HK retail sales test new, low normal

Hong Kong retail sales down 7.3% in November year-on-year, and 8.3% by volume/inflation-adjusted. Big falls in cars, electronics, Chinese medicine, furniture and many other consumer items, except supermarket goods. In volume terms, sales are around 30% lower than in 2015-19. 

With China’s economy doing badly and tourists not spending like they used to, Hong Kong chose a bad time to lose several hundred thousand middle-class residents. I would like to help – but I’ll be in Taiwan for the coming week.

Some other things…

Gwulo – of the superb Hong Kong history website of the same name – gets a British Empire (that’s what it’s called) Medal in the UK’s New Year Honours. I don’t think he has been awarded so much as a Bronze Bauhinia Thing in the city itself. 

ChineseCiv Substack review of a contemporary political philosopher/polemicist Zhao Tingyang’s book Redefining a Philosophy of World Government, which proposes a Chinese-influenced system of world government system…

Most of Zhao’s arguments are founded on what can only be described as extreme ethnic bias. His historical claims about Western civilization are almost all negative while his claims about Chinese civilization are bizarrely optimistic. His definition of “China” is based on three “consensuses” about Chinese history, but none of them are accepted by mainstream international scholars outside the PRC. The oft repeated and increasingly ridiculous claim that China is the only civilization that is “uninterrupted” begins his list of three fake consensuses. He claims many times, against even the most cursory reading of Chinese history, that the current extensive land area of the PRC was slowly collected in a completely peaceful way and never through imperialism, war, or genocide. Is there a single international historian who would agree with this? So much of his book is founded on these myths. In one section, he spends numerous pages discussing the imaginary battles of an ancient deity as if these events were actual history that provided proof for his historical interpretations.

…The problem with Zhao’s thinking, and one that has increasingly infected PRC society over the last few years, is that China is now so isolated that it no longer knows how isolated it is. 

… it’s clear by Zhao’s shrill angry denunciations of Christianity and the West that he suspects, on some level, that the Christian church and America have already achieved a more substantial world system than anything China has ever built or is likely to build in the foreseeable future.

CNN investigation of China’s expansion of anti-corruption detention facilities…

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has launched a sweeping campaign against graft and disloyalty, taking down corrupt officials as well as political rivals at an unprecedented speed and scale as he consolidated control over the party and the military.

Now well into his third term, the supreme leader has turned his relentless campaign into a permanent and institutionalized feature of his open-ended rule.

And increasingly, some of the most fearsome tools he has wielded to keep officials in line are being used against a much broader section of society, from private entrepreneurs to school and hospital administrators – regardless of whether they are members of the 99-million-strong party.

The expanded [extra-judicial] detention regime, named “liuzhi,” or “retention in custody,” comes with facilities with padded surfaces and round-the-clock guards in every cell, where detainees can be held for up to six months without ever seeing a lawyer or family members.

…The lawyer, who requested anonymity due to fears of retribution from the government, said many of their clients had detailed abuse, threats and forced confessions while in liuzhi custody.

“Most of them would succumb to the pressure and agony. Those who resisted until the end were a tiny minority,” the lawyer said.

…High-profile liuzhi detainees include Bao Fan, a billionaire investment banker, and Li Tie, a former English Premier League soccer star and coach of China’s national men’s team. (Li was sentenced to 20 years in prison for corruption this month.) At least 127 senior executives of publicly listed firms – many of them private businesses – have been taken into liuzhi custody, with three quarters of detentions taking place in the past two years alone, according to company announcements.

The New Year means a ton of novels, art, film, music and other things coming out of copyright. This year (depending on jurisdiction): Popeye, Tintin and works by Frieda Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, Charles Ives, Hemingway, Duke Ellington, and others.