Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Boston Review links economic inequality with Hong Kong and Taiwan’s declining faith in Beijing. This downplays the historic, identity and cultural aspects – which makes a change, perhaps…

In 2014, [older Hong Kong pan-democrats’] cautious approach was superseded by a generation willing to risk much more. Thus commenced the most dramatic five-year cycle of revolt witnessed in the city’s history. Hong Kongers were shocked by increasing police brutality including indiscriminate use of tear gas and pepper spray and beatings of nonviolent protestors and onlookers. By February 2020, this violence and the government’s intransigence in its face caused Hong Kongers’ support of Beijing to collapse, with less than 20 percent reporting that they trusted the central government. The government understood then that persuasion was no longer an option, and resorted to the liquidation of the opposition and civil society. Since 2020, opposition political parties, trade unions, and media outlets that held critical views of Beijing have disbanded en masse.

…The CCP of the early and mid-twentieth century made anticolonial and anticapitalist appeals to their compatriots in Hong Kong and Taiwan, societies that had suffered racially stratified exploitation under British and Japanese rule, promising them economic and political liberation. But under Deng Xiaoping and Xi alike, the latter was not only demoted but fully excised from the state’s agenda in service of building national wealth and power via the market. This shift shaped Beijing’s approach to Hong Kong and Taiwan accordingly, as it tried to divert economic opportunities to them in exchange for political submission. For a moment, that outcome seemed within grasp. But the market, as the CCP knows, is a fickle tool.

The Guardian on CCP members being disciplined for reading books with ‘political problems’…

In September a former municipal level official in Heilongjiang, Li Bin, accused of corruption, was also found to have “privately read an illegal publication containing contents that undermined the unity and solidarity of the Party”, according to state media. He was expelled from the Party and his case given to prosecutors.

That same month, Cheng Zhiyi, former party secretary of Chongqing’s Jiangjin district, was also expelled. Among the accusations were “losing ideals and beliefs” after he privately read books and magazines with “serious political problems’ while “outside the country”.

…a list of banned titles published by China Digital Times … includes writings on Chinese politics and history, including the Tiananmen Square massacre and the disastrous Mao-era policies that saw millions die from famine, violence, and political purges. There are books scrutinising the modern CCP’s politics and power, or sharing the views of political enemies and critics like Hong Kong tycoon and activist Jimmy Lai, the exiled Tibetan Dalai Lama, and Bo Xilai, the fallen political foe of Xi Jinping. Hillary Clinton’s memoir is on the list, as is Machiavelli’s The Prince, and Hannah Arendt’s The History of Totalitarianism.

Hillary Clinton???

The CE’s policy address reflects the usual paucity of ideas, or an inability to admit that old ones don’t work, or a dread of embracing new ones.

Eliminating subdivided apartments by requiring them to have a window, a toilet and an area of at least 86 sq ft and renaming them ‘basic housing units’ doesn’t really fix the problem. Why can’t or won’t officials just build more affordable housing?

Because they want ever-higher land valuations that by definition are accompanied by a shortage of homes. So let’s try to lure more suckers into buying overpriced apartments by allowing 70% mortgages.

The government will cut taxes on pricier booze to…

…[promote] the liquor trade and [boost] the development of high value-added industries, including logistics and storage, tourism and high-end food and beverage consumption…

Are any of these ‘high value-added industries’? Mass tourism certainly isn’t. Yet the government plans to expand Mainland individual (and ASEAN) visits in an attempt to push up tourist numbers apparently as an end in itself. Even though Hong Kong has a ‘projected shortage of 180,000 workers across different sectors in the next five years’.

(Fans of borderline irrelevant policy initiatives can find in-depth discussion of the impact of lower tax on fancy spirits here.)

And the government wants to develop local generative AI to help some of its departments in…

…writing drafts, translating, and the conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese characters…

Digital conversion between traditional and simplified has been around for decades. Still, at least it’s not crypto.

A full summary of the policy address proposals is here. The whole thing here. There’s little sense that Hong Kong policymakers recognize a need for major adjustments to the old model. Pandas, property and patriotism will fix everything.

Oh, and don’t forget the gold trading hub. (The list of Hong Kong’s ‘hubs’ is out of date already.)

Officials investigate a sudden outbreak of death among monkeys at the little zoo section of the Botanical Gardens. Nine – the latest being a white-faced saki – have died in recent days. The Standard adds that ‘another De Brazza’s monkey exhibited unusual movement and appetite and is … under observation’. It quotes experts as saying the cause could be viruses or bacteria, perhaps Leptospira, or maybe insect bites, but ruling out heatstroke or overfeeding by visitors.

