Big Lychee, Various Sectors

The number of registered voters falls again…

The 2025 registers of electors, released on Thursday, showed a total of 4,138,992 people registered as voters in the city’s geographical constituencies – the only category of lawmakers open for the public to vote.

…Thursday’s figure represented a drop for the fourth consecutive year and a decrease of about 330,000 compared with the peak level in 2021, when Hong Kong had a total of 4.47 million registered voters.

Not sure whether I’m registered or not. I had a reminder, which I think I ignored. Either way, the people many of us would want to vote for are either barred from running or are simply in jail. If you state an opinion that people shouldn’t bother voting, the ICAC – the anti-graft police – can arrest you. So obviously I wouldn’t do that. (If your opinion is that they should vote, that’s OK. If you express an opinion that this is absurd, maybe you could be arrested for sedition, namely inciting hatred of the government. So I wouldn’t do that either.) 

Some weekend reading…

Japan Times op-ed on the difficulties of invading Taiwan…

The island’s coastline is “remarkably unsuited for amphibious operations.” One study identified just 14 potential invasion beaches. Those landing sites would provide the terrain for one of the largest and most complex military operations in history, demanding a fleet comparable in size to that used by the Allies to land in Normandy on D-Day.

Once an invading force got on the beach — an accomplishment in itself — there would be little territory for staging forces as most of the land behind the landing zones is either rice fields that would swallow tanks and heavy transportation vehicles or cities, which create an urban fighting nightmare.

That unforgiving terrain assumes additional significance if the Taiwanese population is prepared to use it. And, the Stimson analysts note, “Chinese military planners believe Taiwan’s population will mount a formidable defense of their island.” According to a 2024 poll, two-thirds of the population would be ready to fight in their own defense.

History offers reasons to be cautious. The U.S. planned for an invasion of Taiwan during World War II, dubbed “Operation Causeway,” but decided not to proceed. As one military historian concluded, “the more they studied Formosa (Taiwan, pre-Nationalist takeover), the less they liked it.” U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt came to this conclusion, write the Stimson authors, even though the U.S. military “was approaching its absolute zenith of strength and experience,” a decision that “underscored the challenge.”

In contrast, the authors add, China’s People’s Liberation Army has “a mixed record” of amphibious operations.

Some in-depth pieces on China’s ‘involution’ problems. First a reminder from Michael Pettis…

…involution is just the most recent name for an old structural problem in China, that of excessively high GDP growth targets accommodated by increasingly soft budgets. The result is excess capacity throughout the economy.

That’s because as long as the GDP growth target is set above whatever growth the underlying economy can productively deliver, local governments are forced to deliver by overinvesting in whatever sectors are currently in favor, no matter how unproductive the investment.

Until China finds some way of raising consumption growth to at least 6-7 percent, it cannot rein in investment growth as long as it targets GDP growth rates of 4-5%. The only “solution” to excess capacity in one sector of the economy, in other words, is to shift it into another.

It’s worth remembering that the problem of involution was itself set off by the shifting of investment out of a massively overextended property sector. Much of this  went to favored manufacturing sectors, which is why these are exactly the sectors suffering from involution.

A (paywalled) NYT op-ed sets the scene…

Competition in China is often far more cutthroat than in the United States. America has a handful of carmakers; China has more than 100 electric vehicle makers struggling for market share. China has so many solar panel makers that they produce 50 percent more than global demand. About 100 Chinese lithium battery producers churn out 25 percent more batteries than anyone wants to buy.

This forces Chinese manufacturers to innovate, but it also leads to price wars, losses and bad debt — and that’s becoming a problem.

China is heading toward deflation, the often catastrophic downward spiral of prices that sank Japan in the 1990s. Its leaders are blaming a culprit they call “involution” (“neijuan” in Mandarin), a term that has come to mean reckless domestic competition. They want to rein it in by browbeating companies into keeping prices steady and instructing local governments to scale back subsidies.

It won’t work. At best, those are temporary fixes for China’s more fundamental problem. Its economy relies so heavily on investment for growth, rather than consumer spending, that it produces enormous surpluses that wreck profits at home and provoke trade wars abroad.

…Longstanding policies that encourage excess supply remain untouched. Local officials are still measured by how well the economy grows and how quiescent their citizenry remains. That, in turn, means keeping local companies afloat to ensure the steady availability of jobs and tax revenue.

