Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Here’s a weird one: two barristers accuse a judge and prosecutors – including a private lawyer acting for the prosecution – of colluding to drag out a jaywalking trial. The case should have lasted two days, but spanned 91 days over a two-year period. At the end, the judge ordered the barristers to pay the prosecution HK$620,000 for wasting time. This was overturned by the Court of Appeal, which said all parties had been wasting the court’s time. The two are now claiming damages…

On Tuesday, Leung and How filed a writ in turn saying they were entitled to a claim of HK$21.4 million from the prosecutors and magistrate Ho, as well as … the Department of Justice.

The barristers said the prosecution drew upon unnecessary and redundant evidence, and accused magistrate Ho of judicial misconduct and abuse of power.

The Standard’s pro-government editorials these days are so fawning that they are almost amusing. From today’s…

For years, the narrative surrounding Hong Kong’s governance has been one of experience and stability. Yet, as the city navigates an increasingly complex global landscape, stability alone is not enough. The recent sight of veteran lawmakers, some above the age of 70, gracefully stepping aside to make way for a new generation is not a sign of weakness, but a powerful signal of renewal. 

Hong Kong’s advancement demands more than just administrators; it requires visionary politicians with a robust international vision, and this generational shift is a pivotal step in that direction.

…The infusion of younger new faces into Hong Kong’s Legislative Council is a welcome move… A legislature that mirrors the demographic diversity of its populace is better equipped to address its needs, fostering policies that are both forward-looking and inclusive.

…The rejuvenation of Hong Kong’s political institutions is more than a cosmetic change; it is a necessary evolution. By fostering a political ecosystem that values both the wisdom of experience and the dynamism of youth, Hong Kong builds a more resilient and representative governance model.

Is it just me, or is there something synthetic about the way the piece draws on every possible, even implausible, argument to put an enthusiastic spin on the all-patriot LegCo clear-out? It must be written by AI, right?

‘Believe nothing until it’s officially denied.’ The CE insists all those LegCo members standing down…

…have told their own reasons, such as family reasons, [the] wish to focus more on matters they care about, academic pursuits, or the desire to pass the torch to the newcomers.

“These are their personal choices. I respect their decisions.”

Some interesting reads…

Frances Hui – an ‘absconder’ with a HK$1 million bounty – writes in The Hill about the treatment of Hong Kong’s imprisoned politicians and activists…

Solitary confinement has become routine retaliation — whether for protesting in the court, being visited by people the corrections department dislikes or for simply receiving “too many” letters. International standards prohibit solitary confinement beyond 15 days, yet in Hong Kong, its use has dramatically increased since 2020, with 42 percent of such cases exceeding one month in 2024.

Pro-democracy advocate and publisher Jimmy Lai, 77, has endured years in solitary, spending more than 23 hours daily in his cell with minimal exercise and only a sliver of natural light through a small window. Former lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung has been assigned no neighbors in adjacent cells, made to work alone and moved through the prison shrouded by tarps. 

(She co-authored the CFHK report on the subject.)

Worth a look: an Asia Society Policy Institute paper on growing spirituality among China’s middle class…

Guided by Marxist theory, China’s leaders once believed that religion would wither as the country became more educated, scientifically advanced, and economically developed. However, many policies meant to hasten modernization have created the very conditions for religion to flourish. As rapid economic development allowed urbanites to become more materially comfortable, many began searching for deeper forms of meaning, guidance, and solace in times of personal or financial crisis. Beijing has attempted to meet these spiritual demands with nationalism and Confucianism-Leninism, but its attempts to win over its most important constituency — the urban middle class — are losing out to other forms of faith. Educated, affluent Chinese have increasingly sought sources of spiritual and religious authority at the margins of party control and influence, including Protestant Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism, and various New Age–inspired forms of spirituality that mix religious concepts with self-help.

