Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Global Times on a recent academic gathering at which ‘experts’ said that China has sovereignty over the Batanes Islands – Philippine territory south of Taiwan.

A Taipei Times op-ed anticipates that Beijing might start to claim the islands…

The symposium offered the usual comical PRC faux history inventions. “Ju Hailong, Dean of the School of International Studies at Jinan University, noted that the [Batanes] were under the jurisdiction of Taiwan Prefecture during the Ming and Qing dynasties,” said a PRC media report…

…Many of us have worried, based on the PRC’s attempts to create a link between Taiwan’s Indigenous people and Fujian province, that eventually it would act as if all Austronesian peoples were “Chinese” in origin. Sure enough, one of the symposium “scholars” observed that the “Ivatan residents on the [Batanes] share linguistic and cultural ties with the Tao people of Lanyu [Orchid Island, off southeast Taiwan], with their cultural heritage originating from China.” Ironically, the Tao appear to have migrated up from the Philippines.

…Both the claim to the Batanes and the expanded claim to the Babuyan Islands show a key PRC behavior: claims to one territory, in this case Taiwan, lead inevitably to claims to nearby territories. Eventually the PRC will begin manufacturing claims to the Japanese islands to the east of Taiwan. This has also been the case with the PRC’s claims in the Himalayas. 

This follows similar Chinese academic discussion about Okinawa. From ASPI Strategist…

In this increasingly sophisticated narrative, the modern Japanese prefecture of Okinawa is frequently substituted with ‘Ryukyu’, the historical archipelago kingdom that included the present-day island of Okinawa. This terminology serves to decouple the islands’ identity from the Japanese state, which is cast in Chinese historical discourse as a perennial aggressor. By presenting the Ryukyus as a dual victim of Japanese militarism and US imperialism, these narratives align the Okinawan experience with China’s own century of humiliation. Ryukyu is thus depicted as a former Chinese tributary, forcibly absorbed by Japan, devastated in World War II, and later returned to Tokyo through a United States-led arrangement portrayed as illegitimate. 

The author of the latter article believes that these unofficial but high-profile hints of territorial claims are primarily a way to raise diplomatic pressure rather than lay the ground for possible future attempts at annexation. 

What would the UK’s Count Binface do if he were in Hong Kong? OK, he would possibly be in prison for subverting state power, inciting hatred of the government, or colluding with foreign powers (he’s from another planet, after all). But that aside, what would he make of my local streetside waste receptacle situation?

The pic shows my neighbourhood green bin on a good day: bits of crap balanced precariously on other bits of crap. Usually, it’s worse: boxes on either side overflow with similar pyramids of refuse. 

It wasn’t always like this. There used to be an orange bin across the road, which was emptied daily. Then the Orange Bin (‘Food and Environmental Hygiene’) Dept took it away, leaving the one in the sitting-out area (run by the Green Bin or ‘Leisure and Cultural Services’ Dept) to take the strain.

The Orange Bin Dept removed many bins around Hong Kong as part of preparations for their exciting Municipal Solid Waste Charging initiative, under which households and businesses would pay for special pre-paid garbage bags. After numerous false starts, and expenditure of several hundred million bucks, the idea was abandoned because highly paid officials couldn’t work out how to convince people to accept it. (Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have used such a system for years. It’s almost as if having democratically elected municipal governments leads to better public input into policy-making and gives leaders a mandate to get things done.)

The Orange Bin Dept never reinstalled the bins it removed, and the Green Bin Dept hasn’t increased the frequency of its receptacle-emptying – much to the delight of the local pigeons.

On a brighter note: Orange Bin Dept boss Tse Chin-wan recently won Sing Tao‘s Leader of the Year award, in the Community/Public Affairs/Environment & Conservation (of pigeons?) category.

HKFP op-ed on the case of Ami Chan – found with laser pointers and spray paint at the age of 15 in 2019, and arrested now, in 2026…

I express no opinion about Ms Chan’s guilt or innocence, on which the magistrate is now pondering. I do believe that having fallen so far below the standards expected of prosecutions in cases involving children, the Department of Justice should not have brought this case at all. 