…So far, there have been only modest additions to the safety net, and Beijing is wary of reducing the state’s control over the economy and handing it instead to consumers. There is little reason to think this will change. China is likely to try to muddle through its anti-involution campaign hoping that importers, even the tariff-heavy United States, will swallow its excess goods.

A CSIS blog adds…

A central feature of this conversation centers around a criticism of competition based on price. At the corporate level, there are price wars in sector after sector, with companies slashing prices to reduce their inventories and fight for market share against their opponents. In the auto sector, BYD has been criticized by some as the source of price wars, with the charge that it wants to push as many competitors out of the market as possible. The same dynamic is visible in mobile phones, solar panels, e-commerce, and many other industries. The result is deflation as a whole … and in many industries…

…adopting more fundamental reforms would constrain the party-state’s authority. And although officialdom may be unhappy with “excess competition,” it may be willing to accept it as the cost of keeping its hands firmly in control of China’s economy. 

The (paywalled) Overshoot Substack says …

So far, the impact of the domestic slowdown has been partly offset by soaring net exports. In 2024 the increase in China’s trade surplus contributed more to the reported growth rate than in any year since 1997¹. So far in 2025, the dollar value of China’s goods exports is rising about 6% a year, which is about the same as the full-year growth rate in 2024. But unlike last year, when spending on imports rose by 2.5% in January-August, or by 1.1% for the full year, so far in 2025, the dollar value of Chinese imports is down by 2.2%. China’s internal problems are therefore being dumped on the rest of the world. Businesses and workers elsewhere are earning less income because spending in China is too low.

That is a choice, and Chinese policymakers seem to be deliberately shifting at least some of the cost of that spending shortfall abroad through currency intervention. The Chinese banking system has increased its net foreign asset position by $360 billion since the end of 2023, leaning against pressure for the yuan to appreciate, and thereby reducing the international spending power of Chinese consumers while making Chinese exports look cheaper in foreign markets. In the short-term, that might be helpful in moderating inflationary pressures in manufactured goods, but the longer-term implication is deeply negative.

To see why, just consider what China’s top policymakers are saying about their domestic objectives. Besides increasing consumer spending—a longstanding official priority that has not yet translated into meaningful policy action—the focus is on getting companies to stop “excessive” competition for market share by slashing prices below cost. The official view is that this behavior, which has ostensibly been encouraged by local government production subsidies and an over-eager banking sector, deprives businesses of the ability to invest in research, technological upgrading, and quality control. The feared result is less innovation and lower incomes.

But if that is a problem for Chinese businesses competing with each other, it is also, presumably, a problem for non-Chinese businesses competing with Chinese ones—especially if they lack the subsidies and other supports needed to sustain production in the face of “irrational” price competition. From this perspective, the problem currently vexing China’s officials is simply the latest manifestation of the longstanding imbalances that for decades have plagued both China’s economy, and, by extension, the rest of the world.

…So far in 2025, total fixed asset investment (excluding rural areas) is just 0.5% higher than it was in January-August 2024. That is meaningfully slower than the full-year growth rate of fixed asset investment growth in 2024 (3.2%) or 2023 (3.0%), and much slower than the 5.4% growth recorded in 2019, the last full year before the pandemic. While it would be easy to pin this deceleration on the collapse in the housing market that began in mid-2021—growth swung from +10% in 2019 to negative 10% in 2022, 2023, and 2024—that is not the main explanation for what has happened in 2025, even if the pace of the real estate contraction has picked up to 13% so far this year.

For hardcore Pekingology/military geeks only – an in-depth essay on the Solo Wing Substack about purges in the PLA…

Through an examination of official announcements and other information, the outside world has learned that dozens of senior officers and cadres from various CMC departments, branches, theater commands, and military and aerospace enterprises have been purged or dismissed. 

…The obsession with purges reaches back to Stalin, who eliminated swaths of Soviet cadres and nearly all senior commanders in the Red Army, elevating the purge into ideology and codifying it in his Short Course. Mao drew on this model in Yan’an, launching the Rectification Movement that systematically purged and indoctrinated cadres, soldiers, and intellectuals. Through denunciations, remolding, imprisonment, and executions, Mao secured his supremacy.

Communists may argue that purges ultimately strengthened combat power: Stalin purged, and in 1945 the Red Army planted its flag on the Reichstag; Mao purged, and in 1949 the PLA routed the Nationalists. Causality is debatable, but the victors prevailed. As Stalin is said to have told Mao: “The victors are not judged, nor can they be condemned. This is a universal axiom.”

