Big Lychee, Various Sectors

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

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

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

The Diplomat on Beijing’s choice…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desperate Shoe-Shine of the Week Award goes to one of many lawmakers falling into line on Beijing’s appointment of John Lee as Chief Executive…  

Jeffrey Lam from the Business and Professionals Alliance said he believes Lee can unite different sectors, revive the economy and strengthen Hong Kong’s position as an international finance centre.

“John Lee solved many cases when he was in the disciplined forces. Many cases are actually related to commerce. He had to understand about the running of the business sector,” he said.

“Therefore, he has communicated and cooperated with the business sector and other sectors in the society… John Lee can find talents who are familiar with different sectors to help him.”

Yes, Jeffrey.

Property tycoons join in the grovelling. And pro-government figures rush to participate in John Lee’s ‘campaign’. Everyone gets a chance to appear to be involved…

Daryl Ng, grandson of Sino founder Ng Teng-fong and son of the group’s current chairman Robert Ng Chee-siong, will manage HK$3.6 million of Lee’s electoral funds while Pauline Ng and Chan will be responsible for HK$7 million each.

Links for the weekend…

From HKFP, something for any of Hong Kong’s remaining overseas judges…

Clearly the inaptly named Department of Justice does not see its role as including any protection for the prospect of a fair trial for arrested people. We are transitioning to a mainland-style system in which everyone who is arrested is guilty. The role of the court is to read the confession and pass sentence.

Also, a must-read by Holmes Chan and Su Xinqi on the plight of the pro-democrats detained without trial or bail for over a year already…

Charged with subversion, the majority have been held in custody for more than a year and the few granted bail must adhere to strict speech curbs.

Most of what has occurred during pre-trial hearings is blanketed by reporting restrictions, even though the defendants want them lifted. And their trial is not expected to begin until at least 2023.

“The prosecution and the court are making the defendants invisible in plain sight,” legal scholar Eric Lai of Georgetown University told AFP.

Hong Kong public libraries’ list of banned books is secret. Home Affairs Dept explained that disclosing the list…

…may lead to wide circulation of such library materials with malicious intent by other parties or organizations and is thus unfavorable to safeguarding national security. 

From TransitJam, snouts in the Smart Traffic Fund trough – ‘a notorious gold mine for consultants’.

Atlantic on Hong Kong’s decline as an ‘East meets West’ hub…

The consternation and anger [over the resignation of two UK judges] reveal the dilemma facing Hong Kong’s new political regime, placed in power through overhauled sham elections, unchallenged by opposition, and whose fitness for office is judged by a contorted metric that has confused patriotism with blind nationalism. The city’s government and lawmakers, casting themselves always as the victim, seldom let pass a chance to denounce and belittle the West, a nebulous collection of perceived evil forces blamed for many of Hong Kong’s self-inflicted problems. Yet these same officials pine to be accepted, respected, and welcomed as they were just a few years ago by their Western counterparts.

(John Lee, of course, won’t pine.)

The Diplomat on what Hong Kong, rather than Ukraine, tells us about Beijing’s plans for Taiwan…

…the crucial insight that is revealed by Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong is that the economy no longer dictates Xi’s priorities. 

(On a related topic – Foreign Affairs on how Putin misread the West.)

Translation by Geremie R. Barmé of a glorious lockdown rant by an old Shanghai guy to enforcers in hazmat suits. For fans of crazed Shanghainese – a younger guy giving the government a piece of his mind, and a drone telling people off for shouting from their apartments at night. There are clips of crowds fighting over food, a robot-dog enforcing rules, an abandoned real dog being killed, and much more. Oh, but you can order birthday cakes.

NPR on the mood up there…

The first thing the orderly noticed when she arrived at the Shanghai nursing home was the rats.

Foreign Policy looks at shortages in the city…

The food scarcity is severe enough that some people are foraging, resulting in cases of food poisoning. Residents are swapping tips online for making vegetables last longer or preparing food that’s past its sell-by date. Unofficial shops have sprung up run by those who stockpiled over the winter, while there have been breakouts from locked-down compounds to buy supplies.