The department’s guidelines for prosecutors (echoing numerous human rights instruments, including our local one) say that defendants are entitled to a trial within a reasonable time. What the department’s denizens seem to have trouble getting their heads round is that this may vary with the age of the accused.

Pro-Beijing forces established significant influence at grass-roots level in Macau back in the 1960s, so the city never had a civil society and political activism on Hong Kong’s scale. But there were some pan-dems and workers’ rights groups. No more. From AP via HKFP…

In July 2025, [teacher and former pro-democracy New Macau Association] lawmaker Au Kam San became the first person to be arrested under Macau’s national security law, with authorities alleging he had ties to foreign groups endangering China. 

There has since been a lack of public information regarding the case.

On Thursday, a Macau court said in a statement that a judge determined on July 2 that Au was the “principal offender” and had committed crimes of “subversion of state power”.

Au was also suspected of “establishing links with organisations, groups or individuals outside Macau… to commit acts endangering national security” and “breach of confidentiality”, the court said.

…The Chinese casino hub expanded the scope of national security laws in May 2023, which officials said was meant to step up prevention of foreign interference.

In March a new bill was passed to allow Macau’s judges to decide whether national security cases should be heard in camera and require defence lawyers to obtain clearances before appearing in such cases.

NPR’s All Things Considered – it’s still going – looks at Hong Kong’s ‘sound of silence’…

VINCENT: …On July 1, NPR saw plainclothes men following W from a gathering, across several stops on the subway and into a busy shopping district where small groups of activists gathered to quietly mark the anniversary of the handover. W says on days like this, she feels she’s under surveillance. Hong Kong police told NPR that they take action in accordance with the law and made appropriate deployments due to the threat of public safety, public order and national security.

Do you know where the red lines are?

W: I don’t know. Yeah, because some people are still saying things that’s against the government on Facebook, but they’re – nothing happened to them. But some only have less than 100 followers in Facebook, and they got jailed. No, I don’t know the red line.

…VINCENT: Across town, we meet C. He is retired but also a longtime activist. Like W, he asks not to be named for fear of reprisal.

C: It’s not just a law. It’s like a – the weapon. They weaponized it. I think it’s more like to clamp down the political opponents. They tried to erase – not only rewrite, erase the history like nothing happened before.

Still – Hong Kong consolidates its role as Asia’s independent-bookstore-closure hub…

Elmbook, an independent bookshop that opened in 1997, has announced it will shutter its physical store in Mong Kok after being banned from the Hong Kong Book Fair. 

…The announcement came a day after local media reported that Elmbook and another independent bookstore, Luck Win Bookshop, were banned from participating in the Hong Kong Book Fair, which is scheduled to run from July 15 to 21.

InMedia reported that the two bookstores had imported many books from Taiwan for the book fair, but they were suddenly notified of the ban in late June.

RTHK is producing a new show in collaboration with Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po. A sample…

Chief Executive John Lee has said Hong Kong role [sic] in the nation’s 15th Five-Year Plan has been “upgraded” – in what he says is an encouraging development that demonstrates the country’s recognition of the SAR’s potential.

While the previous Five-Year Plan had directed Hong Kong to better integrate into the country’s overall development, the latest development blueprint adopted in March 2026 says the SAR should also “serve” national development and gives explicit support for the territory to expedite the development of the Northern Metropolis.

In an interview for a new RTHK TV programme produced jointly with the Ta Kung Wen Wei Media Group, Lee said this demonstrates the nation’s affirmation of Hong Kong’s contributions.

“This is definitely a positive change, and I find it very encouraging,” Lee told Vision 15: Hong Kong’s Chapter. 

Take a quick look at the composition of the pic. Everything in it is bland, save for one (and it is just one) item, which happens to occupy the central position. Someone is taking this quite seriously.

Will people pay more attention to the Election Committee subsector ordinary elections on November 22? HKFP reports the exercise will cost HK$260 million. Last time, in 2021, just under 4,400 people voted for ‘subsector’ representatives who form part of the Election Committee, which ‘elects’ the Chief Executive – from a field of one. 

The Standard adds…

The Electoral Affairs Office is studying arrangements for polling stations, including setting up a dedicated station for those remanded or detained by law enforcement agencies other than the Correctional Services Department. Dedicated stations may also be set up inside correctional institutions for inmates and remand prisoners, with voting hours from 9am to 4pm.

