Big Lychee, Various Sectors

More here and here on the kids suspended for skipping the school flag-raising, and the UN criticizes the sentencing of minors on subversion charges – appetizers before moving on to Nikkei Asia’s piece on Hong Kong’s uphill struggle to ‘tell its story well’ by despatching overseas delegations…

Many were taken aback. “The DAB visit [to Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand in September] was actually met with resistance within the civil service because, by convention, the government does not help non-executive politicians in their overseas visits,” said a former senior government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It also creates a precedent … but it’s a political order from the top in government.”

(Historically, many Southeast Asian countries have had problems with supporters of the CCP. But leaving that aside – would you send DAB lawmakers anywhere to enhance your image? Maybe the members of Mirror turned the job down.)

The article adds an optimistic note…

…The removal of quarantine, some say, could be an opportune moment to restore a semblance of autonomy, or at least counter the perception that Hong Kong’s policies are set in Beijing’s halls of power.

A nod to the ‘semblance of autonomy’ theory from Samuel Bickett, who thinks the local ‘Article 23’ NatSec Law is being delayed to soothe concerns of overseas business.

You can see the logic – it may well be that local officials feel the time to push Article 23 is not exactly ripe. But there is an underlying assumption here that a) Beijing’s officials care about overseas business, and b) overseas businesses care about NatSec stuff.

CY Leung bemoans the ignorance of foreign investors…

“Not only do they not know [enough about Hong Kong], they have plenty of misunderstandings or superficial knowledge. Or they were misled, because of smearing campaigns by overseas media and politicians about what’s really happening in Hong Kong,” Leung said.

In an AP report on the Russian plutocrat-owned yacht in Hong Kong, Chief Executive John Lee responds to questions about whether he is paid in cash…

“The second thing about the so-called sanction imposed on people in Hong Kong without justification, it is a very barbaric act, and I’m not going to comment on the effect of such barbaric act, because officials in Hong Kong do what is right to protect the interests of the country, and the interests of Hong Kong, so we will just laugh off the so-called sanctions,” Lee said.

That’s ‘so called’ cash.

ASPI Strategist on how things aren’t going to plan for Xi Jinping…

The tide turns against China’s helmsman, domestically and internationally.

One bad period doesn’t negate all China has achieved since Xi took office in 2012, yet the power meter blips. This is not the 2022 that Xi ordered—a masterfully staged Beijing Olympics was supposed to be followed by a calm, ordered progress to the 20th National Party Congress.

The CCP gathers to bury the collective leadership model and remove all checks on Xi as China staggers on through Covid-19 lockdowns.

For years, hard-headed realists have doubted that China will displace the US as the world’s number-one economy. It’s all about compounding: if 2% of something big is more than 5% of something smaller, the smaller thing growing at 5% a year will never catch up with the bigger one growing at 2% a year. A China Project report… 

Due to low real growth in China, modest inflation and sharp depreciation of the yuan, the gap between China’s and the U.S.’s GDP will jump from $5.3 trillion in 2021 to an estimated $8.3 trillion,” tweeted National University of Singapore professor and former World Bank China chief Bert Hofman on September 29.

“This is the single most mind blowing statistic I have read about China’s slowing economy and its effect on U.S.-China relative economic heft: The dollar’s rise is outpacing Chinese growth, so China’s economy will SHRINK in U.S. dollar terms this year,” tweeted Martin Chorzempa, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, responding to Hofman’s prediction.

Another prophecy that came true, and was probably self-fulfilling: ‘the West is plotting to contain China’…

China’s containment conspiracy theories finally came true, however, when the Biden administration announced its Oct. 7 semiconductor export control policy. The new approach is unabashed containment, albeit in a narrowly defined technical domain, with the explicit purpose of hobbling China’s advanced semiconductor technology progress. 

Newsweek on the CCP’s presence in China’s overseas ports and shipping…

On the COSCO ship Rose, “the ship’s party branch educates its members about the latest theoretical achievements of the Party,” the [in-house] publication says. It rattles off obscure but important dogmas that permeate life in China, such as “enhance the four self-confidences,” before concluding the ship’s party branch is “a core for uniting the masses and a fortress for overcoming difficulties.”

