Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Joshua Wong is given 10 years for ‘conspiring to collude with foreign forces’. That charge came in July last year – five years after the alleged offences, and after five years in prison for inciting unlawful assembly and ‘conspiracy to subvert state power’ (participating in a primary election). This new sentence just so happens to come just before he would have been released in January. The judge ordered that two months of the new sentence will be served concurrently…

Wong was accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and other unnamed individuals in 2020 to request that foreign countries impose sanctions and blockades, or engage in other hostile activities, directed against the governments of Hong Kong and mainland China.

The pair, both co-founders of the now-disbanded pro-democracy party Demosisto, had engaged in an “international battlefront” in the wake of the 2019 protests and unrest.

They lobbied for the passing of legislation such as the US’s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, prosecutors said.

BBC story.

Samuel Bickett says…

…The charges, and the sentence, against Wong are nonsense. In Hong Kong’s national security courts, the facts matter little. Nonetheless, judges are expected to make a show of pretending to hold a fair hearing and explaining their sentencing.

Judge Tam here insists, twice, that Wong “is not to be punished for his pre-NSL acts or activities, nor for his political ideology.” The charge covers July 1 to November 23, 2020. So here, in full, is what the judgment says Wong himself did during that period:

July 1: He reshared a Facebook post in which Nathan Law, his former party colleague, announced that he would testify before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee.

July 2: He reshared Law’s post announcing that Law had left Hong Kong, which said the “International Battlefront” had to be defended.

July: In several posts, he wrote that he would not give up his views or his advocacy abroad, that his “comrades” overseas would carry that work on, and that some people needed to stay in Hong Kong.

July 10: He told Commercial Radio that he had lobbied for a US human rights law in the past, when doing so was legal; that he had been in touch with Law; and that people overseas should keep speaking about Hong Kong.

July 18 and 28: He reshared Law’s online petition asking Cellebrite, an Israeli phone-hacking company, to stop selling to the Hong Kong Police, and noted that tens of thousands of people had signed it.

July 21: He reshared Law’s post about meeting British officials and urging sanctions on Hong Kong police officers.

August 7 and October 9: He posted that Cellebrite would stop supplying the Hong Kong Police, the second time by sharing Cellebrite’s own press release.

August 15: He wrote in the Guardian that “we will never surrender.”

September 24: On the day he was arrested over a 2019 protest, he told Deutsche Welle, “I will continue to stay and fight.”

September 29: He wrote in the Financial Times that business executives should diversify their investments away from China.

November 22: The night before he was jailed, he posted a progress report for his supporters on Facebook and Patreon, mentioning letters he had written to Sony and Apple warning them against collaborating with the Chinese government.

That is the whole list. Nearly every item on it is either a repost of someone else’s words or some version of “I will keep fighting.”

The judgment does not identify a single foreign official Wong met after the law took effect…

…How does a court turn a few reposts into a crime “of a grave nature”? Judge Tam took two steps to bend the law to his needs.

First, the court reached back to before the NSL existed. The charge was conspiracy: Wong was convicted of agreeing with Law to collude with foreign forces, under Hong Kong’s ordinary conspiracy law, which let the court attribute Law’s activity in London to Wong in Hong Kong. But Judge Tam found that the agreement was made between 2016 and June 2020, when lobbying foreign governments was entirely legal.

Second, the court held Wong responsible for American policy… 

Timothy McLaughlin says…

Not unthinkable that they will charge him again at some point and continue stacking years on his sentence. A life sentence draws a lot of media coverage and condemnation, going it bit by bit not so much 

The Guardian reports on his letter from prison…

Despite spending his 21st, 25th and 30th birthdays in prison, Wong’s letters – written between August and October – show his resolve and continuing concern about Hong Kong’s future.

“The only thing I worry about is that people will forget Hong Kong, and that amid competition and struggles between great powers, they will forget the countless ordinary, unknown people in different places who have paid a price for their beliefs,” he writes.

