Category Archives: Blog

The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Hong Kong office summons foreign correspondents for a ‘lecture’ on putting positive energy into their coverage of the city’s Mainland extradition amendment. The ineptness of the invitation confirms that the Ministry has little clue how overseas … Continue reading →

Hong Kong has entered the ‘confluence of unfortunate occurrences’ zone. Long drawn-out prosecutions of Benny Tai and other peaceful protest organizers on desperate ‘public nuisance incitement’ charges came to a conclusion, with the court blandly accepting questionable government points. The … Continue reading →

In this week’s episode of How to Turn Asia’s World City into a Banana Republic, Carrie Lam finds ways to discard the government’s old free-and-pluralist look, and build up a new global image as illiberal, intolerant and vindictive. Hong Kong … Continue reading →

Here’s a good rundown of what the US’s apparent banishment of Huawei could mean. Some techie background. Knowing what we do of Donald Trump’s personality, it’s still sort of hard to believe that he isn’t going to fold at some … Continue reading →

You are wrong. You misunderstand. You are stupid. You are ignorant. You have been misled. Clearly, we have not communicated in sufficiently simple terms that your childlike pea-sized minds can grasp. The Hong Kong government has run out of talking … Continue reading →

Beijing is getting openly involved in what is supposed to be a local government initiative to establish a formal system for extraditing fugitives from Hong Kong to the Mainland. Up in the nation’s capital, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs … Continue reading →

The US puts Huawei and subsidiaries on its Entity List (a good old-fashioned list of enemies). It’s the same sanction taken against ZTE a couple of years ago – but at that time Trump wimped out. There is no way … Continue reading →

In the latest twist in the Legislative Council extradition amendment saga, the chairman of the bills committee (the one in the pro-Beijing parallel universe) stands down after a grueling 18 seconds. To put this in context, Abraham Shek represents the … Continue reading →

Here you go – literally step-by-step coverage of the ongoing dramatics in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council today. The pan-democrats in LegCo are all Hong Kong has in the way of democratic political representation. The rest of the chamber is for … Continue reading →

One of the more interesting weeks we have had for a while… You just know Trump, possessor of the deep, long-term, strategic sophistication of a toddler, is going to fold – and we get a nice stock-market jump and life … Continue reading →