AFP on the plight of housewives, a shopkeeper and a pastor charged with sedition in Hong Kong…
Prominent activists and journalists charged with sedition have put up high-profile legal defences, but most residents accused of the crime choose not to fight after they are denied bail, due to the perceived slim chance of success, former defendants and lawyers told AFP.
…Homemaker Chiu Mei-ying, 68, found herself in the crosshairs of authorities when she was charged last April with saying “seditious words”.
“All I did was utter one sentence,” she told AFP.
Three months earlier, Chiu and preacher Garry Pang had attended an activist’s conviction hearing and verbally criticised the magistrate judge.
The Guardian on Chinese officials who disappear ‘but later resurface subdued’, including Xi Jinping himself. (The latest scurrilous chatter about Qin Gang is that his TV anchor mistress – and mother of his child – was working for US or UK intelligence, which obviously can’t be true, right?).
The SCMP’s slightly amazing editorial take on the matter…
Minxin Pei Bloomberg op-ed on China’s faith in ‘old friends’ like Henry K in influencing the US…
China’s real problem, however, isn’t that Western leaders don’t properly understand its perspectives, and require the help of experienced China hands to appreciate them. It’s that China’s own policies have alienated and frightened the West, bringing ties to a historic low. Until leaders in Beijing adjust that confrontational stance, their carefully nurtured connections aren’t likely to lead anywhere.
FT op-ed on the Chinese securities regulators’ demand that IPO prospectuses not ‘disparage’ China’s political or legal systems, while the US counterpart is insisting that issuers describe risks in detail…
The real problem lies in how to navigate between the CSRC’s instructions and the SEC’s call for “more specific and prominent disclosure about material risks related to the role of the [Chinese] government . . . in the operations of China-based companies.”
…The stakes are high for global banks. A significant chunk of their Asian investment banking revenues comes from Chinese share offerings on overseas exchanges. That business has gone from bonanza in 2021 to basket case today, and the recent CSRC guidance has made life a lot harder.
Yes, communists sometimes bob up and sink again like turds at the sewage farm.
“People come. People go. Everything stays the same,” said Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel.
Under Communist totalitarianism people disappear and are erased, and memory of them corrected, repositioned, extinguished, vaporized:
“Three months later FFCC had suddenly been dissolved with no reasons given. One could assume that Withers and his associates were now in disgrace, but there had been no report of the matter in the Press or on the telescreen. That was to be expected, since it was unusual for political offenders to be put on trial or even publicly denounced. The great purges involving thousands of people, with public trials of traitors and thought-criminals who made abject confession of their crimes and were afterwards executed, were special show-pieces not occurring oftener than once in a couple of years. More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again. One never had the smallest clue as to what had happened to them. In some cases they might not even be dead. Perhaps thirty people personally known to Winston, not counting his parents, had disappeared at one time or another.”
Hurrah!
PS: China is losing at the Women’s World Cup too. Poor Zhong Guo. No one thinks you are very Zhong.
A bit of fuss about usage.
This is the headline of the Guardian article: “The growing list of Chinese elites who disappear but later resurface”. “Elites” is used to refer to individuals, though the word denotes a group. Later, in the article, the word is used in the usual sense.
This is a curious thing that happens to words used in China-related English. “Cadre” originally meant a group. Here in HK, “staff” and “triad” are used to refer to individuals, though both words originally denoted groups.
It’s Bo Xi-lai syndrome. Anyone who like Qin Gang goes a bit “native” is automatically suspect.
Sometimes people mistake me for a waxwork from Madame Tussaud but they rejected me over there because I looked too waxy and unreal. Upon my death my body will be donated to science. They will try to turn me into votive candles. Another great leap for Communist science under the core leadership of Gigi Ping.