One other possibility is that they died of boredom – the facility is as grim as its (more or less) architectural contemporary, the old Victoria Prison. 

Or could it be the humans? The staff at the Botanical Gardens are unique among zookeepers worldwide in that they don’t seem to take any pleasure in feeding their animals – dumping the buckets of chopped fruit on the concrete floors of the cages with all the grace of a grumpy dai pai dong owner. Could it be that these low-level civil servants are so resentful at having to perform such demeaning tasks that they are poisoning the primates? Obviously not.

The zoo is of course linked to an aviary across Albany Road – so perhaps there is some sort of bird-on-mammal territorial conflict. Which would suggest this is a case of fowl play.

Yippee I have returned in time to catch the Chief Executive’s policy address later today. The Standard says…

[CE John] Lee said he chose green [as a cover for the document] to show continuity of policies and signify harmony, vitality and prosperity, showcasing that the city is marching from a place of order to one of prosperity.

A radical shift from the old days, when the booklet would be pink to signify harmony, vitality and prosperity, or blue to signify harmony, vitality and prosperity, or orange to signify harmony, vitality and prosperity.

Lee stopped short of giving further details when asked about the key points and length of his policy address.

“I know that everybody’s very keen to know about the content of the policy address,” Lee said.

“You will know everything when I announce it.”

Apparently the highlight will be cheaper booze in order to stimulate the low-altitude economy, or something.

Still recovering from: a) jet lag; b) surprise at how nice Yorkshire is (they could turn up the heating, but otherwise lovely places and people); and c) an aversion to clicking on Hong Kong news to see what’s going on.

Today would have been my mother’s 100th birthday (she died at 85). 

Her parents were of minor landed-gentry stock, who were both educated in Germany (a thing in the late 19th Century) and who both converted to Catholicism – a step that cost her father his legal career. She was one of seven sisters, who went to Catholic boarding school. No cooking lessons (they assumed everyone had domestic help).

As a girl, she met King Zog of Albania in Paris – by accident (she barged through a crowd of people to see who was there). After World War 2, she married. She was at some point a member of the Young Conservatives, through which she once met (and disliked) Evelyn Waugh. Quite a few years later, she and my father split up. Some of my earliest memories are of books. I remember her telling a shocked neighbour ‘I don’t care what my children read, provided they read’. 

Another memory is the play group she started after an extensive battle with county education bureaucrats 40 miles away, doing local TV interviews and losing friends who didn’t want kids from poorer families allowed in. She helped found a – now very established – NGO fighting for single-parent families’ rights. And she got into the nascent feminist movement, attending Women’s Lib conferences, writing for an obscure radical publication and doing voluntary work including pregnancy tests for teenage girls. She would say she didn’t understand why women got married.

There was much more – but you get the picture of her trajectory of awareness and activism. I took it all for granted while a kid, and later put it down to separation from my father, plus eccentricity.

Fast-forward a few more decades, and she shocked her offspring, her array of siblings, nephews and nieces and all her many friends by announcing that she had had a baby in her late teens during the war. Her parents had hushed everything up, refused to let the father marry her (because he was divorced) and sent her off to an elderly aunt in the countryside until the baby was born at a discreet Catholic clinic and whisked away for adoption. For half a century she had constantly been using her first and middle names – as on the birth certificate – and now her daughter had tracked her down. 

And it all became clear.

Away for the next two weeks – going to an exotic part of the world I have never been to before. Should put some pix on Twitter, at least.

The Stand News trial ends with sentences of 21 months for former senior editor Chung Pui-kuen and 10 months for former deputy Patrick Lam. Since both had been in jail for 10-11 months, Chung will serve only nine more months, and Lam was released on health grounds…

Outlining his reasons for sentencing, [judge Kwok Wai-kin] said the duo were “absolutely not simply journalists” during the period of the offence. “The three defendants were not conducting genuine media work, but participating in the so-called resistance then,” he said.

“Focusing on the 11 articles I ruled to be seditious, they were mostly published at a time over half of the Hong Kong society distrusted [Beijing] and [the local] government, the police, and the judiciary,” he continued.

“Such seditious articles had inevitably caused serious damage to [the authorities] and residents,” he said, adding that the news outlet had over 1.6 million followers on social media platforms.

From the Standard…

[Defender Audrey] Eu suggested that none of the 11 articles deemed to have seditious intention by the judge “were promoting any political viewpoints,” but only presenting the views of interviewees and bloggers.

Kwok responded by saying smearing and slandering without objectivity were “unacceptable.”

