The (paywalled) NYT visits the HK Museum of History’s National Security Exhibition…
The Hong Kong Museum of History was the place to go to understand the city’s transformation from fishing village to a glittering metropolis. It housed a life-size replica of a traditional fishing boat and a recreation of a 19th-century street lined with shops.
That exhibit, known as “The Hong Kong Story,” is being revamped. [A] splashy new permanent gallery in the museum … tells a different, more ominous story about the city — that Hong Kong is constantly at risk of being subverted by hostile foreign forces. The exhibit features displays about spies being everywhere and footage of antigovernment street protests in the city that were described as instigated by the West.
…In the government’s telling, the protests were not organic expressions of the residents’ democratic aspirations, as the city’s opposition activists have said, but part of an ongoing plot by Western forces to destabilize China.
The national security exhibit opens with a short video highlighting the unfair treaties of the 19th century that forced China to cede Hong Kong to the British, as well as the Japanese occupation of the city during World War II. Describing the protests in 2019, the video highlighted footage of protesters hurling Molotov cocktails. “Law and order vanished,” the narrator said. Then it credited new national security laws imposed by Beijing in the crackdown that followed, for turning the tide “from chaos to order.”
…It listed the casualties and damage purportedly inflicted by the protesters: 629 police officers injured and more than 5,000 Molotov cocktails thrown by violent protesters.
There was no mention of the tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbag rounds and pepper spray deployed by the police. The display did not mention the attack on protesters at a subway station by a mob armed with sticks and poles, and the police’s slow response to that violence.
…the … exhibit appeared to take a page out of the Chinese government’s playbook after the Chinese military’s brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement left widespread disillusionment.
…Some of the new displays at the national security exhibit closely resemble that which would be found in similarly themed museum exhibits on the mainland. A floor-to-ceiling Chinese flag hung on crimson walls. Next to it was a 13-foot long replica of an oil painting depicting Mao Zedong as he proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 at Tiananmen Square.
Link to the museum’s page here.
It seems the ‘hostile foreign forces’ theory is even less convincing in a museum setting than in officials’ speeches. If the West were genuinely trying to destabilize China, you would expect more serious evidence of external subversion than an outbreak of civil unrest easily explained by local factors. Beijing would suspend diplomatic ties with the foreign power(s) concerned. Both the Mainland and Hong Kong would restrict, if not expel, those countries’ businesses and residents. And policymakers would be asking big questions – for example, whether Hong Kong’s dollar peg represents a security risk.
But that’s not what we get. Instead, while some Hong Kong officials warn of national security threats lurking everywhere, others earnestly plead with overseas governments, businesses and media to improve ties, increase investment and show the city a bit of love. (Has anyone else noticed a flurry of tedious overseas influencer-bores doing ‘dimsum in Kowloon’ on YouTube in the last few months? I smell taxpayers’ money.)
It seems little in the HK History Museum exhibit is about actual national security – military and other strategic threats. Perhaps the greatest threat facing China today (give or take climate change) would be large-scale overseas trade protectionism, as Beijing attempts to further increase China’s share (already a third) of global manufacturing, thus endangering jobs not just in developed but also developing countries.
The government’s response…
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government on August 23 strongly disapproves and rejects the biased reporting of a New York Times article titled “A History Museum Shows How China Wants to Remake Hong Kong” which carries false and misleading narratives against the National Security Exhibition Gallery of the HKSAR.
….The spokesperson for the HKSAR Government stressed, “The article of the New York Times has completely ignored the large-scale and incessant riots that occurred in 2019 and the very fact of the failed attempt to stage the Hong Kong version of ‘colour-revolution’, which have continuously devastated society, livelihood and economy of Hong Kong. It has also deliberately neglected the fact that the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law has enabled the livelihood and economic activities of the Hong Kong community, and the business environment as well, to return to normalcy. The New York Times has demonstrated hypocrisy with double standards.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who never would have heard about the NYT article if not for the mouth-frothing response from the HK puppet government.
Was the author of the NY Times article booted out of the city, visa revoked for good and banished to report from the Nation of Taiwan (lucky for her, if so)?
Could the HKCCPSAR government elaborate on “The New York Times has demonstrated hypocrisy with double standards” please?
so embarrassing
“which have continuously devastated society, livelihood and economy of Hong Kong.”
But the Hang Seng Index indicates that, while the economy did well during the protest window 2014 – 2019, it tanked with the suppression of civil society. While Covid intervened, there has been no upsurge in the chart since restrictions were removed.
https://www.macrotrends.net/2594/hang-seng-composite-index-historical-chart-data
Jackie Chan is to carry the torch at the Paras. Keep the remote handy.
Shouldn’t it be ‘so called reporting’?
“Keir Starmer says he hopes for ‘honest’ talks with Xi Jinping”
As Junior Soprano said, “I want to fuck Angie Dickinson. Let’s see who gets lucky first.”
It’s a dangerous world and there is a child in Downing Street.
This is not going to end well.
“Has anyone else noticed a flurry of tedious overseas influencer-bores doing ‘dimsum in Kowloon’ on YouTube in the last few months? I smell taxpayers’ money.”
I was given a whiff of that money a couple of years ago. Having decamped to UK in 2019, sometime in 2021 I was contacted by phone and email by a social media agency in Malaysia acting on behalf of HKSARG.
They were offering up to HK$80 per post for positive social media commentary about Hong Kong, money credited to my UK bank account every week. They would alert me to negative posts on various platforms, and I would write something positive and glowing, take a screenshot and send it to them.
I politely declined. They were very pushy. Calling me over the next few days to ask me when they could expect to see me start posting.
One hopes those making the YouTube dim sum videos are being more handsomely rewarded.
I always thought Jacky Chan looked like a spastic.
“Perhaps the greatest threat facing China today (give or take climate change) would be large-scale overseas trade protectionism, as Beijing attempts to further increase China’s share (already a third) of global manufacturing, thus endangering jobs not just in developed but also developing countries.”
After 5000 years, one would’ve thought that perhaps somebody up there might recall when this last came to a head around two centuries ago… except now it’s with seemingly everyone, everywhere.
“Jackie Chan is to carry the torch at the Paras. Keep the remote handy.”
Seems only appropriate that a torch bearer should also have some sorta disability.
@MeKnow: re Jackie Chan….yeah, not all disabilities are visible or physical.
Really hoped you were going to address the innovative new “badminton as a an alternative to sex” educational ideas coming out of HK