Among much else, includes analysis of the ‘weather balloon’ that drifted over the US in 2023…

The episode derailed efforts to stabilize U.S.–China relations and exposed the PLA as highly stovepiped and poorly supervised. Such isolation and poor coordination have caused similar incidents before. In January 2011, Defense Secretary Robert Gates met Hu Jintao in Beijing ahead of Hu’s state visit to Washington. Hours before, the PLA conducted its first test flight of the J-20 stealth fighter. Hu, as CMC chair, seemed unaware when asked. Xi, who had just met Gates the previous day, was likely equally surprised. The timing fueled speculation that PLA insiders sought to sabotage the summit. Hu’s weak grip allowed the military to carve out autonomy through its monopoly on expertise. Just three months earlier, Xi had been elevated to CMC vice chairman—his final step toward being anointed successor. The episode showed him firsthand the dangers of a daredevil PLA acting on its own.

Fancy a free book on how the Atlantic slave trade affected Glasgow? The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775–1838 by academic Stephen Mullen. You can read it or download a PDF (or buy a real copy) here. I’ve been perusing it. Interesting!

From HKFP, some pics from the typhoon, and some more (especially for fans of felled trees). And a clip via the Standard of people in Macau catching fish in flooded streets.

On other matters, the government gives up…

Hong Kong has confirmed that a long-delayed waste-charging scheme will remain on the shelf indefinitely, with the government saying the city continues to face economic challenges amid a global tariff war and rising geopolitical risks.

The Environment and Ecology Bureau announced the decision on Tuesday, two months after it was supposed to reveal the scheme’s future by the end of July.

The initiative had already been delayed twice and was originally shelved last May.

If you go to Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, you see ‘Pay As You Throw’ and recycling measures that have been in operation for some 10 or 20 years.

Who cares whether it’s Signal Number 1 or 3, or 8 or 10? HKFP explains them. The system dates from the era of sailing ships. As a mean editor who can trim 1,000 words to 300 with no problem, I would suggest that all you need is ‘nothing’ and ‘8’. The rest is pointless, unless you like ritualized crisis-building. If a typhoon is coming, just say so. 

In theory, the numbered Signals indicate specific conditions, like the distance of a cyclone. But in practice there seems to have been some storm-category inflation. Almost as if an ‘8’ today is what used to be a ‘3’. To make everything fuzzier, the authorities issued an unusual ‘pre-Signal 8 alert’ at noon yesterday. Then the actual Signal 8 at 2.20 (in Macau, they did it at 5.00). Schools had been shut the whole day, while businesses were closing by mid-afternoon. Seas were starting to get rough, so anyone who needed a ferry to get home would have to do so before services stopped. But for the other 99% of the population, the weather yesterday was pretty normal until well into the evening.

The obvious argument for bigger and earlier typhoon Signals is public safety. There was a time when the HK Observatory would hold off on the Number 8 until the last minute, when everyone had a couple of hours to get home (or to the pub). The brutes didn’t even give us enough time to panic-buy.

But some might wonder whether much of yesterday’s extensive announcements and Signal-raising were about making sure officials wouldn’t be accused of not doing enough. A few cynics might even think someone was amplifying a sense of impending potential danger in order to highlight how the government was boldly taking action to protect us. 

Which, in fairness, they have done, judging by the number of emergency vehicles zipping past my window this morning. But do we need the theatrics? Will they drag out the Number 8/9/10 hooplah into tonight?

The government announced a ‘Number 1 Standby’ (ie ‘nothing is happening’) signal just after noon yesterday, even though the typhoon was more than the usual 800 kilometres away. It then announced that it would put up the Number 3 by 9.40pm that evening and would ‘consider’ the Number 8 during the following (ie this) afternoon. It is now saying it will announce the number 8 at 2.20pm, and a ‘Pre-Number 8 Special Announcement’ two hours beforehand. Schools are shut today, as well as tomorrow. 

This is a big typhoon. Outlying islands will no doubt get a battering. Obviously, public safety is the priority, and emergency services need to be on heightened alert. But how does padding out the issuing of numbered storm categories and announcing early-warnings-of-warnings to the whole city really help? You have to wonder whether, in an effort to show everyone they are taking the incoming typhoon seriously, officials are inadvertently creating a greater sense of alarm. Now supermarket shelves have been stripped bare of bread, noodles and vegetables.