And in case you’re worried that the system might be overloaded…

The electronic poll register system will be enhanced with a “three-level confirmation” mechanism, with reviews by core system development and technical advisory committees, as well as independent load and stress testing by a third-party contractor.

After being imprisoned for participating in the pan-dems’ 2020 primary elections, Joshua Wong now faces a second NatSec conviction for ‘collusion with foreign powers’…

He is accused of conspiring with self-exiled activist Nathan Law and “other persons unknown” between July 1 and November 23, 2020, to request foreign countries, organisations, or individuals based overseas to impose sanctions, blockades or engage in other hostile activities against Hong Kong or China.

As with Jimmy Lai or Long Hair, the authorities no doubt fear that the high-profile Wong would be a problem outside prison.

A nightmarish experience several decades ago involved waking up around 5.30am. I sensed a malodorous presence in my slum-apartment. I went to take a pee, and found the bathroom was ankle deep in yellowish-brown lumpy water. At this very moment, an early riser on the floor above pulled their flush, and my toilet welled up, spewing more stuff onto the floor. The faster I tried pulverizing and sweeping the putrid slime-liquid down the drain with a broom, the faster the toilet overflowed with yet another upswell of…

You get the picture. A few hours later, a slightly-amused old plumber had turned up. After taking in the scene, he had gone down into the alleyway beside the building to poke hooks and rods up a drainpipe. After 10 minutes he pulled out a foot-long – and obviously dead – rat, followed by the rest of the building’s accumulated sewage.

So I am not a huge fan of our sleeky rodent friends.  HKFP reports that rats caught by a government contractor avoid their prescribed fate (instant drowning in water and bleach), but are restricted to apples and sweet potato. Wait for the twist in the last sentence…

Hong Kong authorities have suspended a rodent control contractor after workers were found to be keeping captured rats overnight instead of sending them to be disposed of. 

…The contractor did not properly store rat cages and failed to “humanely” dispose of the rats on the same day they were captured. 

…The suspension came after local media outlet HK01 reported that a rodent control contractor operating in Kwai Chung had stored rat cages on a slope near Shek Lei Adventure Playground overnight and fed the captured rodents with sliced apples and sweet potato.

A site supervisor told the media outlet that workers sometimes “forgot” to take the captured rodents to designated waste collection points, where the rats were to be drowned in bleach and water. The supervisor said they were not raising the captured animals.

I sold the apartment in 2017. The whole surrounding site will soon be reborn as a Henderson Land ‘visionary residential condominium development redefining sustainable urban living in Upper Central … harmonizing environmental performance with architectural elegance’. Purchasers should be aware: the marble and gold bathrooms will be haunted by a sodden, foul-smelling, four-footed, furry ghost.

An RTHK story for those nostalgic for the old Hong Kong…

Police on Monday said they have arrested 125 people over suspicions that a triad syndicate used intimidation, arson, criminal damage and other violent means to corner the lunch box business at building sites.

The Organised Crime and Triad Bureau said a recent surge in residential projects in East Kowloon created a sharp rise in demand for takeaway meals among construction workers and it is thought that a triad group decided it wanted to seize control of the market.

…Acting Senior Superintendent Au Yeung Tak said a triad group is also suspected of threatening legitimate meal box suppliers using “methods such as extortion, arson, criminal damage and other illegal violent means”.

…The bureau said it arrested 48 men and 77 women, aged between 22 and 81, and seized assets worth HK$4 million, including luxury watches, delivery trucks and gambling paraphernalia. 

The operation reportedly brought in nearly HK$1 million a month. Which, divided by 125 people equals HK$8,000 each – maybe half of which was actual profit. No answer to the really important question: what the food was like?

More in keeping with the times – HKFP reports…

Ami Chan appeared at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts on Monday for the second day of her trial in relation to the protests and unrest in 2019. 

Chan, who was arrested in 2019 but refused bail, left for Australia in 2021. She was charged when she returned to Hong Kong four months ago.

The defendant was 15 when she was arrested. She was 21 when she was charged in March this year

…According to the prosecution, she was carrying two laser pointers and two cans of spray paint when police arrested her on September 8, 2019, in Fortress Hill.