Eu argued that other newspapers like Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po also criticized the judiciary and other political figures.

She said no one had complained that Stand News had specifically reported seditious articles.

As the two were tried under the old colonial-era sedition law, the maximum sentence was two years. Under the Article 23 NatSec law, it could have been much higher.

The government rushes out a quick statement to pre-empt criticism…

Stand News had completely “disregarded objective facts” and violated journalistic principles set out in international human rights conventions, the government said on Thursday, hours after two former editors of the online news platform were given jail terms for publishing seditious content.

Some weekend reading and viewing…

The Michael Kovrig CBC interview on YouTube.

From Bloomberg, Minxin Pei on China’s anti-Japanese stance…

…[1980s] rapprochement ended after the Tiananmen crackdown in June 1989. In the 1990s, Chinese leaders began to promote an aggressive program of nationalism to bolster regime legitimacy. One of its core components was a concerted anti-Japanese propaganda campaign.

…A sense of economic superiority has made China arrogant and insensitive. Even worse, it has begun to resort to economic bullying to put Japan in its place.

…Foolishly, instead of setting a policy based solely on Japan’s importance to China, Beijing views the Sino-Japanese relationship almost exclusively through the lens of its rivalry with Washington. Xi has adopted a strategy of punishing America’s regional allies, such as Japan and the Philippines, mostly because China has no means of imposing costs on the US.

…Japan has upgraded its security ties with the US to previously unimaginable levels. Even the idea of Japanese forces fighting alongside the American military to defend Taiwan is no longer unthinkable.

It would clearly be in China’s self-interest to change course. A more promising strategy must address the sources of Japanese frustrations and fears.

The easiest and quickest step would be to tone down anti-Japanese propaganda…

China File interview with art historian and journalist Kejia Wu on the tension between Chinese leaders’ yearning for soft power and for cultural control, starting from her time with a property developer…

In the late 1990s to mid-2000s, artists like Zhang Xiaogang … became popular with foreign collectors. At that time, the Chinese contemporary market was starting to do very well, driven by new demand from international collectors…

Artists like that are often not part of the official state system. They make their living by having shows through their galleries, and galleries often bring the artists’ work to art fairs. The galleries help generate sales for them. Artists can survive outside of the state system by being represented by commercial galleries.

However, now the authorities review all their exhibitions (unless the Chinese artist creates their work outside of the country and it is exhibited overseas), including gallery shows, domestic public and private museum shows, and any artworks sent abroad. If these artists have shows in New York, all their paintings will have to be reviewed. And the review process can take three months, but it’s very hard to predict, it can take longer.

For fans of Sichuan peppers – or at least gloriously pretentious writing – an NYT article titled The Life-Affirming Properties of Sichuan Pepper by Ligaya Mishan…

This is not a simple arc of pain to pleasure. The chiles in Rozin’s example of benign masochism don’t just deliver a burn; the capsaicin prompts the release of endorphins. There’s a payoff. No such chemical U-turn is known to take place with hydroxy-alpha sanshool. The fizz merely fades. Perhaps we are newly drawn to Sichuan pepper, then, not because we just want to feel something (as the phrase goes in the meme of the past few years) but because we seek the opposite, the momentary suspension of feeling: an altered state that allows us, by losing sensation, to perceive it — and by extension the world — anew, an “enstrangement” akin to that described by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky in “Art, as Device” in 1917 as the technique of art. Perhaps “numbing” is entirely the wrong word. In Chinese, “ma” also refers to pins and needles, the discomfort of an awkwardly placed limb. Colloquially, we speak of this as “falling asleep,” but it’s actually a reawakening: The pain comes because the nerves, compressed, have been restored to function. Synapses flare; messages fly. It’s not the dying out of feeling but a return — a coming back to life.

The tired ritual known as the policy address probably hit rock bottom in Donald Tsang’s time. Like Carrie Lam in later years, he was a bureaucrat good at implementing policies but devoid of any ideas on crafting them. That said, he did oversee a badly needed boost to health spending. He forced developers to reveal the true size of new apartments rather than count hallways as interior square feet (though he shoveled lots of benefits their way too, like incentives for ‘luxury’ features like clubhouses.) And he introduced a five-day week for civil servants – a measure copied by the private-sector, much to the relief of white-collar workers who had long dozed in the office on Saturday mornings. He also grudgingly approved some conservation projects (like at Central Market), moaning about the loss of revenue to the government. Otherwise, it was just infrastructure white-elephants.