The last project on David Webb’s database – remuneration of directors of Hong Kong listed companies, going back 20 years. Intro here, with suggestions for anyone who wants to do some number-crunching. The 2024 table here. Search for your fave tycoon’s kid (eg, Adrian Cheng at number 54, making HK$47 million in salary/benefits alone in 2024).

It seems quite a few sitting members are dropping out of the forthcoming LegCo election. Such a large number doesn’t look like a coincidence, and the word is that the authorities have told them to quit. They include those in or approaching their 70s, including veterans like Michael Tien, Tommy Cheung, Jeffrey Lam, Andrew Leung and Chan Kin-por. Even Regina Ip, who heads her own little party in her tireless attempts to stay relevant as the new Nat-Sec order consolidates, is going to make an announcement ‘in due course’. Also, supposed independent Tik Chi-yuen. RTHK story…

Lam, who announced his decision on Sunday, said there was no need to focus on age when asked about speculation that an age limit of 70 is in the air for legislators.

“There are many different groups in Hong Kong. No one is talking about this,” he said.

Transit Jam has some thoughts…

The retirements highlight the issue with these “elections”: only rubber-stamped individuals can even think about standing as a candidate. When someone like Regina Ip is rumoured for the chop, we know something serious is going on: and for those chopped, going against the “whispered instructions over tea” would be futile.

As I personally found in the relatively humble DC elections, you need a complex set of approvals to become a candidate for even a small local election, and LegCo’s system is designed as an impenetrable firewall.

If you like byzantine/dystopian/Kafkaesque rules – read his full post. Essentially, only candidates ‘rubber-stamped by Beijing’ get on the ballot. His conclusion is that…

…this LegCo cohort will be for keeps and only death or severe disgrace will alter the membership between now and 2047.

(When Hong Kong’s official status as a special administrative region could in theory come to an end).

Another way of putting it: the authorities are taking the opportunity to shed some members who could perhaps be more effusive in their support for the government, and of course to send a message to those that remain.

In particular, the next LegCo will be cleansed of its legacy colonial-era elders – notably Liberal Party tycoons. Once upon a time, these people were loyal to the Brits. Then they became ‘instant noodle’ patriots. They were always privileged rent-seekers contemptuous of the rabble, but they were also at ease in an environment of pluralism, a free press and independent courts. They (not the pro-democracy activists) were the first to really panic in early 2019 at the idea of extradition from Hong Kong to the Mainland. Beijing has no further need of them. The next ‘all-patriot’ LegCo will also be all-trustworthy.

Will it make any difference to you or me? The number of LegCo members we can name will drop to single digits. Otherwise, no.

Samuel Bickett on the trial of Anna Kwok’s father…

He’s accused of “handling assets of an absconder”—a charge transparently designed to punish Anna, who lives abroad and has a bounty on her head from Hong Kong’s National Security Police for her advocacy work.

The prosecution’s agreed facts in court make clear how hollow the case is. In 1999, Anna’s father bought her a small life insurance policy—worth just US$11,000 when it expired in 2020. The prosecution’s own witness, the insurance agent [said] that Mr. Kwok continued paying for the policy himself and that Anna never signed or paid anything. No allegation has been made that Mr. Kwok intended to provide these funds to Anna, or that he has ever financially supported Anna after her arrest warrant.

The insurance agent, who was just doing his job, was interrogated for 14 hours by the National Security Department and threatened with prosecution if he didn’t testify.

This is what “rule of law” looks like in Hong Kong today: a father dragged into court for buying life insurance for his daughter 25 years ago, all to intimidate a democracy activist across the world into silence.

Western companies still operating in Hong Kong should also take note of what was done to this insurance agent: by operating in a city run by thugs, you are putting your employees in danger of interrogation and threats of arrest for simply doing their jobs. 

(For anyone who missed it – earlier HKFP story.)