And ‘China is a joke’ – Washington Post (maybe paywalled) on Taiwan’s EyeCTV, a satire of  Chinese state media…

Imitating the mannerisms of Chinese officials is one of the group’s regular bits, and host Chen Tzu-chien, has more than a passing resemblance to former Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. The actors also produce news commentary, sometimes delivered while seated on a toilet…

Beijing announces – in its uniquely convoluted and ritualistic way – that John Lee will be Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive. He is promptly ‘showered with praise’. It seems that, rather than fabricate a quasi-competitive process, the Chinese government will present Lee as the sole ‘candidate’…

Lau Siu-kai, the vice-president of Beijing’s top think tank on Hong Kong, said … Beijing wants to make sure there is no damage to the unity among the patriotic camp that would allow foreign forces to take advantage of the situation at the current time.

Lau also said he believes if Lee becomes the next Hong Kong leader, he will take an even tougher approach against anti-China disruptors.

‘Even tougher’ than what? The last couple of days have included denial of bail in a freedom-of-expression case, arrests for ‘sedition’ (clapping in court), and hefty rioting sentences from 2019. ChinaFile compiles a full report on NatSec regime action against speech crimes, foreign interference and subversion since mid-2020. 

John Burns writes in an HKFP op-ed…

Selecting John Lee for chief executive, dependent for his authority on the party and the police, is a calculated move. Authorities are telling us that political skills do not matter, and that neither does inspiring and mobilising the people of Hong Kong. Yet we need inspiring leaders, able to mobilise. So, who will do that?

It’s possible Beijing will allow someone more warm-and-cuddly as, say, Chief Secretary to act as the human face of a grim and menacing regime. But this assumes the CCP is subtle enough to see a need for such a figure. The word is that Lee’s fellow ex-cop Chris Tang will take the number-two position in the ‘even tougher’ administration. Local officials might pay lip-service to the idea of a Hong Kong attractive to the middle class and international business, but Beijing’s priority is to force the city to submit and obey, and root out anything that won’t.

Bookmark this site for forthcoming ‘campaign’ fun (domain registered by a PR company).

Carrie Lam ‘will not seek a second term’ – her words, quoted in numerous international media, which then take them at face value and fail to point out that a second term is not hers to seek. 

We are now going to see a flood of overseas press reports referring to Hong Kong’s next Chief Executive being decided by an election, even if there is only one candidate. Reputable and normally conscientious outlets (Reuters, NY Times, etc) will attempt to qualify this by saying only a small group of Beijing loyalists have a vote. But this will still be incorrect. Even calling it ‘stage-managed’ or ‘rigged’ is misleading. There is no ‘election’. Sticking labels saying ‘ballot’ and ‘voter’ on inanimate objects doesn’t alter that.

Xi Jinping’s number-one skill is painting himself into corners. An insistence on meeting GDP growth targets creates a spiral of debt and wasteful construction that Beijing wants to stop but can’t. The delusion that ‘the West is in decline and China will replace it’ is trapping the country in a dangerously hubristic foreign outlook. The obsession with annexing Taiwan looks ever-less realistic. And now China is committed to two more utter losers – a zero-Covid approach to Omicron, and support for Putin’s genocide in Ukraine – with no non-humiliating ways out.

In its minor and localized way, the choice of John Lee as Chief Executive is part of this pattern. Presumably there will be a reshuffling in which the visibly less enthusiastic senior bureaucrats are replaced with obedient loyalists who take Beijing’s word literally. Whatever the cost in institutional, commercial or cultural capacity, the work of making Hong Kong less distinct must continue, to prove a point about the city as a Western-infested national security weakness.

Reports (with some overlap) on the inane zero-Covid approach in Shanghai here and here…

As more residential communities are blocked off with metal barriers — some entrances reportedly even welded shut with iron bars — people are becoming increasingly unhappy about the policy.

Samuel Bickett considers the pros and cons of foreign judges resigning from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal.

Thought for the Day from Isaac Asimov: 

“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

‘Sources’ say Chief Secretary (for nine months) and ex-cop John Lee might ‘run for election’ or ‘enter the race’ for Chief Executive. There being no election or race (ignore blather about candidacy, convenors and campaigns), this means Beijing is appointing him as Carrie Lam’s replacement. The CCP has tired of Carrie’s warmth and charisma and decided to go full grim authoritarian apparatchik.