With today’s administration run by former cops, maybe there are even fewer ideas floating around. Thus we have a leak on reducing tax on spirits. The theory is that bar-owners will cut prices, thus reviving tourism and nightlife, and boosting GDP into the stratosphere… 

One approach the government is considering is a tiered system whereby more expensive spirits would be taxed less, one of the [sources] said. It’s thought that could boost spending on premium liquor among a higher value type of clientele while discouraging consumers to stock up on cheap drink in a bid to also limit health risks, the person said.

Alternatively, vendors might keep prices the same and make some extra profit. Then, landlords find out and push rents up accordingly. 

What else could officials have done to stimulate F&B outlets? How about mandatory seven-year leases with rents tied to inflation on retail premises, so tenants have a chance of making a profit before the landlords put them out of business? Or a hefty tax on unoccupied stores (currently 11.7% of street-level premises in core districts)? You can argue about whether these would be good or bad policy – but they’re examples of what actual ideas might look like.

Following a 30-second blast outside – another policy I’d like to see: all vehicles to have horns that sound only when in motion. Hong Kong could become the hub for gizmos that disable horns when a vehicle is stationary.

On the subject of blasts: your daily angry press release…

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) stated today (September 25) that it strongly condemned and rejected the report on the academic freedom of Hong Kong published by the so-called Human Rights Watch and Hong Kong Democracy Council yesterday (September 24). The content of the report are all maliciously smears and sweeping remarks. The HKSAR Government must point out its errors to set the record straight.

Smear-slamming season opens, with the Hong Kong government expressing anger over Jimmy Lai’s supporters appealing to the UN about his health in prison, and Beijing hitting back after Michael Kovig talks about being tortured during his detention in China.

National Post piece quoting Lai’s son Sebastien…

To make matters worse, said Sebastien, the 77-year-old is being kept in conditions that would seem more suited to the most dangerous of criminals — solitary confinement, sweltering temperatures, lack of daylight, no independent medical care for his diabetes. The devout Catholic has been denied the opportunity to take Communion, he says.

And there are signs Jimmy’s health has recently taken a turn for the worse, to the point he has been unable to attend some court appearances, said his son.

Sebastien is worried his father will not survive the ordeal, even if the court metes out less than the life sentence allowed under the NSL. He has been unable to talk to him in four years.

“He’s practically being baked alive. It breaks my heart,” said Sebastien. “He’s an elderly man now, but given the conditions, it wouldn’t be surprising if he just passed away in jail … It’s not easy to know that your father could die at any moment and that he would never get that time (in jail) back.”

…“They know that for a financial centre, that element of trust, of fairness is important,” said Sebastien. “And by highlighting what’s happened to my father, I’m also indirectly highlighting that Hong Kong is no longer a place where you could rely on that. It’s now a place where the government believes itself to be infallible … All they want to do is ‘security.’ And it’s a police state.”

Hong Kong’s NatSec Committee pre-empts a judge by ruling that Kinson Cheung is not eligible for early release from prison, where he is serving a sentence for the common-law offence of ‘incitement to wound with intent’ – praising a man who stabbed a policeman (and currently killed himself) in 2021. Normally, convicts would get released early for good conduct.

From the (paywalled) FT, Calvin Klein gets into NatSec trouble in the Mainland…

China has accused the parent company of Calvin Klein of boycotting cotton from its western Xinjiang region, threatening for the first time to put a US company with significant interests in the country on a national security blacklist.

Beijing’s threat to include PVH, a clothing maker whose brands include Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, on its “unreliables list” is likely to alarm international companies at a moment when China is struggling to attract foreign investors.

…the ministry [also] accused the group “of violating normal market trading principles and unreasonably boycotting Xinjiang cotton and other products without factual basis”.

….Beijing’s implementation of the blacklist followed tightening US restrictions and sanctions on Chinese technology and exports, particularly on its telecom equipment maker Huawei.

But foreign lawyers argue that provisions of China’s blacklist are too vague, targeting companies accused of “endangering national sovereignty, security or development interests of China”.

……Under the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, the US bans goods made in Xinjiang unless importers can prove they were not made using forced labour.

In a company filing this year, PVH said it had made “efforts” to confirm that materials covered by measures such as the US act “are not present in our supply chain”.