From HKFP, more on the court case in which ‘absconder’ Anna Kwok’s father is accused of dealing with funds linked to her. It seems Kwok Yin-sang took out insurance plans for Anna and her two siblings back in 1999. His counsel argues that, since she herself (up to last January) never signed anything with AIA to accept responsibility or ownership, the policy was never hers.

The Standard adds…

An insurance agent from AIA, surnamed Cheng, testified that the defendant sought to cancel his daughter’s policy in January.

Defense counsel Steven Kwan Man-wai played a voice message Cheng had sent to Kwok’s son in February, in which she said: “Your dad filled in Kwok Fung-yee’s name and signed it himself, because the real issue is that I can’t get a signature from her. I did explain to your father, but I’m not sure he understood.”

Kwan argued that when Kwok’s son reached adulthood, his policy receipt was also signed by the father to transfer the policyholder’s name — an arrangement that AIA had accepted. 

This, he said, demonstrated that a policyholder’s name does not automatically transfer from the parent to the insured child upon the child turning 18, meaning Kwok Yin-sang remained the policyholder rather than Anna Kwok.

However, AIA’s service director, surnamed Yan, told the court that the insurer’s system automatically changes the policyholder to the insured child once they reach 18, and that the policy’s cash value then belongs to that child.

So somewhere here there’s a national-security threat.

Also: an 89-year-old released on bail after being arrested on October 1 for allegedly acting with seditious intent, apparently in Causeway Bay MTR station.

Writing for Channel News Asia (part of Singapore’s state-owned media monopoly), former SCMP editor Wang Xiangwei asks whether Hong Kong is still Asia’s world city. He cites Mainland companies’ IPOs, the influx of (mostly Mainland) talent under various visa schemes, and an apparent recovery in (mostly Mainland) tourist arrivals…

This resurgence, however, feels lopsided on the ground. The streets are bustling, and the vibrancy is unmistakable. Tourism footfall is up, especially from mainland China, which accounted for nearly 80 per cent of Hong Kong’s visitor arrivals between January and August.

But boarded-up storefronts tell another story. High rents and competition from cheaper cross-border alternatives have hit parts of the retail and restaurant segments hard, even as other sectors, for example jewellery and watches typically favoured by tourists – thrive.

Beneath this uneven recovery looms a larger, strategic question: Is Hong Kong rebounding to reclaim its cherished mantle as Asia’s World City – a cosmopolitan powerhouse akin to New York or London – or is it morphing into China’s World City, a specialised outpost serving the mainland’s ambitions? 

…Perceptions have shifted dramatically; serious doubts now swirl about whether Hong Kong is devolving into “just another Chinese city”. This unease stems partly from the territory’s political elite, who have increasingly embraced mainland-style rhetoric and governance practices. 

…Hong Kong grapples with striking a delicate equilibrium between security and development, and between deeper integration into the mainland economy and its role as a regional hub for international business. 

…Apprehensions that Hong Kong is settling for a diminished role – a regional player on par with Dubai – rather than reclaiming its perch as a global financial titan rivalling New York and London. 

…[the city needs to be] indispensable to China’s modernisation and equally indispensable to global capital seeking exposure to China and Asia. 

To deliver that dual indispensability, Hong Kong must navigate these currents with nuance – honouring Beijing’s directives while safeguarding the openness that once defined it as Asia’s unrivalled world city.

A Kevin Yam post…

if HK is becoming like Tokyo and Seoul in financial markets terms, then that in itself should give those who say “HK is back” pause. Since the Japanese economic bubble burst well over 30 years ago, the Tokyo markets have, while remaining important in many ways, been in the doldrums, despite occasional bursts of optimism driven by the many false dawns that Japan’s economy had over these decades. All signs are now pointing to China starting to go through what Japan had gone through for decades. This should serve as a warning when looking at the sustainability of HK’s current financial markets recovery.

As for Singapore…

Why move to a place that was not yet HK but was becoming nearly as expensive as HK?