And on the reaction from governments and NGOs…

Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said: “The harsh sentence on baseless charges against Joshua Wong is cruel and unjust. Young people promoting social change are an asset for any vibrant society, but the Hong Kong government puts them behind bars.”

Sarah Brooks, deputy regional director for Amnesty International, said: “Today’s sentence is another grim reminder of how Hong Kong’s National Security Law has become a tool to punish dissent rather than to genuinely protect national security.”

She said the new conviction “cruelly – and perhaps deliberately – comes mere months before he would have been eligible for release under his previous conviction”.

The government comes out with its own comment on the case…

The reasons for sentence handed down by the court ruled that the offence in this case was of a grave nature, and pointed out that at the material time, Hong Kong was confronted with the social turmoil and the serious effects of riots, and was facing very high risks to national security and the rule of law. The acts of Wong Chi-fung and others aggravated the serious predicament. They had direct engagement with top or senior officials of foreign countries, and continued to promote the calls for sanctions through their own social media accounts and via prominent news media or outlets in the West, reaching both local and international audiences. Wong Chi-fung and Law Kwun-chung were the masterminds of the case and the advocates at the forefront calling for foreign countries to impose sanctions and hostile measures. After the implementation of the HKNSL, they persisted in acts endangering national security and deliberately adapted their respective roles, yet their roles were equally crucial. They indeed contributed to the imposition of sanctions and hostile measures by foreign countries, and such sanctions and measures significantly impacted upon and endangered national security. 

And ‘strongly condemns and opposes’ criticism of the sentence. The CE, Security Secretary, LegCo and police all voice support.

Another book seller arrested…

The National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force today (November 5) took enforcement action in Mong Kok and arrested a 34-year-old local man. He was suspected of contravening the offence of “importing a publication that has a seditious intention” under Section 24 of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.

Investigation revealed that the arrested person, a company director of a local company, was suspected of importing seditious books into local bookstores with the intent to bring hatred, contempt or disaffection against the Central People’s Government and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. 

New World’s disastrous 11 Skies project has now been taken over by the airport and bundled with a patch of adjacent sea (over which the airport apparently has jurisdiction) as ‘Skytopia’… 

…a new tourism landmark offering leisure, entertainment, arts, and sea-air joint sightseeing, with most amenities, including a minibus connection to Tung Chung, scheduled to debut by 2028.

Speaking at the Super Terminal Expo on Wednesday, AAHK Executive Director of commercial Cissy Chan Ching-sze said the project would cover 200 hectares of surrounding waters and include leisure and water-recreation facilities, as well as arts and cultural attractions.

A yacht bay with 500 berths is planned, with about half able to accommodate superyachts. Chan said AAHK also intends to develop sea-air sightseeing, allowing visitors to arrive by plane and continue their journeys by yacht to destinations around the world.

I Googled ‘sea-air sightseeing’ to find out more about this multi-modal form of leisure travel. It would appear that the phrase was invented by Hong Kong bureaucrats a few months ago. Jet into CLK on your private jet, take a shuttle bus to sunny exotic Tung Chung, then go somewhere else ‘around the world’ by yacht.

But wait! There’s more yachts. Also from the Standard…

The Festival of Connoisseurs debuted in Hong Kong on Wednesday at AsiaWorld-Expo, showcasing prominent brands across nine luxury lifestyle categories, including yachts, supercars, fine jewelry and timepieces, art, and premium travel.

…Airport Authority Hong Kong chief executive Vivian Cheung Kar-fay, also the chairman of AsiaWorld-Expo, noted that with 12,500 registered vessels in Hong Kong but only 4,000 available berths, there is significant demand for yachting facilities.

Are yacht berths going to be Hong Kong’s version of China’s over-invested solar panel manufacturing sector? It has that ‘Five-Year Plan’ decree-from-on-high feel about it. Would the private sector, left to its own devices, be doing this?

Is Trump on some sort of really effective psychotropic meds? He’s taken the mid-terms defeat on the chin – completely out of character for a narcissist. What happens when they wear off? And do they work for people with an obsessive fixation about yachts?