Magistrate Wong pointed out that at the time, the nearest place where protesters clashed with police was Causeway Bay.

“That’s some distance away,” he said.

Focus Taiwan on an exhibition of protest-era T-shirts – many of which could possibly get you arrested in Hong Kong today…

T-shirts worn in past democratic movements and public events in Hong Kong reflect the city’s evolving public culture and social history, the head of an academic association said at an exhibition highlighting Hong Kong T-shirts in Taipei on Sunday.

Chan Kin-man (陳健民), president of the Taiwan Society for Hong Kong Studies (TSHKS), said organizers of public events, marches, rallies and democratic movements made T-shirts of different colors, slogans and designs to express their messages, making them a distinctive feature of the city’s public culture.

Most of the T-shirts on display at the exhibition are black, though some are white or brightly colored, reflecting the distinct characteristics of the various public issues and events they represent.

Ryan Ho Kilpatrick on ‘Sinicization’, with reference to Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt and Hong Kong…

…to treat Sinicization, in Communist Party parlance, as synonymous with Hanification, is to miss out on a crucial point. That is that, according to influential Party theorists and advisers, even ethnic Han people must be “Sinicized” as well — because it denotes not only the forceful spread of an ethnic identity but a political one. 

…Professor Jiang Shigong … notes that the Hong Kong cultural elites he earlier chided as too Westernized to grasp the profundity of Xi Jinping’s speeches had, in fact, retained Confucian rites, feudal hierarchies, and a classical language largely lost on the mainland. Paradoxically, they are both too Western and too Chinese. And it is actually the latter — an enduring sense of attachment to “cultural China” but not “political China” — that is even more dangerous to the Communist Party, for it represents what Jiang refers to as the ceding of “cultural leadership”…

Jiang worked for the Liaison Office for a while, and has written extensively on Hong Kong.  Article includes a link to his essays, and a pic of one of his works seen at Hunter Bookstore.

From Joel Chan…

Latest data as of 31 Mar 2026 shows there were a record 4,798 prisoners on remand (presumed innocent) in Hong Kong jails, which is a record 43.24% of the total prison population (of 11,096).

By Bangkok officials, at least.

Thailand has 463 times the land area of Hong Kong, and a population nearly 10 times bigger – the kingdom has 363 people per square mile, versus Hong Kong’s 18,200. The kingdom’s nominal per capita GDP is a seventh of Hong Kong’s. Last year, Thailand had around 33 million tourist arrivals last year, while Hong Kong had nearly 50 million. 

Which of the two places wants to boost tourist arrivals, and which wants to curb the numbers?

Bloomberg (paywalled) reports…

The Southeast Asian nation, famed for its beaches and city nightlife, is only targeting about 33 million foreign visitors this year, well below the nearly 40 million who arrived in 2019.  

…“We’re not too worried about the number of tourists because we want to generate more revenue from each visitor,” [Thai tourism official] Nithee said. “We focus on quality markets.” 

We leave the riffraff to Hong Kong.

…The agency is targeting travelers drawn by medical care, wellness retreats, concerts, festivals, golf, marathons and other sporting events because these visitors tend to stay longer and spend more.

The agency’s website also leans heavily into the luxury and wellness angle…

…But with tourism accounting for about one-fifth of Thailand’s economy, the ecosystem of hotels, restaurants, food markets, transport operators, dive shops and tour companies which has sprung up around that depends on large volumes of visitors.

Thailand has the space – and the low-paid workforce – to accommodate more low-end tourists. But they think they can and should do better than that.

Some weekend reading…

From Postcolonial Politics, a short (by which the authors mean ‘long’) article on how Hong Kong has never decolonized.  The analysis has to produce results that support an ideology – so partly interesting, partly a bit loopy…

After the failure of the “Umbrella Movement” in 2014, localist and “anti-mainland” sentiment grew further and faster, pushing more young people to declare themselves “localists” in order to counter the increasing influence of the mainland Chinese government, and a new form of colonialism.  …demonstrators claimed the right of Hong Kong people to elect their own government and employed the argument of the specificity of Hong Kong’s socio-cultural identity. But where does this specificity come from? 