My humble opinion: Hong Kong could have been Asia’s equivalent of New York or London, if it had been competently run (focusing on housing and quality of life), and if it had retained its traditional freedoms (no press closures, pan-dem round-ups, Nat-Sec movie censorship, etc). Now it won’t be.

Photos from my former helper, in Lapaz, Bogo City in Cebu, Philippines. Although the recent earthquake hit hardest further north, causing dozens of deaths, houses in her township are now unsafe, so people are sleeping out in fields and a basketball court…

If T-shirts can threaten national security, presumably movies can…

A total of 50 films have been required to be edited, and 13 titles have not been approved for screening on national security grounds since Hong Kong amended the Film Censorship Ordinance in 2021, according to authorities.

What were the films? The authorities won’t say. Why were they censored? Which parts were cut? Again, they won’t say. So how can anyone know whether showing a film would be illegal? 

A 68-year-old man appears in court accused of helping his ‘absconder’ daughter…

…the father of wanted activist Anna Kwok Fung-yee allegedly attempted to manage his daughter’s insurance policy…

The case marks the first prosecution for attempting to handle the financial assets of a designated absconder under Article 23, and the first time a fugitive’s family member has faced such charges.

…A prosecution witness, insurance agent Cheng, told the court that the defendant approached her in January seeking to cancel his daughter’s policy. Cheng said she informed the father that the policyholder’s signature was required. The defendant later claimed he would meet his daughter overseas and, about a month afterward, submitted documents bearing her signature.

The defendant’s 28-year-old daughter, Anna Kwok Fung-yee, is wanted for subversion and collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security. Authorities have offered a HK$1 million reward for information leading to the US-based activist’s arrest.

He is apparently pleading not guilty. It will be interesting to see what happens. Just what sort of punishment is appropriate for conveying your daughter’s insurance paperwork?

In Domino Theory, Mark Simon (ex-Apple Daily) gets polemical on Beijing’s problems with foreign (and domestic) women leaders…

In recent decades, the CCP’s leadership and propaganda machine have unleashed misogyny against female leaders, from the Philippines’ Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, and especially Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文). The latest target for what I call the “Archie Bunker treatment” — after the bigoted TV patriarch — [is] Sanae Takaichi, who was elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party earlier this month and is poised to become Japan’s first female prime minister.

China’s domestic politics offer no counterbalance. Women are scarce in high government roles, with CCP leadership resembling a 1950s Klan rally in its uniformity. While a few women rose in the last two decades, today no female heavyweight graces the Politburo, a stark regression from even token representation. This cadre of unenlightened men, steeped in authoritarianism, fuels a propaganda apparatus that sabotages goodwill with foreign counterparts.

More for fans of AI skepticism, from Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing and ‘Enshittification’ fame…

…the AI bubble is driven by monopolists who’ve conquered their markets and have no more growth potential, who are desperate to convince investors that they can continue to grow by moving into some other sector, e.g. “pivot to video,” crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, and now “super-intelligence.” Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters … AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging “foundation models” will be shut off and we’ll lose the AI that can’t do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or “discouraged” and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations…

The only thing … that we can do about this is to puncture the AI bubble as soon as possible, to halt this before it progresses any further and to head off the accumulation of social and economic debt. To do that, we have to take aim at the material basis for the AI bubble (creating a growth story by claiming that defective AI can do your job).

A (paywalled) WSJ column quoted in the piece says…

The windswept town of Ellendale, N.D., population 1,100, has two motels, a Dollar General, a Pentecostal Bible college—and a half-built AI factory bigger than 10 Home Depots.

Its more than $15 billion price tag is equivalent to a quarter of the state’s annual economic output.

The artificial-intelligence boom has ushered in one of the costliest building sprees in world history. Over the past three years, leading tech firms have committed more toward AI data centers like the one in Ellendale, plus chips and energy, than it cost to build the interstate highway system over four decades, when adjusted for inflation. AI proponents liken the effort to the Industrial Revolution.