A Yuen Long district council member (and member of various United Front bodies) gets two and a half years in prison for sex with an underage girl…

Sei Chun-hing was sentenced at the District Court on Monday after his conviction in September. He was found guilty of having unlawful intercourse with a girl known to the court as X over a decade ago, but acquitted of indecent assault against the same person. 

X was 11 at the time of the alleged indecent offence, and 13 when the sexual intercourse occurred.

Handing down the sentence, Judge Stanley Chan said Sei showed no regret over his actions and noted that the defence did not acknowledge the trauma experienced by X, who was in a relationship with Sei at the time.

Compare with sentences handed out to: Jimmy Lai (20 years); Benny Tai, Gwyneth Ho, Long Hair, Joshua Wong, Claudia Mo et al (4-10 years); Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan (7 years) – for words, meetings and participation in primary elections. Joshua Wong will be sentenced tomorrow for ‘collusion with foreign forces’, which could keep him in prison for decades more.

In what sort of company is French soccer player Kylian Mbappé? A list of some 80 individuals and companies that have ‘insulted China’…

HKFP asks why the Northern Metropolis vision-plan switched from being a high-tech zone to a university hub. Simple answer: bureaucrats are desperate to identify new economic roles for Hong Kong, but need to find ones in which the city has a comparative advantage vis-a-vis Shenzhen, which the whole area adjoins. And they can’t.

Hong Kong can’t compete with Shenzhen’s far lower costs. Bureaucrats’ obsession with keeping the city’s land valuations high ensures that Shenzhen will be a much cheaper place to do most sorts of business. 

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s core differentiators are fading. Rule of law and the old ‘freewheeling’ press are being downplayed in favour of an emphasis on ‘national security’. An emphasis on ‘integration’ with the Mainland and promotion of a more national/Chinese/patriotic mindset are making the place feel less distinct, and some would say less international.

Hong Kong’s one killer app is a lack of capital controls, but even the financial services sector has steadily become more focused on the Mainland, which is now heading towards a slowing economy.

Since Shenzhen already has a large tech cluster, there is no point in trying to reproduce one on this side of the border. So fancy university parks are apparently the way to go. (As HKFP points out, Shenzhen has those as well.)

Another approach would be to devote all that space in the NT to decent quality but affordable housing and business space, and let entrepreneurs develop whatever businesses they think best without landlords killing them off after the first three years. But that’s presumably too horrifying for local officials to envisage – and perhaps not ‘Five-Year Plan’ enough.

The bureaucrats are similarly – and perhaps more embarrassingly – desperate when it comes to boosting tourist numbers.

The special Peak path lights themed display concept project has died, and the HK Tourism Board are promising to restore the natural-ish beauty they wrecked, to public outrage.

Things tourists like: street food (Hong Kong shuts down daipaidongs); authentic heritage (HK removes neon lights, fruit markets, etc); authentic experiences (HK promotes light shows and other contrived gimmicks); walkable urban environment (HK prefers devoting street-level space to Alphards); good value for money (HK prefers high returns for landlords).

Given that the city is already overloaded with visitors, perhaps we should be grateful that the Tourism Board continues its decades long authentic cultural heritage-tradition of being a joke.

The Diplomat looks at the powerlessness of Hong Kong citizens as the government decides how to respond to the Wang Fuk Court fire investigation…

Shortly after the fire, student Miles Kwan was detained by police after distributing material demanding an independent investigation and government accountability. His detention illustrated the risks surrounding collective mobilization over the disaster. Without meaningful electoral leverage and with constraints on public organizing, citizens have few effective means to challenge the political settlement announced by the administration. 

…In [Beijing’s] Liaison Office’s framing, a report exposing pervasive failures in government supervision became an occasion to celebrate the administration’s capacity for self-correction. The announced measures were presented as evidence of responsible leadership, while the public was encouraged to recognize the government’s efforts and turn its attention toward future development.

