And so we say farewell to Greater Bay Area Week. We have got this down to a routine, now: Beijing launches a new slogan, officials screech at everyone to ‘seize the opportunities’, shoe-shiners organize a conference with Victor Fung and Ronnie Chan, and civil servants pull out the trusty Grand Vision Concept template and throw together a quick website, complete with a map titled ‘The Map’.
The Big Bay Area Exciting Thing has attracted international media attention. As with so much of the outside world since the rise of Emperor-for-Life Xi, the press are becoming 
jaded about China in general, including its elaborate mega-plans. They suspect hype, white-elephant splurges and speculative real-estate plays. Today’s BBC, FT, CNN, Washington Post, Guardian and others also recognize a clumsy plan to downgrade and merge Hong Kong when they see one. An opinion piece at Forbes puts it in the context of Hong Kong’s government-imposed stagnation.
China’s economy is running out of steam because the cost of servicing debt is (probably – state secret) approaching the amount of extra GDP the credit-bingeing is delivering. Similarly, the ‘Wow factor’ returns on world-changing epic slogan-strategies are diminishing.
I declare the weekend open with three recommended items of finely crafted and scurrilous Hong Kong reading.
A look back, in partial disbelief – from a Taiwan perspective – at veteran campaigner Martin Lee and how his ‘Sinocentrism/democratic-reunification ideology’ is stuck in the 1990s. Ouch.
After years of well-bred and cool people looking the other way and pretending not to notice, we must, reluctantly, talk about this: here’s a no-nonsense article – in impressively exquisite taste – on the use of the (totally innocent) Latin preposition ‘cum’ in Hong Kong’s official signage. And an erudite discussion on it here.
And a column that starts on the difficulty of teaching ballet, then pirouettes into a rather shocking and brutal examination of South China Morning Post editor Tammy Tam’s obvious inability to write. This is painful to read and thoroughly nasty stuff, bordering on vicious. More, please.
There is a perfectly respectable suburb of Manchester called Chorlton-cum-Hardy.
“…shoe-shiners organize a conference with Victor Fung and Ronnie Chan, and civil servants..”
Hey, what about Ron..? It is so sad that they cannot even drag in Ron “man for all seasons” Arculli in to front for them these days…
Where IS he? Do hope he is not poorly…
Isn’t it obvious? Tammy Tam is either (or both) an illegitimate daughter of the Huawei founder or/and Xi Jin Pooh’s mistress.
Michelle Ng’s evisceration of Tammy Tam’s writing ability was the editorial equivalent of clubbing a baby seal to death.
Tammy Tam is the disgraced ATV news editor who televised the greatly exaggerated reports of Jiang Zemin’s death and had to resign, because even the useless idiots at ATV reckoned that that was a cock-up too far.
Consequently, The CCP and Tammy both know she’ll never get work anywhere in this town if she doesn’t do exactly what they tell her to do. She’s a bit less Liaison Office than Jilin Communist Party higher-up, Wang Xiangwei, and a lot more stupid, so you can just blame all the really sinister stuff on her witlessness and point to her track record.