The Standard on the delights of cramming (‘welcoming’) more tourists into an already jam-packed city…

As Hong Kong welcomed over 600,000 visitors in the first three days of the National Day Golden Week, the city faced severe traffic congestion across Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, with long queues forming at popular tourist spots. 

…The influx of tourists during the Golden Week holiday significantly strained the city’s transport network, particularly in traditional tourist hubs like Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui. 

The concentration of visitors, many traveling via tour buses or ride-hailing services, led to frequent pick-up and drop-off activities that clogged roads.

While the heavy traffic reflects robust economic activity driven by tourist spending on dining, hotels, and luxury goods, the [HK Automobile Association] cautioned against equating gridlock with prosperity.

Did the traffic jams ‘reflect’ tourist expenditure? And if there was extra spending, how much of it simply went to landlords?

HKFP on the crowds of Mainland tourists descending on Sharp Island last week…

Greenpeace alleged that some boats had ignored the regulation by the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department and anchored directly within the coral zone on Wednesday.

A large number of visitors also dug up coastal organisms such as starfish, sea urchins, and clams, while others littered and started fires illegally for cooking, the group said.

According to Greenpeace’s Chinese-language statement, “the excessive crowds undoubtedly put immense pressure on the environment.”

It went on to say, “Too many tourists were also gathered there to snorkel, with some even walking on the coral surface, which could break or kill the coral…

…The “overcrowding” at Sharp Island this week proved that the approach of strengthening enforcement at specific tourist hotspots was a “piecemeal solution” that does not solve the issue of overtourism, [a Greenpeace spokesman] said.

Maybe because overtourism is – in effect – government policy? The obvious reason for this is that bureaucrats, under orders to boost the economy, measure their success in terms of higher visitor numbers. No matter that making Hong Kong a nastier place to live might be counterproductive in any way.

Another explanation comes to mind as you struggle to get through hordes of Mainlanders taking selfies in the latest Xiaohongshu-promoted rundown/picturesque districts. You ask ‘why is the government doing this to us?’ and wonder whether it’s a deliberate plan to overwhelm the city with Mandarin-speakers as punishment for its perceived lack of loyalty to the motherland. An absurd idea, of course – but that’s what it feels like.

The government leaps into action…

The Environment and Ecology Bureau said it would review its crowd management measures at country parks to enhance ecological conservation.

This came after it received reports of visitors capturing marine life, trampling on coral and cooking on the beach at Sharp Island in Sai Kung during the National Day Golden Week holiday.

Sharp Island is part of Hong Kong’s Unesco Global Geopark.

The bureau has called on visitors to protect nature and wildlife and bring their rubbish home.

Also: increased patrols, including distribution of leaflets.

Sharp Island is hard to get to. But unless they’re going to surround other over-visited spots with barbed wire, there isn’t much they can do. Everyone knows that Mainland tourists have a particular approach to travel: everyone must go to the same place to take the same photo. They will flock to places like Sharp Island because most of them never see a beach where they come from. Similarly, Hong Kong’s earliest urban districts (Victorian-era granite walls, weird trees, graffiti) have a unique, even exotic, vibe compared with the shabby Stalinesque brutalism of their own cities’ older neighbourhoods. 

Maybe in time they will acquire a taste for less herd-like leisure travel. But meanwhile, if you make it easy for them to cross the border, this overcrowding will continue. And if you make it harder – well, that would be unpatriotic, wouldn’t it?

It’s not just Mainlanders who find Hong Kong’s ‘grottitecture’ attractive compared with their own urban sterility. An Asia Times column, by a Singaporean, argues that Singapore could borrow some of Hong Kong’s ‘edginess’…

…rather than erasing its imperfections, Hong Kong has embraced them as defining features that make life there exhilarating. And as both metropolises invariably compete for financial flows and global talent, this “edginess” has grown into a decisive advantage, one which Singapore has much to learn from.