…In Hong Kong, the chief executive can decide which officials should resign, which should remain, and when the administration should move forward. The people who suffered the consequences of its failures have few options to demand a different outcome. That imbalance lies at the heart of Hong Kong’s accountability problem, and no amount of official contrition or administrative reform can resolve it on its own. 

But it is not a ‘problem’ – it’s by design in what is a Mainland-style system that does not accommodate any possible challenge to the executive authority. No representative government, no separation of powers/checks and balances, no independent inquiry.

Which leads us rather elegantly to independent bookstores. Lingua Sinica on Hong Kong’s latest closure…

Though the circumstances in both cases intimated pressure on national security grounds, Greenfield and Elm Books were not forthcoming about their reasons for shutting down. “The road ahead is shrouded in fog,” Elm Books said in its message to the public. “If fate allows, we will meet again.” 

Luck Win, the latest casualty, has been equally guarded.  

State-backed media were far less reticent, and their coverage spoke volumes about what booksellers would not say. A full-page undercover report in the Chinese government-backed Wen Wei Po (文匯報) on July 13 helps fill in the blanks: it alleged that Luck Win and Elm Books had stocked “independence books” (獨書) that disparaged the country, the Chinese Communist Party and the National Security Law.

And now Agape Garden bakery.

Anyone following the more cerebral parts of social media last week would have noticed a sudden upsurge in posts on Mao Zedong as a tyrant – the tens of millions of deaths he oversaw, the allegations about peasant girls, etc. This followed China’s reaction to a French soccer player’s mention of the Great Helmsman. From First Post…

The “crisis” began with peak internet absurdity. Football fans, poking fun at Mbappé’s massive influence at his clubs, routinely circulate memes portraying him jokingly as a ‘supreme leader’. Shown a viral Photoshopped image featuring his own face superimposed onto the body of Mao Zedong, Mbappé casually remarked, “I think he was a Chinese dictator,” and broke into laughter. 

If Beijing had ignored the remark, few would have known or cared. But instead, Chinese authorities orchestrated a frenzy of mass outrage, removing Mbappé’s face from ads and threatening to ban TV coverage of his games, encouraging citizens to denounce the guy. For ‘hurting the feelings’, etc.

This did not exactly make China look like a confident and contented country. Mbappé and his teams’ profuse apologies possibly make some nationalistic Chinese citizens feel good (though being behind the Great Firewall, they couldn’t know exactly what Mbappé said in the first place). But it also highlighted the illiberal and cantankerous side of the Chinese authorities to the international audience watching the whole thing going viral.

Then comes the counter-reaction, and even Twitter and YouTube users who mostly follow celebrity news suddenly find themselves getting content about the Great Leap Forward famine and the Cultural Revolution. For example, a short witty cartoon showing Mbappe in the Cultural Revolution. And here’s part 2, featuring Hello Kitty.

First Post concludes…

Nothing reinforces the authoritarian nature of a regime more convincingly than watching it purge a footballer and extract coerced apologies over a historical truism. In its determination to let the entire world know that it had suffered a grave ideological injustice and would impose costs proportionate to the “insult”, China triggered a global Streisand effect—transforming a fleeting joke into an international case study in thin-skinned authoritarianism.

As the Sharp Text blog puts it…

…the Party under Xi Jinping simply can’t get out of its own way. Ever. [S]tories like this one provide a much louder reminder to the world that China is still an often-paranoid and chronically authoritarian state, where companies and citizens can be mobilized on a whim if it serves the Party’s opaque aims. Facing down a trade war with Europe, they are seeking to humiliate a French national hero who doesn’t even know who Mao Zedong is. It’s so senseless and embarrassing, yet completely unsurprising. 

Lingua Sinica examines the origins of ‘hurting the feelings’ and asks why the authorities chose to make such a fuss over this particular particular episode…

One exasperated Weibo user put it bluntly: “Mbappe’s words seriously hurt me, but I don’t know what he said; I hate him, but I don’t know why. I don’t even care about football.” 

Someone (as Jacques Chirac once said) missed a good opportunity to remain silent.