To the extent it makes any difference in terms of substance, expect an even more top-down, slavishly loyal, law-and-order-obsessed NatSec Regime to mop up remaining dissent and civil society (recent examples here and here). Internet censorship, surveillance, anti-terrorism patrols. Zero tolerance for laughing. The police state c’est moi. Many will look back at 2017-22 as a gentler time – probably from overseas.

Another rumour: Financial Secretary Paul Chan will ‘consider running’. Would a regime that backs Putin in Ukraine pick Paul Chan? Thank you. Also – the apparent leaks are all a joke to manage expectations so everyone is overjoyed at another five years of Carrie. As if people’s feelings are a consideration.

Today’s guest artist (click on a pic) dedicates her song to Regina Ip.

Enjoy the cheerful chaos of Covid policy while it lasts. The Mainland Chinese folk-medicine expert advises Hong Kong to implement the ‘Three Easies’ and the ‘Three Reductions and One Priority’. And the Hong Kong government unveils its latest exercise in futility: universal but voluntary self-testing over three consecutive days, with those testing positive kindly requested to inform the authorities. 

Doing it for just one day would be too easy – you must put serious effort into putting yourself at risk of being sent off to an isolation camp, and don’t expect any actual incentives encourage participation.

Some say the idea is to use (predictable) non-compliance to justify a subsequent compulsory mass-testing. Others think this city-wide self-testing will justify not doing that. As ever, we are left in bewilderment.

I guess columbariums are closed? Some Ching Ming links…

Hongkonger Eric Yip wins the UK’s national poetry competition. He’s 19. Sneaks up on you, and is even more compelling on a second reading.

George Magnus on China’s political and economic outlook – ‘There is no liberal reform agenda in China anymore’.

Antony Beevor (of Stalingrad and Berlin fame) on Putin fighting WWII…

An almost Stalinist determination to right the Russian military—backed by the execution of deserters and failing officers—could well extend the conflict in a bloodbath of relentless, grinding destruction.

A look at the town where Volodymyr Zelensky grew up.

A history of Singapore’s 1979-onwards ‘speak Mandarin’ campaigns in posters and other publicity materials. In 1957, most Singapore Chinese used Fujian/Guangzhou languages – and only 0.1% spoke Mandarin.

If you’re passing the FCC, check out the exhibition of up-close photographs of scary Hong Kong wildlife by Lawrence Hylton.

The Guardian on the UK judges’ departure from Hong Kong’s CFA…

[Activist Chung Ching Kwong] told the Guardian the campaigners had been seeking to have the British judges removed from the court of final appeal as their presence was “no longer acting as a moderating force, as the government has claimed, but was giving a false sense of legitimacy to the Hong Kong government”.

Kwong said the non-permanent judges had no impact over political cases, and so there was no positive influence they could wield by remaining.

The foreign part-timers’ presence on the CFA is purely symbolic. Thread on the neutering of Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal…

The CFA can do very little when the legal system as a whole has deteriorated to the extent that it has

Overseas [judges] will only ever see a carefully curated subset of cases (and you can bet your bottom dollar none of them will be “sensitive” ones)

From Transit Jam, Hong Kong government continues its fight against two-wheeled transport.

From China Quarterly, a long paper on Hong Kong’s 2019 ‘Freedom Summer’. Heavy on the serious academic jargon/sociology-babble – but about the spontaneity and community spirit of the uprising. 

RFA interview with Samuel Bickett.

In the Spectator – how Henry Kissinger was co-opted by China.

And on other matters…

Trump’s golf statement on March 28. And a golf magazine’s story on his sportsmanship…

…the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”

Great moments in statistics/cartography: the most popular topping/sauce to go on chips in the UK by county, no less…

Observations include a distinct ‘Gravy Belt’ extending further than stereotypically imagined, curving into Mid/West Wales … Cheese did best in remote rural areas such as the Scottish Highlands.

