Have a happy National Day!

Your annual pro-government-line retrospective describing Hong Kong’s Occupy/Umbrella movement as a failure, featuring compulsory key words ‘deflated’, ‘disillusioned’ and ‘frustrated’. Alternative view: by forcing the Chinese Communist Party to clarify beyond all naïve doubt that it had zero intention of ever granting the city representative government, the movement was a complete success.

The following years have confirmed that CCP rule has nothing to offer Hong Kong except pointless infrastructure projects, vacuous slogans and growing political repression. The city’s once-respected police are now deploying the anti-triad squad on thought-crime witch-hunts and trying to ban Facebook accounts, education bureaucrats are ordering schools to find and inform parents of kids with ‘wrong or radical concepts’, and university administrators say ‘no political advocacy’ on campus and freak out over pro-independence posters. And in a global first, Hong Kong rats are now passing hepatitis to humans.

‘One Country, Two Systems/High Degree of Autonomy’ – also known as ‘let’s pretend we’re not part of a Communist dictatorship’ – are officially over.

A group of Occupy veterans called HK Civic Hub issue a report on Beijing’s ‘sharp power’ in the city (here’s the whole thing). Their thesis is that the CCP is testing such tactics in Hong Kong ahead of using them in other free societies, which is debatable and not very relevant – but a good angle for the foreign media.

Who it seems are rapidly catching up with the reality of Communist-ruled China. John Pomfret says Beijing has only itself to blame for its growing unpopularity around the world, even if we have to agree with Donald Trump on this. Academic Deng Yuwen goes further and reluctantly cites Steve Bannon in proposing Xi Jinping as the ‘last leader of true Communism’. (The analyses surely do not need sleazy demagogues to validate them.) For the theoreticians, here’s a comprehensive, indeed dauntless, list of reasons why China is totalitarian rather than authoritarian (brought to you by the phrase ‘Post-fascism with Sino-Legalist characteristics’). For balance, here’s a voice of mild, moderate, calm reason from the Brookings Institute.

Who can we blame? Joseph Bosco points the finger at Henry Kissinger

Kissinger sees China today as the embodiment of an ancient civilization with hallowed principles of governance — not as a modern communist dictatorship whose founder scorned the very culture Kissinger now posits as its operating principle. Mao Zedong conducted a Cultural Revolution against Chinese history and the Chinese people.

And if you’ve nothing to do on Monday, how the Communist Party is trying to control Tibet by micro-managing reincarnation, and why a Chinese military invasion of Taiwan would be such a mess they probably won’t dare.

I declare the long weekend open with this heart-warming little snippet in which a Hong Kong landlord blew at least HK$25 million holding out for higher rent…

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11 Responses to Have a happy National Day!

  1. Joe Blow says:

    You forgot to mention that Occupy Central was also instrumental in the demise of 689’s reign.

    On Hennessy Road, CWB, near Times Square, there is a retail space, hemmed in by two jewellery stores, that has been vacant for at least 4 years.

  2. I wish you would cut the mindless neo-con MI6 propaganda and do some thinking.

    The terror is a capitalist terror and China is only part of that as it is now neo-capitalist.

    Hong Kong people have everything to gain from socialism.

    In the meantime, until the landlords are all hung and all the minivans scrapped, they really ought to have a Saddam Hussein at least on moral grounds as a ruler.

    Anything else they don’t deserve.

    Pip, pip! You do amuse, you know.

  3. Stanley Lieber says:

    If the current $1.25M rent is 72% lower than the previous rent, then the previous rent was around $4.5M.

    In which case the $3.25M monthly “loss” over 20 months would be around $65M.

    I think.

    A sure sign that it’s time for me to get a life.

  4. HillnotPeak says:

    A new visual at the top, even the graphic design of HKNP is better then anything coming out of China. (I will vote for that pug in a heartbeat).