The HK government releases the report on the Wang Fuk Court fire. Some quite interesting details about the way companies colluded in bidding. But of course everyone knew that was going on. Only after 163 people die do officials decide to take action. Bid-rigging might now become a crime.

HKFP stories here and here. Housing Secretary Winnie Ho, whose underlings called ahead to tell contractors they were coming for an inspection, has resigned. Is anyone going to prison?

The Too Simple substack looks at Western YouTubers and other influencers doing their thing in Xinjiang…

 One thing Randisi doesn’t mention is that this trip was organised and funded by the Communist Party of China. 

…Their tour is being run by the regional branch of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), aka the CPC Bureau responsible for “content management” and “censorship” of the internet. It is the architect behind China’s “Great Firewall”. Last month, a local CAC meeting, while discussing propaganda efforts, declared: “The internet should be the front line of ideological work.” 

The Diplomat on China’s economy…

China today has the lowest consumption rate of any major economy in the world – in fact, its consumption rate is lower than any major economy in the past 100 years. 

Consumption makes up just about 56 percent of China’s GDP. In most economies, it’s 70 percent or more. To put this in perspective, China’s consumption as a share of GDP is about 10 percentage points lower than Japan’s was in the 1990s, at the worst point in its economic stagnation. 

Why does low consumption matter? Because it’s a flashing warning sign that China’s economic model is fundamentally broken. That’s why GDP growth is coming to a screeching halt, dropping from highs of 10 percent or more in the early 2000s to under 5 percent today. It’s also why China’s debt is growing to alarming levels.

And this is not just a problem for China. Low consumption in China means its people aren’t buying all that much – but China can’t scale back production without mass layoffs. So what does China do with all the extra stuff? It exports more and more abroad, at lower and lower prices. 

It comes with a (rather AI-laden) video. A deeper treatment is in this interview with George Magnus, in which he discusses his book Peak China: The Battle for Global Economic Supremacy. He writes a very quick summary in the Guardian.

For map fans, an overlay of the Normandy D-Day landings on top of Eastern China and Taiwan.

HKFP reports that Legislative Council members are getting a pay hike. Not a big one, at 1.6%. But it brings their basic pay to HK$110,000 a month. (They also get various allowances, notably one that covers the cost of maintaining an office with several assistants.)

In 2021, Beijing overhauled the electoral system for the legislature, expanding it to 90 seats. Most traditional opposition figures remain in prison, have left politics, or have fled into self-imposed exile. 

Earlier in October, Rita Fan, the first president of Hong Kong’s legislature after the 1997 Handover, said on RTHK that it was costing too much to sustain 90 lawmakers in the Legislative Council, citing the opinions of “a friend.” 

Under the all-patriots system, key legislative roles – such as asking ministers awkward questions and threatening to withhold funding – are in effect no more. No-one has ever explained why more lawmakers were necessary when they all have essentially identical pro-government views.

Rita Fan has friends?

Also in HKFP – the government says two towers of roughly 45 and 55 floors on the Hung Hom waterfront will not block views, including of Lion Rock. But look at how many of Hong Kong’s tallest buildings are those right up close to the harbour. They pretty much make money by taking everyone else’s ridgeline/sea view and selling it to the highest bidder. Unless the Hung Hom structures are going to be invisible.

What do the rats think?

Reaching the parts other national security laws can’t reach: the government ‘embeds’ NatSec education in kindergartens…

The Secretary for Security, Mr Tang Ping-keung, and the Under Secretary for Education, Dr Sze Chun-fai, jointly officiated at the launch ceremony. Mr Tang shared the creative concept, saying that an illustration-driven book supplemented with an engaging storyline enables children to discover and learn the meaning of following rules and thinking critically, so that they can understand the importance of safeguarding national security from an early age…

The three-volume set of picture books is set against the backdrop of “Andy and Security Bear”, the national security comic series launched by the SB in mid-2024 that has been well received by the education sector and students. The set consists of three new stories accompanied by resources including themed children’s songs, enabling teachers to make learning enjoyable in kindergartens.