Hong Kong’s bankers enjoy an enviable range of leisure options after work, from gorging on Michelin-star quality dim sum to downing cocktails in the boozy quarter of Lan Kwai Fong, all within a ten-minute walk of the Central finance district.

Singapore’s offerings, which subsume a limited variety of hawker center meals and sanitized nightlife concentrated in the Clarke Quay precinct, pale in comparison.

Such disparities extend beyond cuisine and clubs; the curated, top-down nature of Singapore’s mega-events can limit their public appeal, with five of the 15 art galleries at Gillman Barracks closing down just three years after opening.

Conversely, Hong Kong’s Clockenflap concerts and Tai Hang Fire Dragon Festivals flourish through hands-on community participation, making them feel distinctly authentic.

…Singapore could fund independent organizers of apolitical entertainment initiatives … create a more diverse, textured identity … foster Southeast Asian cultural districts and promote their food, music and art…

It’s all relative.

HKFP op-ed on the travel industry’s strange ideas – such as the notion that people arrange flight plans according to how appealing various intermediate airports are…

As one speaker put it, “If passengers can enjoy a comfortable and pleasant shopping experience at Hong Kong airport, there would be little incentive to seek transit through … other destinations.”

Someone needs to grab these people firmly by the ear and explain that air passengers are not looking for a “comfortable and pleasant shopping experience.” In fact, attempts to turn air travel into a shopping experience are more resented than appreciated.

…It is a basic axiom of international air travel that all airports are very much the same. The differences between them pale into insignificance compared with matters like the date and time of the flight, the intended destination, the impact of a mid-journey change, if any, and above all, of course, the price of the ticket. The flight, we hope, will be comfortable and pleasant. The airport merely has to be efficient.

Yet international surveys keep insisting that the best airport is Changi, not the one we have to spend least time at. Really – they’re just Greyhound Bus stations.

What was the cost per kilometre of the high-speed rail to Shenzhen? HK$2 billion? I guess this is a bargain in comparison. Still, the government somehow spends HK$450,000 widening a short stretch of sidewalk in order to accommodate photo-taking Mainland tourists. Meanwhile, Hong Kong residents elsewhere in the city have to put up with inadequate pedestrian space so a few Alphard owners can store their mobile living rooms wherever they want…

[Local driver] Wong told HKFP that he had seen police vehicles patrolling the street, but officers did not do much to stop tourists from standing on roads to take photos.

“The government is all about boosting tourism now, so [the tourists] can do whatever they want,” Wong said in Cantonese.

With the Trump administration disrupting the US’s H1-B visas for skilled workers, China launches its own, only to prompt fierce anti-migrant sentiment online from young people experiencing a 19% unemployment rate…

“Amidst a backdrop of some countries tightening borders and sidelining international talent, China has astutely seized this important opportunity and promptly enacted policies that will undoubtedly have a profound impact on our future development,” the [People’s Daily] editorial said.

“However, some people have misinterpreted and misunderstood the policy, spreading bizarre theories that mislead the public and create unnecessary anxiety.”

(Problem discussed by East Asia Forum – ‘Unofficial estimates put the true youth unemployment rate as high as 46.5 per cent’.)

China Media Project on Beijing’s latest attempt to make the social-media environment a haven of positive energy…

On September 22, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced its latest “Clear and Clean” (清朗) campaign—this time targeting the “malicious incitement of negative emotions” (恶意挑动负面情绪) across social media, short video, and livestreaming platforms. The two-month campaign promises to crack down on everything from “group antagonism” to “excessive rendering of pessimistic emotions.”

An American Enterprise Institute article on ‘Taco Don’ and China…

Although President Trump has been accused of “always chickening out,” he has not shied away from applying pressure on countries ranging from Iran to Venezuela. In recent months, however, Trump has consistently chickened out with one country: China. Since the late spring, Trump has made concession after concession to Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping and gotten little to nothing in return.