And more on the renegade province, from National Interest…

The legal issue today concerning Taiwan is not whether Beijing has title to Taiwan, given that China has not held title to the island since 1895, and has as weak a claim to it today as Spain does to Cuba. 

The ‘No-one Could Possibly Live With Him’ Award goes to the commenters who, concerned and confused that my household consumption of water is (almost exactly) double that of the average Hong Kong individual, can only assume I gorge myself on the stuff.

Over the last 24 months, my apartment’s water consumption has almost halved. Can’t think of an explanation…

• Reduction in size of household: none.
• Gradual long-term shift to drinking beer: no.
• Repair of leaking plumbing and/or installation of more efficient appliances: no.
• Increase in showers/cooking/washing off premises: no.
• Massive collapse in domestic/personal hygiene: certainly not.
• Conscientious effort to reduce usage to save planet/money: not really.

At this rate, I will cease to use any water by mid-2025. A mystery. Whatever it is, it doesn’t apply to electricity.

Your NatSec weirdness du jour: according to a Tweet, ‘14 students at Saint Francis Xavier’s School in Tsuen Wan were suspended for three days for failing to attend a flag-raising ceremony on Friday. The vice principal allegedly scolded them and threatened to report them to the NatSec police, and a uniformed cop was spotted in the school today’.

The jailing of primary-election participants; the conviction of sheep-cartoon publishers; the arrest of erhu- and harmonica-players; the trial of a 90-year-old retired Catholic bishop. And now, another great moment in the thwarting of mortal threats to the security of the nation: a court sentences kids who were 15 or 16 at the time of arrest to juvenile detention for ‘conspiracy to incite subversion’…

Even though there was no evidence to show the defendants had succeeded in inciting others to act, [Judge] Kwok said it could have been a possibility if the group had met someone who shared the same ideology. People’s minds could be changed quickly, the judge said.

(Would someone who shared the same ideology need to be incited or have their minds changed?)

AFP adds…

The defendants cited the French Revolution and Ukraine’s struggle for democratisation over the past decade to support their cause, the court heard.

Flyers handed out by the group also quoted the Chinese Communist Party’s Mao Zedong saying that “revolution is not a dinner party” and is instead “an act of violence by which one class overthrows another…”

To repeat: Hong Kong now hosts a massive NatSec establishment that must justify its existence by finding local plots to overthrow the government of the world’s nuclear-armed second-biggest economy. Either they move next onto subversive toddlers and triangle-players, or declare ‘mission accomplished’ and downsize.

CNN on how – more to the point, why – Hong Kong has been inching away from Beijing’s zero-Covid policy. Essentially, China’s policy makers see the collapsing property market, rising youth unemployment and other problems and feel desperate (though not desperate enough to extricate the Mainland from the zero-Covid mess)…

Chinese authorities “see a role for Hong Kong in helping to restore the mainland economy,” said John Burns, Emeritus Professor at HKU. “This would be another reason why the central government gave the green light to Hong Kong authorities to open the border – and I think that’s what happened. Hong Kong has no autonomy to decide things like this on its own.”

Seems about right. The only other explanation is that local officials and/or sympathetic Mainland ones are craftily disobeying commands from higher up. Still, the idea that Hong Kong will serve as an ‘experiment’ for the Mainland sounds more like an excuse than anything else.

BBC on the effects of zero-Covid on China’s people…

China has successfully minimised the impact of the virus – and if it re-opened tomorrow, the disease would spread like wildfire.

But, at the moment, it feels like the government is just kicking the can down the road. Remaining cut off from the outside world is coming at a cost.

There are no easy options, but China can’t go on like this forever.

‘Honey Badger’ Cummins, it transpires, is a rugby star and reality TV personality. And now, some say, an apologist for an oppressive regime, not to mention its idiotic Covid restrictions.

…critics say the ads depict a Hong Kong that no longer exists after COVID-19 restrictions saw many of its top restaurants shut down including one visited by Cummins during the campaign, Tung Po Kitchen.

