All this, I mean. From Lam chun-tung at Initium, Hong Kong end-June 2022 in pictures. Special July 1 ’life imitating art’ – except cartoonist Zunzi failed to anticipate the weather. More anniversary art (not for the squeamish) here.
A rather damning graph from the FT showing how few young Hong Kong people identify as ‘Chinese’ rather than ‘Hongkonger’. The 18-29 cohort would have been replaced twice during the 20-year period, so over time it becomes a group purely born after 1997. And (if sampling is sound) more will have been Mainland-born or born to recent arrivals. Big turning point in 2005-10 was when Hong Kong started to be flooded with Mainland tourist-shoppers. Since that time, a ‘Chinese’ identity in Hong Kong has apparently become even less equated with anything cool, attractive or fun.
Another graph, from HKFP, showing how apartments of less than 40 sq m (430 sq ft) went from 5% of completions to over 40% after the handover.
Just a few of the elegies in the following links. Probably some paywalls…
The Economist on how China turned Hong Kong into a police state. It took time, and Beijing uses some of the same methods overseas…
In the more explicitly repressive context of Mr Xi’s rule, Hong Kong came to be seen ever less as an engine of growth and ever more as a site of subversion.
…When Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s wealthiest tycoon, called for restraint in 2019 from both the government and protesters, the party and its proxies labelled the 91-year-old billionaire the “king of cockroaches”. He got the message. From then on every Hong Kong tycoon voiced support for the government’s harsh response to the protesters. They all saw what happened to Jimmy Lai.
Video here with interviews. Outline here – ‘There is nowhere better to understand how the United Front really works than Hong Kong’.
The UK’s Daily Mail gives us the excitable tabloid version…
…just as there seems minimal chance of raising the huge [Jumbo floating restaurant] 3,000ft from its resting place on the seabed, few citizens cling to much hope of salvaging that spirit of dynamism, openness and optimism it represented and which made Hong Kong so special.
Best read this before clicking the next one. Regina Ip tells the Guardian how sorry she feels for pro-democracy politicians, sort of…
Ip said she felt sad that former legislators like Claudia Mo, Alvin Yeung and Ka-ki Kwok had been arrested and wished “they had not gone so far to break the law”.
“It must be terrible to be in jail, and … they were professionals,” she said, but accused them of trying to achieve “regime change”.
…Ip said she believed that if the opposition had won power, “they could lock me in jail”.
She really thinks she’s that important?
Vice on Beijing’s re-engineering of Hong Kong.
Market Place on the business and professional exodus from Hong Kong.
The FT looks at views of local loyalists, including Tsang Yok-sing…
Tsang, a soft-spoken former teacher who got on well with his pro-democracy opponents when he served in the territory’s legislature, said that “Beijing did not make its moves out of the blue”. …But when asked what he felt about seeing so many of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy figures in jail, he struggled to respond.
“How do you want me to answer your question? How do you want me to answer?” he said, before pausing to gather his thoughts. “Some of them, I think, committed serious mistakes and had to bear responsibility for their decisions. To be frank, though, we also did not see this coming.”
From the Tyee, a new generation of Hongkongers settles in Vancouver…
Her father was furious when he discovered the real reason for her departure. “I still remember the phone call,” said Mary. “He said, ‘You’re not my daughter anymore…’”.
HKFP counts 58 civil-society groups that have disbanded under the NatSec regime.
From China File, NatSec arrests in graphics.
Vag’s desperate grasping at relevance should (emphasis: should) be embarrassing even for her.
And I didn’t know big festivals were back in HK!? The last photo looks like “HK Twatfest ’22”. Either that or HKCCPSARG executives reenacting a Napoleonic era British Infantry Square.
I am impressed by the speed and efficiency of the removal of the flags and related bunting from private property. Unfortunately the stuff on public and mainland controlled property seems to be lingering.
Will the new governor now have the authority to order his ICAC file shredded?
For ten long years you would have thought that Ag and Fish sector had no representative in Legco, note the lack of enthusiasm in supporting real farmers and fishermen, indifference to the impact of climate change on the sectors, failure to support groups campaigning to preserve marine life, to save arable land from brownfield use, etc etc, but finally the man has finally made his mark.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hong-kong-lawmaker-who-met-chinas-xi-tests-positive-covid-2022-07-04/
There were rumours that he would run for a geo seat in the last real Legco election to free up the anointed A&F seat to another non achiever, some images of him ‘cleaning up’ urban alleyways were released, but his party probably realized that his track record was less than lustrous.
Hopefully the Minister of Silly Walks was also sworn in.
It’s fascinating how much analysis of “what happened” is going on without reaching the obvious conclusion that everyone should stop pretending that China is a civilised, modern country and treat it as South Africa was until it sorts itself out. Of course, in these capitalist times that will only happen once there’s no more money to be made.
“It’s fascinating how much analysis of “what happened” is going on without reaching the obvious conclusion that everyone should stop pretending that China is a civilised, modern country and treat it as South Africa was until it sorts itself out. Of course, in these capitalist times that will only happen once there’s no more money to be made.”
One megalomaniac, dictator run country at a time, please. Flustercuck du jour is Russia and we need to see through to Putin’s demise/death first. CCP just cynically and calculatingly backs him because a weak Russia = further enabling “China’s Rightful Greatness” denied by the West for so long.
very much agree with the Pope’s stance. I would add that China is rapidly going to become like fascist Italy between mid 30s to 1945, where an aging autocrat full of himself and surrounded by apologists, sycophants, true believers and plain jane conmen and exploiters, sent his country to a disastrous military and political disaster