The switch to concessions was triggered by President Trump’s climb-down on his favorite economic tool: tariffs. Trump started his second term with a series of tariff escalations against China. By mid-spring, however, he had largely backed down in exchange for . . . nothing. Beijing merely lowered its tariffs to where they had been previously. Grand words from the US about opening the Chinese market have been revealed as nonsense. 

Instead, the US has turned dovish. With import tariffs and market access capped by Chinese resistance, Trump switched to trying to cut the trade deficit by giving the People’s Republic of China (PRC) what it wants: American technology. This is not a new attitude for the President. In his first term, he dismissed national security as an unacceptable “excuse” for blocking exports to the PRC.                                                                                                    

…Joe Biden once said “all politics is personal.” This certainly seems to describe Trump’s captivation by Xi. He noted, “Think of President Xi: central casting, a brilliant guy… he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron first. Smart, brilliant, everything perfect.” 

Back home, where China’s questionably managed economy and continued political purges raise doubts about his choices, Xi does not seem as smart as he does to Trump. When it comes to US-China relations, however, Trump is making Xi look brilliant.

A lengthy Boston Review of Books interview with Geremie Barmé on his ‘New Sinology’…

…judging from the past, Beijing is likely to be particularly interested in supporting and gatekeeping a kind of Chinese Studies that is, to use their loaded terms, “correct” 正確, “objective” 客觀 and “scientific” 科學. Those familiar with party parole, not to mention party-state practice, will readily appreciate the gloomy significance of such language for it mitigates against pluralism, healthy debate and enlivening differences of opinion.

…China’s “velvet prison” is now built out a well-funded cultural and arts scene that is au fait with the latest international fashions and technical achievements; an academic world that was long ago brought to heel and sated on official largesse; a publishing world that polices itself (with the help of tireless editors and alert readers); a boisterous online realm kept in line by 24/7 vigilance and vigilantes; and a cadre of cultural creators and online influencers, both Chinese and foreign, who have internalised China’s mature regime of self-censorship…

…Under what I call the Empire of Tedium of Xi Jinping (2013-), which in many ways is a kind of “restoration” within the Chinese system, and its harder-line surveillance socialism, I often feel that Soviet-era Russian dissidents are more of a touchstone … Under Xi, the soft dissent of the Eastern Bloc is easily corralled or crushed by a state that delights in mass cultural performance, is the enemy of civil society and pursues its obsession with wealth, power and global influence

The Standard, for anyone who needs reminding, is a free paper that largely comprises brief English translations of Sing Tao articles. It is tycoon-owned, virulently talks up the property market at every opportunity, and is resolutely pro-Beijing/Hong Kong government. But it used to have its own editorials, written by ‘Mary Ma’, which could on occasion be punchy and even funny. Then, some time ago, these were replaced by much duller pieces rehashing the government line. From today’s…

Yesterday, National Day celebrations in Hong Kong were more than just a display of flags and fireworks – they were a powerful symbol of the city’s resurgent vitality. The streets, thronged with both tourists and locals, pulsed with an energy not seen in recent years. This was not a fleeting moment of festivity, but a clear indicator of a resilient economy finding its footing amid global uncertainties. The scenes from Canton Road to bustling local cinemas tell a compelling story of recovery, reinvention and a future built on more than just financial prowess.

The visual cues of Hong Kong’s comeback are unmistakable. The re-emergence of mainland tourists shopping at luxury boutiques in Tsim Sha Tsui is a classic barometer of retail health. However, the recovery is broader and more deeply rooted. Local crowds flocking to restaurants and cinemas demonstrate a restoration of domestic confidence. This renewed sentiment has spurred the property market, with developers confidently launching new projects…

As Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has emphasized, robust policies are designed to create prosperity that permeates the whole of society, not just the financial sector. The numbers validate this approach… 

The government [sic] proactive role in incubating new industries is particularly forward-thinking. Take, for instance, the ambitious decarbonization agenda. Initiatives like green marine bunkering and producing sustainable aviation fuel from used cooking oil are masterstrokes of modern policy. They are not merely environmental imperatives but represent enormous economic opportunities. Furthermore, these emerging green industries require a vast spectrum of manpower, from top-tier professionals to grassroots workers, ensuring that the benefits of growth are widely shared across the workforce.