A symbolic slap in the face for officials insisting that Hong Kong still has rule of law. The two top members of the UK Supreme Court resign from the city’s panel of overseas Court of Final Appeal judges, stating that they…

…cannot continue to sit in Hong Kong without appearing to endorse an administration which has departed from values of political freedom, and freedom of expression…

HKFP report, including comments from British government officials.

Playing it ever-so cool, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice issues a whiny blog-statement that rebuts the UK’s criticism of declining rule of law in Hong Kong without actually mentioning it.

The Chief Executive addresses the issue rather more directly – except you will never know, thanks to the government’s secret press-release weapon of using 100 words where 20 would do, so anyone attempting to read it all the way through will fall asleep halfway. We can imagine that Carrie finds this a welcome distraction from the never-ending zero-braincells Covid nightmare.

The Law Society begs the judges to reconsider – almost rather touching. The Bar Association indulges in some even more feeble hand-wringing. The word ‘regret’ needs a rest,

For a genuine pithy-and-pissy mouth-frothing rant, we must turn to China’s officials in Hong Kong (the Foreign Affairs ones), who deliver some serious freaking-out about ‘playing the foreign judges card’, ‘smearing the NatSec Law’, etc. What’s interesting here is that they genuinely seem miffed about the justices pulling out. They could be defiant and patriotic and say (as many Chinese nationalists do) ‘We don’t need no stinking foreign judges’, de-colonization, blah blah. 

Former CE CY Leung gets similarly irate on a social-media post – even accusing UK officials of damaging separation of powers by pressuring the judges to quit.

Samuel Bickett has some criticisms of his own…

Lords Reed & Hodge resigned under political pressure, yes, but on the way out they defended the indefensible: A court system filled with judges who have cravenly abandoned their duty to the law & the defendants whose fates they control.

Since the authorities started using the NatSec and archaic sedition laws, observers have debated whether the presence of these overseas judges helped protect rule of law in Hong Kong or unwittingly provided a veneer to a rotting system. The jailing without bail of people like Claudia Mo, Jimmy Lai, Long Hair and so on – essentially for their opinions – surely answered that question. The Canadian and Australian part-timers still on the CFA will now also presumably withdraw.

You might have thought that Justices Reed and Hodge jointly win Judge of the Day Award. But no! That prize goes to a more junior and locally employed judge arguably proving that independent courts can still exist in Hong Kong. An unvaccinated woman applies for a judicial review of the government’s Vaccine Pass. Judge Russell Coleman turns her down, but in his decision makes some rather pointed remarks about officials’ handling of Covid. For example…

There may well be room for people to say that a number of decisions and announcements made by the HKSAR Government relating to the Covid-19 pandemic have seemed to be: lacking in logic or common sense; riddled with inconsistencies; short on empathy and human understanding; detached from local personal and business realities; focused on distractions, hence being reactive to what seems urgent at the expense being proactive to what is important; blind to the need for a coherent longer-term strategy and contingency planning and the clear public communication of it; and sometimes even apparently contrary to the very ‘science’ which is invoked to justify them.

Ouch. And… 

…the HKSAR has pursued a policy to combat the pandemic which is in line with the policy pursued in Mainland China, but one increasingly out of step with most other countries and regions.  That policy has been called the “zero Covid” policy, later shifted to or renamed as the “dynamic zero Covid” policy – though it did not inspire confidence that the person in charge of implementing the shift in policy could not give a clear description of it, also showing that a nice slogan is not a substitute for an actual strategy.

The neat thing is that this brutal editorial these comments do not (to this layman) really inform his argument or need to appear in the written decision – but I guess judges need to get things off their chests too.

Which brings us to Hong Kong’s tragic Covid policies, and the prioritization of praising Beijing over using science. A government website lists, with a straight face, certain Chinese traditional medicines as having the following medieval-sounding qualities… 

To clear scourge, remove toxin, diffuse the lung and discharge heat … Dispel wind and unleash the inhibited lung energy, clearing heat-toxicity … Relieve exterior syndromes and remove dampness, regulate Qi and harmonize the function of the spleen and stomach.

(Link via Tripperhead, who deserves a Gold Bauhinia Medal – and is profiled on a Bloomberg vid.)