Wishing to avoid having a population that was either pro-CCP or pro-KMT, and unable or unwilling to Anglicize floods of new arrivals, the 1960s colonial government cunningly engaged in…

…the construction of a Hong Kong identity, based on an American and European-style consumer society. The worker, the producer must become the consumer. The political and social changes of the 1960s and 1970s therefore closely resembled the transformation of everyday life, especially in the sphere of leisure, which took place in Britain and Western Europe in the late 1950s and 1960s. It was above all the privatization of daily life, the withdrawal into the home and the family facilitated by the miniaturization of the media for the consumption of cultural products (transistors, inexpensive televisions, and later the audio cassette), which were significant for the construction of this new identity. Such privatization implied the fragmentation of collective life, especially with regard to workers and their unionization. 

It was nothing compared with what smartphones were to do. 

The authors are essentially seeing the 1967-97 development of a Hong Kong identity as a contrived plan to maintain British rule. Beijing officials would of course heartily agree. Certainly, administrations during that era laid on the ‘community’ stuff with gusto. But it was likely as much to do with keeping up with changing public attitudes as managing them. Hong Kong during that period was pretty much the freest society in Asia, and the local population had the opportunity and means to carve their own identity – and did. Leftists often find it hard to imagine that non-Westerners have their own minds. But they sort of anticipate this criticism…

In the construction of the Hong Kong identity, the worst aspect was the institutional denial of the agency of the Hong Kong people by the colonial authorities. In the twenty-first century, historical reality has constituted many parts of Asia as constituents of modernity and not merely its exploited objects. It is a modernity that bears the marks of colonialism, is full of contradictions, unfinished processes, turmoil and hybridity. But is it really any different from the rest of the modern world where women and the working classes constitute the domestic colonized? In Asia, these contradictions and consequences of capitalist development have simply been exacerbated causing a concomitant amplification of the human suffering and dilemmas that go hand in hand with urban capitalist industrialization in general.

Entertaining if you have nothing important to do.

War on the Rocks looks at the challenges of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan…

Three key missions at the heart of any cross-strait campaign have never been successfully executed under modern threat conditions: an amphibious landing against a credible coastal anti-ship missile threat, a large-scale airborne drop against modern air defenses, and a large, opposed air assault at extended range. In other words, the People’s Liberation Army would have to make history three times in the same campaign.  

…The familiar point is that invasion would be difficult. The sharper point is that Taiwan would not need to defeat the invasion force outright. It would only need enough surviving capability to disrupt the sequence. In a campaign built around tight timing and limited lift, the threshold for disruption is far lower than the threshold for destruction. China would have to move, land, reinforce, and sustain exposed forces under fire. Taiwan would only have to break that sequence.

Lift makes the problem more concrete: China would need to deploy sufficient combat power ashore in the opening hours to prevent the beachhead’s isolation before follow-on forces arrive. That makes amphibious lift central to the campaign. If China cannot meet that threshold in the opening waves, it must either accept a dangerously thin landing force or compensate with airborne and air assault operations. Those workarounds create the second and third Nevers.

Essentially, you can’t launch an invasion without large, slow ships and planes full of troops and equipment moving right up to the defenders. Unlike in the past, defenders today have numerous smaller and faster missiles and drones to mess things up.

The SCMP interviews Hongkongers spending the holiday across the border…

…[Edward Wong said] that Hong Kong eateries, which often required table sharing and imposed dining time limits, were less competitive than their mainland counterparts.

“Restaurants on the mainland are more spacious and offer better service,” he said.

Simon Chiu, a 66-year-old retiree, headed to Shantou in Guangdong with his wife to join a group of friends for a short getaway.

…Chiu said Hong Kong’s dining scene lacked fresh ideas and creativity while the mainland offered better value for money.

“Most importantly, many of our friends have headed north during the holidays, so we would be the only ones staying behind if we remained in the city,” he said.

Maggie Tsang, 42 … set aside around HK$1,000 (US$127.50) for food and children’s game parades, ball pits and family facilities at shopping centres in Futian district.

She said playgrounds and child facilities on the mainland cost about half as much as those in Hong Kong.

“It is also much more affordable as we are travelling with another family, splitting all the bills with us,” Tsang said.

Raymond Yeung, a 48‑year‑old technician … said … Shenzhen offered more options for family activities.