An explanation from China Digital Times of the ‘garbage time of history’…

When the result of a sporting match becomes a foregone conclusion and lesser players are subbed in to run out the clock, announcers often term it “garbage time.” The latest term to sweep the Chinese internet holds that nations, too, experience a similar phenomenon: the “garbage time of history” (历史的垃圾时间, lìshǐ de lājī shíjiān). Coined by the essayist Hu Wenhui in a 2023 WeChat post, “the garbage time of history” refers to the period when a nation or system is no longer viable—when it has ceased to progress, but has not yet collapsed. Hu defined it as the point at which “the die is cast and defeat is inevitable. Any attempt to struggle against it is futile.” Hu’s sweeping essay led with Soviet stagnation under Brezhnev and then jumped nimbly between the historiography of the collapse of the Ming Dynasty and Lu Xun’s opinions on Tang Dynasty poetry. Unasserted but implied in the essay is that China today finds itself in similar straits. 

A partial translation of the essay follows.

At Bloomberg, Minxin Pei picks up on the Chinese people’s pessimism about the country’s prospects during the ‘garbage time’ …

On the surface, such pessimism is driven by economic woes. The collapse of the real estate sector has shrunk the net worth of the middle-class. The resulting negative wealth effect has curbed consumption, exacerbating the slump and threatening deflation.

The malaise, however, has deeper political roots. The country has gone through much worse economic times before without despairing. Tens of thousands of state-owned enterprises were liquidated and more than 30 million workers laid off at the end of the 1990s. Still, ordinary Chinese remained optimistic about the future.

The difference is that those citizens believed in the competence of the reformist then-premier Zhu Rongji…

…Now, Chinese are not only dissatisfied with government decisions. More importantly, they see no possibility of improvement because the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly signaled that it intends to maintain the same domestic and foreign policies that have led to economic stagnation at home and geopolitical tensions abroad.

…Under Xi, the party is ruled by a highly centralized, if not personalized, leadership. Changing or reversing policies is extremely hard, if not impossible, as evidenced by the absence of major shifts since China’s recent economic struggles began in mid-2023.

Which leads us to a post by former Mainland real-estate developer Desmond Shum on ‘the Key Characteristics of Xi Jinping’…

When Xi took power in 2013, he saw a China growing more diverse, which he perceived as a threat to the CCP’s dominance. To counter this, he dismantled his political rivals, reorganized the bureaucracy, and reasserted state control over key sectors—media, real estate, finance, and more.

Xi views this as trading short-term pain for long-term gain, but his failure to grasp the depth of the immediate consequences has drastically altered China’s trajectory. The country now finds itself on a path of decline, a result of Xi’s rigid policies and inability, maybe more unwillingness, to adapt.

In Hong Kong, the government is setting up a committee to name the two panda bears that will receive an elite police motorbike escort ‘in arrow formation’ on their arrival.

One more NatSec sedition case from last week…

Au Kin-wai, 58, appeared before Chief Magistrate Victor So at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Friday, where he pleaded guilty to one count of “knowingly publishing publications that had a seditious intention” over statements he made online.

He was charged on June 21 over posts on social media platforms Facebook, X, and YouTube calling for the dissolution of the Chinese Communist Party, and for Chinese president Xi Jinping and Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee – both of whom he dubbed “dictators” – to step down.

He also invoked a Cultural Revolution-era slogan: “Revolution is no crime, to rebel is justified.”

…Kwan on Friday contended that the court had to consider the minimal impact of Au’s actions, saying that most of Au’s 200-odd posts were repetitive, and that he only had about 20 followers on all four of his social media accounts. The counsel asked the court not to give too much weight to the protection of society as a sentencing factor, considering the defendant’s limited reach.

HKDC’s tally…

37 have been imprisoned in #HongKong for #sedition. 104 arrested, 60 charged, 42 convicted, 0 acquitted. Almost all for speech protected in free countries, including 42 for online posts, 15 for journalism, & 13 for publishing, possessing, importing &/or selling books.

Kevin Lau (former Ming Pao editor and victim of a knife attack in 2014) writes on the intimidation campaign against Hong Kong journalists…

The harassment methods often involve pressuring relatives, specifically targeting journalists’ parents, spouses, and siblings. They spread rumors to their employers, landlords, and even neighbors and real estate agents, claiming the journalist is a criminal. They make all kinds of unfounded smears, trying to put enormous pressure on journalists’ relatives so that, unable to bear the disturbance, they will persuade the journalist to stay silent and change careers. This method of pressuring relatives to isolate them socially has often been seen in mainland rights activists’ experiences but was rare in Hong Kong. Now it’s being used intensively against a group of young journalists, reflecting the invasion of mainland political suppression tactics into Hong Kong. The spectre of Cultural Revolution-style denunciation campaigns now hangs over the heads of targeted individuals. This might be the most eye-opening aspect for Hong Kong people – if the HKJA hadn’t conducted a broad survey of its members, and some harassment victims hadn’t stood up to testify, this dark political trend might still be unexposed.