And will this continue after Ragassa has passed (which, believe it or not, it will)? Is the whole city going to stay shut down until Friday?

Non-panicky advice: get home in good time this evening and expect tomorrow to be a write-off.

There’s nothing Hong Kong loves more than an excuse to panic-buy…

Residents have begun to accumulate supplies in anticipation of the impending arrival of Super Typhoon Ragasa, while some retailers warned about potential price increases. 

In the flood-prone area of Heng Fa Chuen, residents were observed procuring additional provisions in preparation for Ragasa, which correlatively resulted in a modest increase in sales for local vendors. 

Businesses are projecting heightened foot traffic and revenue on the upcoming Monday and Tuesday, with some merchants indicating that prices may be adjusted based on the restocking situation.

There’s also a debate going on (somewhere) about whether taping windows up is a good idea.

HKFP op-ed on LegCo’s rejection of a government bill to establish a registration system for same-sex couples who married overseas. It describes some odd features of the process. The government did not hold a public consultation – but LegCo did. And that showed 80% opposition, despite a robust public opinion survey two years ago finding 60% support for same-sex marriage. And Beijing’s officials endorsed LegCo’s handling of the bill….

…The huge gap between public opinion (as shown in the scientific survey) and the LegCo vote reflects the unrepresentativeness of our “patriots-only” legislature. It also exposes officially identified “mainstream public opinion” for what it is – the opinion only of our officially selected patriotic political elite and their narrow band of supporters. 

The government’s lack of enthusiasm for its own proposal was palpable. Remember that only after the top court “kicked” the government did it do anything at all. For years, the government ignored the results of scores of lost lawsuits that exposed official mistreatment of same-sex couples. 

Indeed. The all-patriots LegCo would have voted for the bill if the authorities had wanted it, notwithstanding a few fundamentalist Christian members who show a curious obsession with gays. But the overall impression is that the government/Beijing’s officials were mainly concerned with asserting non-subservience to the court that ordered the change to the law.

As for the role of public opinion – the whole post-2019 ‘patriots-only’ move away from competitive elections tells you all you need to know. The system is designed not to be representative. 

An SCMP op-ed…

The decision by a majority of legislative councillors to vote down the same-sex partnerships bill has been presented by officials as some kind of triumph for the system of government. In fact, it sets us on the road to a slow-burning loss of credibility about our commitment to the rule of law.

A total of 71 members voted against the bill earlier this month, with just 14 in favour and one abstention. The outcome was widely reported in the overseas media, most directly highlighting that this was a direct rebuttal of a ruling by Hong Kong’s top court.

The narrative since put forward by some officials is that, despite the negative outcome, the process was a success because it showed all three branches of government carried out their duties faithfully according to the law. The judiciary interpreted the relevant law independently, the executive responded appropriately by putting forward legislation to remedy the adjudged illegality and the legislature exercised its free judgment.

This is pure sophistry. A significant minority of Hong Kong citizens have been denied certain rights that our Court of Final Appeal ruled they should have by law. The promise by the government to examine what might be done administratively to minimise the damage to those concerned is welcome but insufficient.

Another HKFP take on the subject here.

Also from HKFP – whatever happened to ‘Night Vibes’?

Launched in September 2023, the government’s Night Vibes Hong Kong campaign was once billed as the marquee push to revive tourism and domestic spending post-Covid. Performances, cultural events, markets and tours were promised, offering “festive and vibrant” experiences along the harbourfront and beyond.

By January 2024, it had expanded into Day x Night Vibes @ 18 Districts. As of the first quarter this year, more than 60 events had been held, officials said. But earlier this month, when a pro-establishment party urged Hong Kong to boost its “night-time economy,” reporters noticed that the campaign’s dedicated website had quietly vanished.

…into (presumably) the night.

Admit it – you hadn’t noticed, right?

Jessie Lau in Prospect on the 10th anniversary of the film Ten Years…

Now banned in Hong Kong and Mainland China, Ten Years captured Hongkongers’ anxieties in 2015 over what their home may become by 2025, in a series of haunting vignettes depicting the potential impact of Beijing’s increasing control over the semi-autonomous city. Filmed on a tiny budget of just HK$500,000 (£47,400), it was an instant hit upon release, selling out screenings across the city before it was pulled from commercial theatres following pressure from Chinese authorities. When it unexpectedly won Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards a year later, Beijing barred the broadcast of the ceremony on the mainland, calling it a “virus of the mind”.