The pressing, overriding, number-one, get-on-with-it!!! priority must, surely, be to vaccinate the elderly. Instead, Hong Kong officials roll out the red carpet for a delegation of traditional Chinese medicine experts…

Traditional Chinese medicine will be very effective in reducing severe illness and deaths,” [CE Carrie] Lam said.

…”Elderly patients in Hong Kong have more severe illnesses and a higher death rate,” [Mainland TCM expert Xiaolin] Tong said.

“Chinese medicine has its advantages, especially in treating elderly patients with chronic diseases, because it not only targets the coronavirus but also helps treat their other illnesses.”

Full-blown adulatory press release here. More breathless praise for ceaseless Mainland anti-epidemic supplies. 

You will soon be getting your very own anti-epidemic service bags with free boxes of quack voodoo placebos with mystery herbal ingredients that might damage your liver. Check out the logistics and manpower. (Can we grind up the TMC pills as fertilizer for potted plants? Hate throwing stuff away.) 

More official messaging reflecting government priorities: the latest (in fact, first) Safe Community Newsletter from the Inter-Departmental Counter-Terrorism Unit. The oh-so Civil Service graphic design is itself borderline aesthetic terror.

A few more links, for ambience…

Professor Philip Cowley on how Hong Kong’s zero-Covid mania backfired…

Hong Kong ran out of coffins as well as smugness. 

Bloomberg op-ed on the end of ‘antifragile’ Hong Kong…

…the administration’s public statements have tended to emphasize the city’s inability to cope and dependency on help from mainland China.

(An interesting point: unless you’re past your mid-40s or so, you have no memory of a time when Hong Kong had leaders who displayed pride and confidence in the city.) 

HKFP on people stranded overseas giving up hope (loosely defined) of returning to Hong Kong anytime soon.

The above picture shows:

1. a pizza factory
2. the left-luggage facility at an airport
3. Hong Kong…

…has further expanded its capacity at public mortuaries, as well as for body identification and cremation, to cope with an accumulating number of corpses.

No scientific logic involved, but the Hong Kong government ‘streamlines’ the flight suspensions regime in such a way few will notice much difference. And with impeccable timing, the Airport Authority announces that the third runway will start operations later this year. (As a Mainland-built Covid isolation facility?)

Much of the mental trauma Hong Kong people are undergoing arises not just from the effects of harsh and unscientific Covid policies, but from trying to work out why?

From a (probably paywalled) Economist story on Beijing’s obsession with internal stability ahead of the CCP congress later this year…

If officials relax the [zero-Covid] policy to protect the economy they would risk a surge of cases that could overwhelm China’s fragile public-health system.

Surely the root of the Hong Kong dilemma. If Hong Kong transitions to ‘living with Covid’ ahead of the Mainland, what message does that send the Chinese public about the CCP’s infallibility? We have to drag out absurd flight suspensions so as not to look different.

And then the icing on the cake: an HKFP article points out how omicron has given Beijing an opportunity to reduce barriers between the Mainland and Hong Kong systems via traditional medicine and health workers. (Extra context: a relentless focus on travel-, quarantine- and school-related policies that encourage the middle class and expats to leave.)

As Dr Owens mentions in his latest, the greatest suffering falls on the least well-off. And…

The failure to define a strategy has resulted in an attempt to walk a tight rope, balancing on the one side, science and evidence, and on the other a political constituency seemingly unable to understand the most basic concepts of biology.

And how did this get past the SCMP’s Party Secretary? The patriotism/Nat-Sec-driven dismantling of district civic groups – and official boycotting of remaining pan-dem activists – has undermined the fight against Covid at neighbourhood level…

“It took a few months for the government to break community links that had taken 40 years to build up. We can’t expect anyone to have the ability to rebuild them soon.”

The official explanation for Shanghai’s use of phased lockdowns in handling its latest outbreak: the region’s economic importance to the rest of the world. Sounds like making-it-up-as-we-go bullshit. Probably a sign of tension between zero-Covid ideologues and science-based pragmatists as the city is poised to go the way of Hong Kong.

For chart geeks – HKFP presents highlights of Hong Kong’s omicron saga in graphic form.

And, on non-Covid affairs, how Beijing is enforcing correct thinking on Ukraine among educators.