More from HKFP. The HK Democracy Council wade in.

This is in the context of a major tourism relaunch, alongside a campaign to reverse the brain drain (thanks to the San Tin Technopole Hub-Zone) and the much-hyped forthcoming ‘financial summit’. Officials’ desperation to somehow bounce back offers rich pickings for the PR floozies. But on the bright side – the Oz promo was shot pre-Covid, so we can be sure the avalanche of marketing exercises and celebrity endorsements to come will be far more in tune with reality, and not all misleading or offensive, right?

‘Honey Bear’ also says ‘come to Hong Kong to watch the Civic Party possibly disband’.

You mean it hasn’t already? What is the purpose of a formal opposition political group under a one-party state, where democrats are jailed for trying to win elections, and elections themselves are now rigged by a candidate-screening process (such that barely 30% of voters bother to cast a ballot, and urging a boycott has been made a crime)? Either you expose your members to greater risk of persecution on subversion or sedition charges, or you become co-opted as token ‘centrist’ stooges. Under these circumstances, abdication/absence/invisibility is noble. Clinging on looks tawdry.

Weekend reading…

From InMedia, why 4,000 Hong Kong teachers quit in 2020-21. If the salary of one high-school department head – HK$90,000 pm – is typical, leaving is no small deal.

UnHerd on Xi’s Putin and other problems…

While [Xi’s] own position appears relatively unthreatened, the same can’t be said for his plan to pack the Politburo (the CCP’s top 25 leaders) with his protégés and factional allies, ensuring his path to lifetime rule and completing his personality cult. Xi’s economic mismanagement and strategic misstep of personally linking himself too closely to Putin have exposed him and his political faction to internal criticism in a manner that was almost unthinkable even two years ago. 

In the Nation, Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch on the Vatican’s deal with Beijing…

By renewing a secretive deal with Beijing, the Vatican is effectively endorsing the Chinese government’s perversion of religions and is dangerously close to being complicit in the country’s deepening rights abuses.

Spot the censorship: Mainland edition of a history textbook versus the original English-language version.

Following Biden’s recent remarks, Gerrit van der Wees on why you should ignore blather about US ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan…

Many in the press and think-tank world mistakenly equate “current policy” with “strategic ambiguity.” 

The Carnegie Endowment offers helpful hints on how to tell if and when China is about to invade Taiwan.

What’s On Weibo explains why Chinese netizens call Russia ‘vegetable goose’.

On sort-of out-of-area matters, Timothy Snyder on how the war in Ukraine might end…

The scenario that I will propose here is that a Russian conventional defeat in Ukraine is merging imperceptibly into a Russian power struggle, which in turn will require a Russian withdrawal from Ukraine. This is, historically speaking, a very familiar chain of events.

…regime survival has depended upon two premises: what happens on television is more important than what happens in reality; and what happens abroad is more important than what happens at home.  It seems to me that these premises no longer hold. 

A local angle: a yacht (over half the length of the SS Titanic) belonging to Russian sanctioned billionaire tycoon and buddy-of-Putin Alexei Mordashov has moored in Hong Kong.

Cue the rickshaws: the story behind the Tourism Board’s promo down under…

Director of the Hong Kong Tourism Board Australia and New Zealand, Karen Macmillan, said, “The video series shows the incredible variety of experiences you can do in Hong Kong and really captures its distinctly East meets West vibe.

Maybe it would help if you knew who ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins (and his performing ‘infectious larrikin persona’) is. Though then again, maybe not. Oddly, he doesn’t appear on the lengthy credits (bottom of article), which make the production sound like Ben Hur. Wretchedly over-cliched content aside, it’s hard to imagine the potential size of the Australian inbound market justifying the budget for these videos. Even as the most onerous idiotic Covid restrictions are relaxed, Hong Kong looks set to be a place outsiders visit only if they have to. And Virgin pulls out.

Part of a backlog of recommended reading for the gentry…

How the government turns a blind eye to developers’ (and their contractors’) poor safety standards. Truth is, we all (apart from Transit Jam) take this stuff for granted. 