The SB also released “Singing Softly”, a children’s song launched alongside the first volume of the picture book. Kindergarten students attending the event performed it on the spot. Through movements, the students brought the lively and easy-to-understand lyrics to life and reinforced their understanding of the positive values in the story, including respecting others and safeguarding their home. 

Note that the Secretary for Security formerly known as Chris lacks his English name here. Is this just an RTHK translation thing, or is it going to become de rigueur for officials to drop the foreign influence?

Patrick Poon in Cha Journal compares three women to one another in less than 1,000 words…

Few would think to place the British writer Virginia Woolf, the Chinese writer Eileen Chang, and Chow Hang-tung, the Hong Kong barrister and Vice-Chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, side by side. Yet I believe the values each of them pursued throughout her life are ones they hold in common. 

In the Wire China Michael Kovrig reviews a Safeguard Defenders book on China’s ‘black jails’…

…new first-person accounts of both PRC and foreign citizens abducted by the Chinese Communist Party’s security apparatus under a sinister procedure it calls zhiding jusuo jianshi juzhu 指定居所监视居住 or zhiju 指居 for short. The official English translation is “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location” (RSDL), a bland bureaucratic mouthful that deliberately masks pre-arrest detention in a secret facility where your tormentors subject you to appalling abuse and your only right is to obey. 

Lingua Sinica piece on how the downfall of Victor Orban also means the downfall of Chinese state media influence in Hungary…

This kind of media cooperation is political, not commercial. It does not relate to the media market. It has a political reason and a political goal. It is a tool for diplomacy. The Chinese side itself stresses that this cooperation runs under the “personal care and guidance” of the leaders from both countries, which tells you how political this is. These deals are part of bilateral diplomacy — but it also means that they are not run professionally, because a European state broadcaster having to cooperate with Chinese state media is not really a normal, professional agreement. 

An interesting Twitter post analyzing People’s Daily reports of top Chinese leaders’ oration over the years. Nowadays, 60-80% of Xi Jinping’s speeches are described as ‘important’, while few other Politburo members’ are. Indeed, few others seem to make even unimportant speeches.

A Taipei Times op-ed looks at the use of ‘Formosa’ vs ‘Taiwan’ through the ages. (It mentions the name ‘Formosa’ entering Western headlines ‘after 1949’. Western news coverage of the Taiwanese revolt against the KMT/ROC’s occupation of the island earlier after WW2 referred to the ‘Formosan uprising’. A plug here for the 1948 book Formosa Calling by Allan J Shackleton.)

Out of action tomorrow, as I’m going to see a nice young lady on the 80-somethingth floor of IFC. She is my personal banking blah blah, and will offer me well-intentioned financial advice while I gently remind her that I’ve been investing since before she was born. When I last saw her she sat horrified as I explained why the Nvidia and other AI players were all propping up each other’s massive overvaluations and the whole bubble would burst at some point. The lure is that she will waive commissions on certain rather boring funds. Plus great coffee. And an incredible view.

The UK issues its latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong. 

The Hong Kong authorities seek to dismiss it as worthless and irrelevant, yet lavish a sizable press statement on it…

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) strongly condemns and must resolutely refute the untruthful remarks, slanders and smears against various aspects of the HKSAR in the so-called six-monthly report on Hong Kong: January to June 2026 of the United Kingdom (UK) today (October 23). 

…A spokesman for the HKSAR Government said, “…The general election for the eighth term LegCo was successfully held at the end of last year. Voters actively cast their votes, returning a new cohort of LegCo members who are patriotic and love Hong Kong, responsible, capable and committed to serving the community. This has once again exemplified the high-quality and healthy competition under the new electoral system, embodying broad representation and balanced participation. The improved LegCo has proven in practice that this is a democratic electoral system that suits HKSAR’s actual circumstances and needs.”

Many gigantic and medium-sized paragraphs follow. Stats show that the phrase ‘so-called’ appears 13 times.