“You have more space in Shenzhen to play, and there’s more greenery too,” he said.

Why is the overcrowded and overpriced side of the border the one trying desperately to boost its tourism industry?

From the Standard – NatSec police arrest Hunter Bookstore owner Leticia Wong and her husband…

…for allegedly distributing seditious materials and utilizing a youth exhibition on student suicides to brainwash children with anti-government hatred, all while facing accusations of laundering massive amounts of overseas funding from anti-China organizations.

[They] … were recently arrested by officers from the Police National Security Department on suspicion of “doing an act or acts with seditious intention.” 

Wong is also implicated in an additional money laundering charge for allegedly receiving multiple suspicious payments amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars from overseas anti-China organizations. 

According to informed sources, in addition to selling and displaying publications with seditious intentions, the involved bookstore frequently utilized seminars and sharing sessions targeted at teenagers and students to instill anti-government ideologies. 

Recently, the bookstore held an exhibition regarding the “issue of student suicide,” but the exhibits contained a massive amount of content intended to disparage the central and Hong Kong governments, instilling a psychology of hatred in young children. 

Human Rights Watch marks six years of NatSec in Hong Kong…

The Chinese Communist Party and state have comprehensively reengineered Hong Kong’s foundation of governance, reshaping its leadership, personnel, institutions, and ideology. The authorities no longer present national security as an exceptional response to the 2019 protests, but as a standing principle of administration. They have enforced citywide compliance by punishing increasingly minor acts and targeting ordinary people for peaceful expressions. 

…The government cites national security to justify censoring expression across the arts, film, and publishing. Even restaurant licenses now include national security clauses. 

…The draconian national security regime has been used by the government to stamp out dissent and act with impunity, with far‑reaching consequences. The deadly Tai Po fire in November 2025 is an example of this new approach. Despite ample evidence pointing to government negligence, no officials have apologized or shown any indication of accepting accountability. Instead, the authorities silenced critics on social media and arrested a student and a YouTuber for “sedition” after they spoke out. The government also barred victims from displaying banners on their homes and journalists from accompanying survivors as they returned to their apartments to retrieve their belongings. 

Benedict Rogers in Union of Catholic Asian News…

Almost three decades on, those promises lie in tatters, those treaty obligations and constitutional protections shredded.

Over the past decade, and particularly the past six years since the National Security Law was imposed, most of Hong Kong’s basic freedoms — of expression, association, and assembly, along with media freedom — have been dismantled, and other freedoms — of religion and academic thought — increasingly undermined.

Hundreds of political prisoners remain in jail, including the media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai, serving a 20-year sentence, barrister Chow Hang-tung, and trade unionist Lee Cheuk-yan. Independent newspapers have been forced to close, civil society has been shut down, pro-democracy political parties have ceased activities, and the legislature has been transformed from a vibrant multi-party quasi-democratic entity to a puppet rubber-stamp body of pro-Beijing goons handpicked by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)

Hong Kong has been transformed from one of Asia’s freest and most open cities into one of its most repressive police states. The only features that mark it out from mainland China are that it retains its own currency, and the internet is still more freely accessible. The ‘Great Firewall’ of China has not yet engulfed Hong Kong, although what you post or share or even ‘like’ on social media can get you arrested and some websites, such as that of Hong Kong Watch, which I co-founded almost a decade ago, are blocked.

HKFP reports the closure of Undergrad, the Hong Kong U student paper founded in 1952…

…after failing to recruit enough members for its editorial board … 

In a statement, the 2025 editorial board attributes the move to ‘the natural ebb and flow of history’ – a nice touch of irony, perhaps.

HKFP points out that in recent years…

At least six universities, including HKU, have seen their student unions disbanded, evicted, or stripped of institutional ties. 

How many independent student unions or publications still exist in Hong Kong?

In the Standard…

An off-duty police officer attached to the National Security Department admitted on Monday (Jun 29) to secretly filming beneath a woman’s skirt at an MTR station and attempting to seize a colleague’s loaded service revolver.

Ko Chun-chung, 39, pleaded guilty at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, sitting as a District Court, to one count of unlawful recording or observing of intimate parts and one count of attempting to possess a firearm without a license.