What – no ‘yacht economy’?

On reading this, my immediate feeling is deep sympathy for whoever has to write this stuff every day. But then it occurs to me that it takes a certain literary technique to craft such a vacuous string of words – or be so wrong. Post-property bubble Mainlanders will never go back to buying luxury garbage like they once did. Aviation fuel from cooking oil is not a ‘masterstroke of modern policy’. 

It must, of course, be Chat GPT.

Which leads us rather elegantly to Ed Zitron on the case against generative AI. A long but worthwhile rant…

…if you generated a picture of a person that you wanted to, for example, use in a story book, every time you created a new page, using the same prompt to describe the protagonist, that person would look different — and that difference could be minor (something that a reader should shrug off), or it could make that character look like a completely different person.

Moreover, the probabilistic nature of generative AI meant that whenever you asked it a question, it would guess as to the answer, not because it knew the answer, but rather because it was guessing on the right word to add in a sentence based on previous training data. As a result, these models would frequently make mistakes — something which we later referred to as “hallucinations.” 

And that’s not even mentioning the cost of training these models, the cost of running them, the vast amounts of computational power they required, the fact that the legality of using material scraped from books and the web without the owner’s permission was (and remains) legally dubious, or the fact that nobody seemed to know how to use these models to actually create profitable businesses. 

…The problem is that most jobs are not output-driven at all, and what we’re buying from a human being is a person’s ability to think. 

Every CEO talking about AI replacing workers is an example of the real problem: that most companies are run by people who don’t understand or experience the problems they’re solving, don’t do any real work, don’t face any real problems, and thus can never be trusted to solve them … leaving us with companies run by people who don’t know how the companies make money, just that they must always make more.

When you’re a big, stupid asshole, every job that you see is condensed to its outputs, and not the stuff that leads up to the output, or the small nuances and conscious decisions that make an output good as opposed to simply acceptable, or even bad. 

…Large Language Models are also uniquely expensive. Many mistakenly try and claim this is like the dot com boom or Uber, but the basic unit economics of generative AI are insane. Providers must purchase tens or hundreds of thousands of GPUs each costing $50,000 a piece, and hundreds of millions or billions of dollars of infrastructure for large clusters. And that’s without mentioning things like staffing, construction, power, or water.  

Then you turn them on and start losing money. Despite hundreds of billions of GPUs sold, nobody seems to make any money, other than NVIDIA, the company that makes them, and resellers like Dell and Supermicro who buy the GPUs, put them in servers, and sell them to other people. 

…LLMs are an output-driven technology, but most jobs that AI is meant to replace require far more than just spitting out stuff. In reality, executive excitement over AI shows that they have little understanding of labor – they’re Business Idiots. 

…The stock market has an unhealthy relationship with NVIDIA (it makes up 7-8% of the S&P 500). 55% year-over-year growth isn’t enough – even if NVIDIA sells $72 billion of GPUs in a year, the markets would punish them for not keeping up an unrealistic pace. NVIDIA got desperate, and birthed “Neoclouds,” debt-ridden data center companies selling AI compute. NVIDIA invests in them, sells them GPUs, and pays them for compute – all so they can raise money using contracts/GPUs as collateral…to buy more GPUs from NVIDIA.

…We are in the midst of one of the darkest forms of software in history, described by many as an unwanted guest invading their products, their social media feeds, their bosses’ empty minds, and resting in the hands of monsters. Every story of its success feels bereft of any real triumph, with every literal description of its abilities involving multiple caveats about the mistakes it makes or the incredible costs of running it. 

(Warning: column uses ‘compute’ as a noun. It means computing power or resources.)

More here, if you like this sort of thing.