George Magnus in a long but worthwhile analysis of China’s economic prospects…

…it is a moot point whether the PRC can resolve these problems satisfactorily, partly because the CCP itself is one of the main architects of the economy’s current ailments, and partly because of the systemic nature of the problems. Changing the system is simply not an option.

Covering similar ground, but also essential – Michael Pettis in Foreign Affairs on how China has trapped itself economically…

…it is difficult to abandon a successful development model. Its very success tends to generate a set of deeply embedded political, business, financial, and cultural institutions based on the continuance of the model, and there is likely to be strong institutional and political opposition to any substantial reversal.

Hong Kong is proud to help with the recruitment of astronauts, following an invitation that shows Beijing’s trust in the city. Or at least some of the city. Several million sighs of relief echo around the streets as non-patriots learn they will not be eligible to be sent up in China’s space rocket.

Much excited chatter about suitable candidates – for example, how about lawmaker Dr the Hon Elizabeth Quat, famous for her dazzling academic qualifications, including (surely) a PhD in astrophysics, or two?

A gushing Standard editorial advises…

As space missions involve highly sensitive state secrets for authorized eyes only, it can be expected that applicants will be subject to thorough background checks.

Which brings us to a Financial Times scoop revealing that China’s Foreign Ministry is asking foreign diplomatic missions in Hong Kong to disclose details of their consular and residential premises…

Officials want floor plans, details of rental or sale terms, as well as lease or sale agreements.

Scene at the NatSec police: “Hmmm… The Bolivians have converted their spare bathroom into a limbo-dancing studio. Better check it out.”  Should keep them busy for a few months while they’re waiting for the next clampdown on subversive erhu-players.

A major outbreak of righteous indignant mouth-frothing in Hong Kong Twitter-land. The cause was this piece by a Financial Times staffer leaving the city after just a couple of years, describing her life of junk parties, RAT tests, champagne at sunset, quarantine – every dim-bimbo expat cliche bar the rickshaws and coolies. 

What you should do is turn the page (it’s a lifestyle piece). But it was a slow weekend, and numerous familiar-but-anonymous posters erupted in fury. Many pointed out obvious shortcomings in the article. ‘…she falsely generalises her own terribly disinterested disposition as the norm…’ How could she be an expert when she apparently had few local connections? Or claims the only thing that’s cheap here is the taxis? 

Tone deaf is right, but not for the reasons she imagines. She seems completely ignorant of the fact that a large population of non-Cantonese here in Hong Kong (many professionals) live nothing like she describes and were out there protesting with everyone else.

At this point a more angry crowd weighs in. I won’t bother linking, but the basic gist of it is a form of virtue-signaling: ‘this person is just an expat, while I’m a genuine [non-native-born] Hongkonger of many years/decades who can use chopsticks and has local friends and cares and understands about the place’. Or the short version: ‘I’m white, but not a Disco Bay one’.

This hypersensitive superiority and resentment towards other outsiders/Westerners who moved to Hong Kong more recently and/or don’t integrate sufficiently is not new. Remember aging colonial matrons’ disgust at working-class Brits arriving to work on the airport in the 90s? Probably goes back centuries. Indeed, it has a name: Marco Polo Syndrome. I discovered this place and know its exotic ways, while you are an interloper who embarrasses me.

The cool thing to do is ignore people. Always worked for me live and let live. Not everyone is curious or adaptive. (Though most FT correspondents, in my experience, are.)

Update: quick discussion of the phenomenon.

Some more on the men arrested for posting ‘seditious’ material online. Allegations include ‘offensive slogans’, ridiculing the national anthem, and ‘desecration’ of the national flag. And two of the speech therapists imprisoned for seditious sheep cartoons are to appeal their conviction.

If the government ignored these expressions of opinion that do not endanger life or property, few would even notice them. Instead, enforcement action makes everyone focus on reworded anthem lyrics, and the sheep cartoons are now available in English and Mandarin (Taiwan-style, no less).