I was a journalist covering the film awards for local media in 2016—an era of relative press freedom that now feels like a lifetime ago. I still recall the shock that reverberated across the auditorium that evening: the moment of utter silence, followed by rapturous applause. The flash of cameras from the press area, as we all flocked forwards, scrambling over one another, for our front-page shots. The look of disbelief on the executive producer’s face, as he stepped onto the stage and spoke about how the award represented hope in Hong Kong; how it belonged to us all.

For anyone who thinks an EV factory makes sense in Hong Kong – a good Reuters story on China’s car glut…

China has more domestic brands making more cars than the world’s biggest car market can absorb because the industry is striving to hit production targets influenced by government policy, instead of consumer demand, a Reuters examination has found. That makes turning a profit nearly impossible for almost all automakers here, industry executives say. Chinese electric vehicles start at less than $10,000; in the U.S., automakers offer just a few under $35,000.

Most Chinese dealers can’t make money, either, according to an industry survey published last month, because their lots are jammed with excess inventory. Dealers have responded by slashing prices. Some retailers register and insure unsold cars in bulk, a maneuver that allows automakers to record them as sold while helping dealers to qualify for factory rebates and bonuses from manufacturers.

Unwanted vehicles get dumped onto gray-market traders like Zcar. Some surface on TikTok-style social-media sites in fire sales. Others are rebranded as “used” – even though their odometers show no mileage – and shipped overseas. Some wind up abandoned in weedy car graveyards.

These unusual practices are symptoms of a vastly oversupplied market – and point to a potential shakeout mirroring turmoil in China’s property market and solar industry, according to many industry figures and analysts. They stem from government policies that prioritize boosting sales and market share – in service of larger goals for employment and economic growth – over profitability and sustainable competition. Local governments offer cheap land and subsidies to automakers in exchange for production and tax-revenue commitments, multiplying overcapacity across the country.

Another hub idea: rather than assembling EVs, how about disassembly of aircraft?

In the SCMP (where else could it be? – a Chinese academic thinks the country could use West Germany’s approach to absorbing Taiwan …

Beijing could incentivise Taiwan to reunite with the Chinese mainland by learning from German policies adopted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a Chinese government adviser told a security forum on Wednesday.

Zheng Yongnian, a political-science professor from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, said Beijing could consider steps such as financial support and unconditional citizenship for Taiwan residents.

He hinted that mainland China had the means to adopt measures similar to some of Germany’s post-reunification policies, such as a “solidarity tax” and exchange rate parity.

He told the Xiangshan forum in Beijing that when the East adopted the Deutschmark months before reunification, the East German mark was worth far less than the West’s currency “but they treated one East mark as equal to one West mark – that gave many ordinary [East German] people incentives to side with West Germany”.

He added: “The current exchange rate between the Chinese yuan and the New Taiwan dollar is roughly one to four, and I think that could work.”

He also cited the German government’s nationwide “solidarity tax” – initially 7.5 per cent, later 5.5 per cent – on income and corporate taxes to fund infrastructure and integration, hinting that mainland China could adopt a similar approach.

The levy raised the equivalent of hundreds of billions of euros and is still being paid by the top 10 per cent of earners today.

The Deutschmark thing is irrelevant, as a ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy would leave Taiwan with its own currency. Anyway, West Germany made that pledge because the DDR’s currency was non- convertible, unlike Taiwan’s (though like China’s). Which brings us to the main problem with this academic’s proposal: German reunification involved a rich and democratic region absorbing a poor and unfree one. (Hence the solidarity tax – a wealth transfer to help the East catch up.) In the case of China and Taiwan, it’s the other way round: you’re trying to lure a free society with a developed economy into being taken over by a developing authoritarian one. 

The academic would be better off asking how things might have worked out if German reunification had involved West Germany being ‘incentivized’ to be ruled by the East German communist regime.

Chief Executive John Lee took just under three hours to deliver his policy address. He mentioned a few major initiatives – notably the ‘Northern Metropolis’ – that aren’t new. Some minor positive measures, including free high-tech prostheses for amputees, and less red tape for food outlets. Some banal obscurities, such as allowing dogs in restaurants. And a load of desperate (or optimistic) proposals to boost the economy, involving yachts, AI, gold, green (!) maritime fuel bunkering, Greater Bay Area intermodal something, streamlining license applications for Low Earth Orbit satellites, and encouraging tokenized assets, tokenized deposits, tokenized money market funds and tokenized bonds, with help from a supervisory sandbox. 

