, all those people were infringing paragraph x of the Public Highways (Willful Obstruction) Ordinance and had to be arrested, end of story. 

Ideally, a PR guru will tell his boss/client things they don’t want to hear. “You are unpopular because you are unelected and unresponsive to the people’s needs, and unless you fix that, no media strategy will help.” In reality, it is easier to deliver messages that make the higher-ups feel good, even though public opinion – the audience that is supposed to matter – remains unconvinced or even hostile.

That’s why it often makes sense to hire an outsider, and preferably one who leans subversive. The Iranian regime – far more authoritarian than Hong Kong’s – understood this when they engaged Explosive Media to churn out anti-Trump Lego videos.