  5. Knownot says:

    History strongly suggests that a dictatorship, Leninist/state-capitalist/strongman or otherwise, is not durable.

    Hong Kong’s younger people – and their counterparts throughout China – will surely see a freer future one day. As the venerable Jerome Cohen recently said: “I’ve been studying China for almost 60 years. This too shall pass.”

    — Hemlock
    — HK Free Press, September 25

    I shall probably pass before that day,
    Go back ‘home’ or ‘pass’ another way,
    Leaving the future to the hopeful young,
    Who wait and hope, who hope and stay.

    But faithful I remain to an idea
    That people mention these days with a sneer:
    ‘The End of History’ is liberty.
    It can even happen here.

    Going back, say, forty years ago,
    No-one seeing China then could know
    How that wretched state would rise and shine,
    The lights go flash, the money flow.

    Was it for this, for wealth and stock exchanges,
    That in the deserts and the mountain ranges
    Mao’s guerrillas hungered, killed, and died?
    The ancient country ever changes.

    Faithful I remain to a cliché:
    The British and the Hong Kong Chinese way
    Succeeded: British law and Chinese shrewdness.
    I wish we had it still today.

    Though so much that was good has been repressed,
    Not young people’s clarity and zest.
    But some of us are lucky that we saw
    The Fragrant Harbour at its best.

  6. I Married Miss Fang says:

    Good to have the blog back up.

    Of course, besides the looming clouds running in from the mainland there’s another commemoration due next year. Ten years since the handover from the Diary. Will there be a ‘Where are they now’ feature ? Did Winky get tired of waiting and elope to Vancouver with Polly the lipstick lesbian ? Did Desperately Dull Desmond retire to the U.K. to vote for Farage ? And how much money did the Chairman of SMeg make when he sold out to Jack Ma ?
    Don’t disappoint.

  7. Chinese Netizen says:

    Fon’t you mean “Have a Happy Nationalist Day”?

  8. Chinese Netizen says:

    And yes…I mean D on’t… not F on’t

  9. Feilo says:

    In other news, a CCTV “journalist” made a fracas in UK by trying to disrupt a meeting on the situation of HK. Shouting, slappings and the usual threatening charges about “not interfering in China’s internal matters” follows, as are the usual truculent requests from diplomats for “excuses” and “apologies”. Methinks, if UK Governments has some balls left, the bint should be left in prison without bail for some time, then when served the sentence, immediately put on a plane to Beijing with a one way ticket, together with her family. Apologies, excuses and bills for the above ticket and any additional expense incurred in the incident must be requested firmly from the Communist embassy with an admonishment to avoid repeating the trick of sending propagandists under the cover of “journalism”.
    Oh and by the way, cancel Curry Lamb passport, residence permit and confiscate any property she may have in UK, perhaps when she realizes her only destination for vacation may be some toxic area in mainland, she would be less reckless with her words, or, who knows, she may well feels the pangs of conscience and pull the plug from the current farce she’s in

  10. Reader says:

    There seems to have been a ripple of confusion out there in medialand as to whether it was ‘Hong Kong Civic Hub’ or ‘Hong Kong Civil Hub’. A bunch of early reports riffed off ‘Civic Party’ to get it wrong.

    SCMP is now there with ‘Civil’ – but not sure if they got it right first time:
    https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/2166052/new-hong-kong-civic-group-co-founded-activist-joshua-wong

    Your and other RTHK links had ‘Civic’ but changed to ‘Civil’:
    http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1420270-20180927.htm
    http://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1420378-20180928.htm

    The STD and a bunch of ‘portals’ and echo chambers still have ‘Civic’:
    http://www.thestandard.com.hk/breaking-news.php?id=114634&sid=6

    For the record:
    https://hkcivilhub.com/

  11. Chinese Netizen says:

    @Feilo: I sense some pent up (justifiably) anger bubbling up. You wouldn’t happen to be pounding the keys with a beer nearby? Agree with your sentiments 100%

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