Hong Kong’s fundamental challenge is accepting and adapting to a world in which the Mainland’s post-Mao economic boom – the huge easy skim – is over. Which doesn’t bear thinking about. So frenetic micro-management it is. 

Joel Chan lists the hubs…

Wasn’t there also a reference to an ‘immersive, thematic travel hub’? Something to do with halal food? Or maybe I dreamt it.

Just time for a link for history types – an Asia Times article by Francesco Sisci comparing the impact of geography on political, military and philosophical development in ancient China and Rome. (Also, some wacky nationalistic Chinese ranting in the comments section.)

I think this was supposed to be kept under wraps before tomorrow’s policy address. Either way, this Bloomberg story is a sign of desperation among Hong Kong officials trying to reposition the city’s economy…

Hong Kong is in talks with several Chinese electric-vehicle makers to establish local EV manufacturing, according to people familiar with the matter, as the financial hub looks to advanced industries to diversify its ailing economy.

The city’s officials aim to develop an EV assembly base — a relatively complex process requiring advanced skills, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private deliberations. They are weighing potential sites in Hong Kong’s New Territories that border mainland China, they added.

The talks have included state-owned automaker FAW Group, one of the people said.

Hong Kong has “been proactively facilitating the development of strategic industries, including advanced manufacturing” as part of its 2022 I&T development blueprint, the city’s Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau said in response to a Bloomberg News query. FAW didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hong Kong is turning to new industries to spur growth after years of economic challenges fueled by political crackdowns, Covid isolation and a property slump, which have undermined the city’s status as a premier financial hub.

What ‘advanced skills’ would be needed, and does Hong Kong have them? And what competitive advantages does Hong Kong offer? As the story mentions, Hong Kong has high land and labour costs. While you can import workers, you can’t import sites suitable for large-scale manufacturing complexes. How can an EV plant possibly be viable unless the taxpayers subsidize it with cheap land? Then there’s existing overcapacity in the Mainland’s EV industry…

…with factories producing only half of their planned output — and a bruising price war that has forced a rare government intervention.

One possible reason for locating such operations offshore would be to avoid tariffs on Mainland-produced EVs. But surely it would make more sense to build the plants in Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil or somewhere where costs are much lower and there’s a sizable and growing local market as well as export opportunities. 

Mega-events that fall flat, endless ‘hubs’, visas for supposed talent, an insatiable longing for millions more tourists, crypto, and now car assembly. Perhaps we should have some sympathy for the civil servants who are given a near-impossible mission: come up with ideas to rejuvenate the economy – but keep real-estate prices/land valuations high and (if you’re getting funny ideas about creative industries) put ‘national security’ above everything.

Transit Jam digs into the Missouri Synod Lutheran church’s complaint against HK International School and finds that they are demanding…

• all other religious teachings … are dropped … no comparative religious studies;

• festivals outside Christian festivals to be strictly prohibited;

• an end to all acceptance and promotion of homosexuality, same-sex marriage and transgender-affirming care…

Whenever I think about Lutherans (about one minute once every five years), I have visions of trendy female Swedish pastors and that completely nuts architecture in Iceland – and forget who they are named after. It seems these guys (no women clergy) are pretty orthodox. Could be an interesting court case.

Ronny Tong’s think tank used to be called Path of Democracy, but has now renamed itself PoD Research Institute. Adjusting to the new order in Hong Kong. It still conducts a survey asking people if they are satisfied with the Legislative Council’s performance. The question might have made sense when the public elected representatives of their choosing to hold the government to account. But these days, LegCo members are, in effect, appointed by the government specifically to agree with it. It’s not a question of whether the public are satisfied with the legislature so much as whether they perceive one actually exists in any meaningful way. (For the record, the majority are dissatisfied.) 

Update from HKFP…

[Tong] said the think tank did not intend to avoid “democracy” in its name, but added that the word could have a political connotation that may impact the credibility of its research.

By ‘did not’, we mean ‘obviously did’.

We ease ourselves gently into another week with a sneak preview of Wednesday’s policy address: the CE’s neckwear. 

For decades, policy addresses and their attendant ‘consultations’ have been heavy on ritual rather than substance, not to say quantity over quality. If there is anything worth looking for this year, it would be signs of seriousness – or desperation – about the economy. I’ve heard talk of at least one proposed measure that sounds borderline absurd. We’ll see.