The NatSec system’s relentless if futile pursuit of ex-lawmaker Ted Hui – safely overseas – culminates in a sentencing in absentia to over three years in prison. His original sins date back to protests in and outside the Legislative Council back in 2019-20, but the authorities are visibly Mightily Miffed that he skipped town (with the help of Danish lawmakers) and, as the judge put it, ‘undermined public confidence in the administration of justice’. Oh, and he ‘shows no remorse’.

On the subject of running rings around people, a Standard editorial makes some amusing points over Li Ka-shing’s offloading of a luxury apartment complex onto a Singapore-based investment fund. CK Asset stands to continue making money from the Borrett Road development by helping to finance the buyer and taking a no-risk potential slice of future sales for a time.

China Media Project looks at Global Times’ increasing use of ‘Xizang’ instead of ‘Tibet’ in English-language output. With the Ministry of Foreign Affairs following suit, how long will it be before Beijing starts pressuring foreigners to adopt and normalize what is in effect a new name? When will airlines or hotel groups add ‘Xizang’ to ‘Hong Kong, China’ or ‘China’s Province of Taiwan, China’ in their drop-down menus? How many years will it take for overseas audiences to work out where or what ‘Xizang’ is? How many decades will it be before foreign commentators – still struggling to say ‘Beijing’ properly – manage to pronounce this mysterious Pinyin-Han usage?

Hong Kong’s NatSec police arrest people for alleged ‘seditious’ social-media posts. With thousands of staff and a huge budget – and no genuine national security threats in sight – this establishment must be desperate for things to do. So scroll through Facebook we must. Day after day after day.

Meanwhile, another part of the government does something intelligent with taxpayers’ money: it is going to offer winter flu shots to over-50s at Covid vaccination places. Simple and obvious, but still a surprise: someone, somewhere in the bureaucracy, is using their brain.

Speechless with shock, we will have weekend links early…

A detailed Georgetown Law paper on how Hong Kong’s first NatSec case – that of Tong Ying-kit – falls short of international human-rights standards.

A London Times editorial blasting the Vatican for its squeamishness on Cardinal Zen.

Mediacorp vid on China’s housing woes. And the Guardian on the ‘Ponzi scheme where money taken from new investors is used to pay off existing clients in an ever-decreasing spiral to collapse’.

‘We also serve’: the Conversation on how Chinese celebrities are pushing Beijing’s line on Taiwan. 

National Interest item saying time is running out for China to invade Taiwan. And Inside Story on why it would be a disaster in any case…

Reunification has essentially zero support among Taiwanese. And even if the current leadership could somehow be eliminated, local replacements would be equally or more hostile.

…If an invasion of Taiwan is militarily impossible, why is it continually discussed? The answer is that it is in the interests of all the major parties to pretend that an invasion is a real possibility. 

The magistrate rules that there is sufficient evidence for a trial of Cardinal Zen and five others accused of failing to register a legal defence fund. Some more details here. As a taste of how things are likely to go… 

…the lawyer representing the cardinal asked a senior police inspector whether the funeral committee for the late Macau tycoon Stanley Ho and Chief Executive John Lee’s election office were registered societies.

However, the line of cross-examination was stopped by the prosecution and the magistrate, who questioned the relevance of whether other groups were registered societies.

She said that funeral-related groups formed ‘not because of an aim, but to complete something’.

Isn’t completion an aim? Whatever. Expect more extreme nitpicking over what sort of group needs registration under the Societies Ordinance, including prosecution emphasis on the political – as in sinister- or conspiratorial-sounding – nature of the fund (a la Wen Wei Po). The trial for a minor (max HK$10,000 fine) and little-used charge could turn into a neat example of ‘rule by law’, in which government opponents commit offenses while loyalists doing the same thing do not. 

The Catholic News Agency quotes various Catholics and others in support of Cardinal Zen. The Guardian’s coverage of the proceedings.

Another weird moment in NatSec: police film worshipers leaving the Anglican cathedral after a memorial service for the Queen. Given the use of this tactic to dissuade crowds from jeering the national anthem at sports events, the logic is presumably that expressions of mourning for the late sovereign (as outside the British consulate) are a disguised form of anti-Beijing protest. No exceptions for the church of which she was Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor by convention dating back to 1531 (Henry VIII, etc).