Free! No extra charge! Another one from ‘a spokesperson for LegCo’…

A Diplomat piece on the reasons behind Beijing’s fears of gay rights activity…

…LGBTQ public life in Hong Kong is being narrowed through administrative and institutional means rather than formal criminal prohibition. Consensual same-sex conduct remains legal, and LGBTQ organizations continue to exist. But these groups find it harder and harder to organize publicly, retain venues, sustain institutions, and remain visible in civic life.

This is striking because Hong Kong once had one of the most visible LGBTQ communities in East Asia…

The same pattern is visible in mainland China…

…Foreign connections have become increasingly important to this repression. Chinese authorities often treat independent organizations with international ties as possible channels of foreign influence. LGBTQ groups are especially exposed because contemporary sexual minority advocacy is highly transnational, involving foreign NGOs, embassies, academic institutions, cultural organizations, and legal networks. This allows questions of private identity and social equality to be reframed as questions of sovereignty and political security. 

…China’s control increasingly travels through people, platforms, and language communities. Whether joining a cultural space in Paris, a platform in Taiwan, a Pride parade in Bangkok, or a community organization in North America, Chinese citizens and Chinese-language communities remain exposed to censorship, surveillance, or coercive pressure originating from inside China. 

Desmond Shum, who has some expertise in the preservation of family wealth, on Beijing’s recent tax crackdown…

The recent bloodbath in Hong Kong’s stock market has an all-too-familiar suspected culprit: the Chinese government.

Ninety days ago, Beijing announced a 20% tax on certain offshore trust income, potentially reaching back many years. With an October 22 declaration deadline, wealthy families facing unexpected tax bills have been scrambling to raise cash, selling shares, borrowing against holdings and dismantling offshore trusts, according to Reuters. I have little doubt this forced selling has contributed to the market rout.

…Over the past fourteen years, the Party has tightened its control over private enterprises, subordinated commercial interests to political priorities and eroded the predictability essential to preserving wealth across generations.

Xi did not invent this vulnerability. It is deeply embedded in the CCP’s history and political structure. The reform era merely encouraged entrepreneurs to believe that the rules had permanently changed.

The latest offshore trust tax crackdown is another reminder of how misplaced that confidence was.

He also addresses the issue here…

For China’s wealth owners, four measures matter most:

• The Supervision Law (2018; revised 2024) — transformed the risk to personal liberty.

• The Counter-Espionage Law (2023) — vastly expanded the boundaries of “national security.”

• The new offshore trust tax rules (July 2026) — fundamentally changed the calculation of wealth protection.

• The new Exit-Entry Regulations (August 2026) — strengthened the state’s control over mobility and the ability to leave. 

How do you be patriotic and boost the tourism sector at the same time? China Media Project adds ‘Red Tourism’ to its dictionary. While it has a clear ideological function, encouraging leisure travel to remote spots on the Long March route provides an economic boost to poorer regions…

“Red tourism” has helped cultivate and maintain this national [‘patriotic education’] vision as subsequent leaders have pushed forward economic development and modernization, while also bringing business and development to “old revolutionary areas,” many of which were rural and poor. Local governments have poured hundreds of millions of yuan into these projects, which involve not only the construction of museums, monuments, and heritage sites, but also the development of tourism infrastructure including roads, hotels, and ample public transportation. 

It’s a money-spinner! Why hasn’t Hong Kong thought of this? Stop chopping down trees to create more inane light shows – launch the new ‘National Security Tour’: visit the old HQ of the newspaper that was shuttered for collusion with foreign powers; walk along the same streets where the CIA paid a million ‘black hands’ to overthrow the motherland; enjoy an ice cream at the park where thousands of people tried to subvert state power every year; buy a T-shirt denouncing seditious incitement at the closed-down bookstore. As the article quotes People’s Daily… 

Red tourism is both a conceptual innovation and an industrial innovation. The development of red tourism will help explore a virtuous cycle in which, under the socialist market economy, social benefits and economic benefits are well integrated, spiritual wealth is transformed into social wealth. Together, they are of benefit to the society and the people.