Just in case you needed reminding that Beijing’s Liaison Office is now running Hong Kong, its boss Zhang Xiaoming delivers a Policy Address and Update. He describes recent subversion of the city’s legal principles as ‘rule of law’ and the overturning of democratic election results as ‘a heavy blow against independence’. He also declares himself satisfied that the local masses now better understand ‘One Country Two Systems’, and they think the stationing of Mainland cops at the new West Kowloon High-Speed Rail Station is just fine and dandy too.
Zhang is now in effect our Party Secretary, representing the higher authority and watching over the local administrative appointees in China’s ‘church and state’ system. We can be pretty sure that he and his malevolent sidekicks are behind the continued hounding of evil counter-revolutionary elements, such as the attempt to bankrupt disqualified lawmakers a la Singapore. It is a Rectification Struggle no-brainer – banish the dissidents from public office, deprive their radical groups of fat Legislative Council allowances, and scare the monkeys.
This also goes for the even more questionable/intriguing/harebrained effort to jail Joshua Wong et al for the Great 2014 Storming of Civic Square and Triggering of Umbrella Mayhem.
To Communist Party Commissar Zhang, hurling the deviant foreign-influenced enemy and dissident into a dungeon is a matter of patriotic duty, to defend the Glorious Motherland from hostile forces. And a particular type of grumpy loser – certain newspaper columnists, for example –will get a kick out of seeing the annoying little twerps put behind bars. But for local officials like Chief Executive Carrie Lam, wringing their hands and hoping to create unity and harmony, this could be at least a minor nightmare.
Leave aside the local impact. To some influential audiences overseas, Joshua Wong is famous – probably the only Hongkonger they’ve ever heard of (give or take an aging uncool actor). He is the city’s mop-topped teen heartthrob, geeky rebel and fighter for freedom and justice, covered by trendy journalists and even featured in a documentary film for demanding democracy.
The courts hearing this case are, if Zhang is correct, now just tools of the executive. So are Beijing’s ogres and their local minions really dumb enough to turn an icon of Hong Kong soft power into a prisoner of conscience?
“are Beijing’s ogres … and dumb enough to turn an icon of Hong Kong soft power into a prisoner of conscience?”
You bet they are.
Another masturbatory petulant storm cloud of hate from you directed towards nonentities.
Big Capital and a few million brainwashed wannabe capitalists run Hong Kong.
The CCP is just a slight adjunct on that.
Wake up and smell the US dollars!
Pip, pip!
“give or take”
Yes, totally uncool these days …
HK private clubs used to be run like this
How much longer can you chaps put up with all this shit?
In my opinion, it’s high time everyone who can jumped into a lifeboat and paddled like billy-o. I mean, you wouldn’t want to get pulled in by the suction when the RMS Hong Kong finally sinks beneath the waves, would you?
On the other hand, high salaries, a taste for martyrdom, or just plain inertia might just keep you clinging to the wreckage.
Beats me.
@Red Dragon – or family connections – elderly parents can’t just be shoved into a lifeboat kicking and screaming.
Then there’s all the shit everywhere else… Trump, Brexit, etc. – where you gonna go?
Are Baron Wilson and Red Dragon the same person, like a schizoid playing games? Similar tone and meter.
Can’t have a prisoner of conscience without an ogre on the other side of the coin.
In other random thoughts: Josh Wong as a mop-topped teen heartthrob, geeky rebel. Never considered it before, but in another time and place he could have been a member of the Ramones.
Re the Kim solution, of course all men think of is nukes and blowing stuff up.
A far more expeditious solution would be to send over half a dozen jumbos packed with runny French cheese, calorific chocs and litres of very bubbly champers.
Kim and his cohorts would gorge themselves and implode.
But of course that would not entail splurging billions on munitions and all that kind of men’s stuff so, like so many simple and effective measures, will not be considered.
Kim and his entourage would self immolate on the contents.
Smart de Vice, let me put you right.
I am not George Adams, and George Adams is not me.
Indeed, if you read back through the comments section of this blog, you will see that, over many years, I have never failed to express my utter contempt for the soi-disant “satirist” of Stanley. Like almost everyone else in here, l rejoice in his recent silence.
Any similarity between my tone and meter and those of that egregious buffoon is entirely unintentional. I shall obviously have to work harder in future to ensure that no such confusion arises again.
It really is very decent of you to bring this matter to my attention, and I thank you for having done so.