HK cops launch ‘Operation Complete Over-the-Top Freakout’

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Not content with such anti-riot voodoo as the application of water-soluble glue to brick sidewalks, Hong Kong authorities plan to deploy 6,000 police next week to guard visiting Chinese official Zhang Dejiang. The South China Morning Post describes the effort as the city’s biggest security operation since the Olympics equestrian events, which sounds a bit underwhelming. But what we can expect – they’re already putting barriers everywhere – is maximum inconvenience as the cops block entire roads and overhead pedestrian walkways every time this guy goes somewhere.

SCMP-Security

The weird thing – if we are to be brutally honest here – is that up until the visit was announced a few weeks ago (or whenever), no-one had pretty much ever heard of him. Zhang is Chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, the small semi-full-time bit of China’s vast one-week-a-year rubber-stamp legislature. It says here that he’s a Jiang Zemin protégé, which suggests that the current top leadership would distrust him and give him only mundane and stupid jobs to do. And, lo and behold, he is coming here to talk at a conference on Belt and Road Opportunities Blah Blah.

Hong Kong’s chattering classes must read more into it, and so they interpret Zhang’s visit as being in some way connected with the rising tide of Hong Kong independence sentiment. A Beijing think-tank informs us that his mission is a sign of the Central SCMP-PanDemCydGovernment’s ‘care and love’ for the city (cue shiver down spine). Selected pro-democrats struggle to feel excited about the Zhang banquet – lucky invitees RSVP by completing a lengthy application form and affixing a photo.

The extreme security measures could be a convoluted attempt to send a message to CIA-backed fishball-rioting splittists and/or to Beijing’s officials that Hong Kong’s leadership and its big tough police force remain ever-vigilant. Given that Chief Executive CY Leung’s obsessive-compulsive shoe-shining obsequiousness is completely off the scale, the mobilization of thousands of cops for no obvious reason is also possibly just a grand face-giving gesture – his equivalent of, say, a box of chocolates.

The pro-independence movement will presumably not even deign to acknowledge the presence of Zhang in our city-state-to-be. They have better things to do with their genius for trolling, which it must be said becomes more magnificent by the day. One of their number recently proposed a sort of compromise: maybe Hong Kong doesn’t need to be fully independent, he said – it could just be… a US territory. You could hear the blood vessels bursting in Beijing’s Liaison Office.

As for Zhang’s personal safety, I have the perfect solution. All he needs to do is wear a slightly loud-coloured T-shirt and casual slacks and stroll around any street or neighbourhood while chewing a hamburger – I can guarantee that not a single person will even notice him.

HKPolice

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7 Responses to HK cops launch ‘Operation Complete Over-the-Top Freakout’

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    You forgot…he needs to drag a suitcase as well.

    So the question is: Will traffic enforcement be in full effect while Master Zhang is in town or will the Altard set still mock the law as if any other day?

  2. Policemen are like bad porn actors They always keep their socks on. Nice photos.

    Are you going to reveal to your readers that you have and occasionally wear the last remaining pair of Rent-A-Tent colonial Bobby shorts?

    I think they should be told.

  3. LRE says:

    To paraphrase Oscar Wilde:
    “The unelectable fêting the unacceptable.”

  4. mjrelje says:

    Good to see the HSI continuing its I-shaped drop ahead of the un-elected black hair dyed mouthfrother’s visit. Lets hope by time he gets here he’ll be squashed by a tycoon jumping off a over leveraged building.

  5. Paul says:

    Was there not a young student called Joshua something who brought Hong Kong to a standstill?

  6. Walter De Havilland says:

    The cops are deploying 6000 officers to protect one man. Just for the sake of comparisons at the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V had 6000 men.

  7. "Dr" Adams says:

    Rent-A-tent shorts ? I could use them after the old Viagra kicks in.

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