Best skip the next four years

Would love to be able to fast-forward four years. Let’s imagine it’s 2028… 

Suppose Donald Trump was totally serious about tax cuts for business and the rich, big tariffs on imports, ordering the Fed to cut interest rates, and mass-deportations of low-paid workers. What happened to that recipe for inflation? And how much has the whole planet retreated into protectionism? 

Has Putin grabbed the Baltics and half of Poland? Or did China toss him out while reclaiming Siberia for the motherland?

And what have the creepy weirdos Trump appointed to his cabinet been up to? Is pasteurized milk still legal? Have they hanged Hillary yet? 

And is Trump still even alive? He was looking increasingly doddery throughout 2024. Has a heart attack carried him away? So JD Vance is president now, rolling out some South African tech billionaire’s eugenics scheme.

As for Hong Kong – how much of an economic decline has the city suffered after the US shut its doors to China’s manufactured goods? One thing we can be pretty sure won’t change is the relentless focus on National Security. 

Which brings us back to 2024. 

The government announces NatSec guidelines for civil servants, though no-one is allowed to know what is in them… 

…“It must be confidential. If others know about how we remind our colleagues [to safeguard national security], those endangering national security will try to escape from [being caught],” [Security Secretary Chris] Tang said…

The security chief said authorities had noticed that some civil servants were unsure how to safeguard national security in their daily endeavours, and therefore guidelines were needed to illustrate practises they could put into place.

“Another thing is to change the mentality and mindset of our colleagues, to embed the concept of national security into their brains,” Tang said.

There are some 170,000 civil servants. Making sure none of them leak the internat NatSec guidelines will be a good test of how well you embed things into their brains.

And Beijing’s newspapers criticize a film director for suggesting film directors and the city as a whole have less freedom…

In an editorial published on Monday, Chinese state-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao said [Johnnie] To was being “unfair” to local filmmakers by [simplifying] the predicament of Hong Kong’s film industry as merely a political matter and saying the city had “no soul.”

…To’s interview garnered more than 820,000 views on YouTube in less than four days, with some viewers expressing respect for the director and praising him for “speaking the truth.” But his remarks drew criticism from pro-Beijing media, with Ta Kung Pao’s editorial urging To not to “politicise” the film sector.