Some accumulated things

None of them about Speed or Coldplay… 

SCMP op-ed by a couple of academic/think-tank types suggests that the government sell public housing units at (pluck random number out of thin air) 25% below their market value in order to tackle the budget deficit…

A potential answer [to the budget problem] lies in one of Hong Kong’s underutilised assets: its 850,000 public rental units, which house about a third of its population. Selling these units to tenants could generate transformative revenue. Even at a 25 per cent discount off the market price – which is roughly HK$2 million per unit – a decade-long sell-off could yield up to HK$1.3 trillion, which is enough to cover more than 14 years of the current deficit of HK$87.2 billion.

This assumes there would be takers. If you are sitting pretty in a small but HK$2,000-a-month unit, why would you want to spend HK$2 million to carry on living in it while also assuming responsibility for maintenance costs? If you’re retired, perhaps you could rent it out and move to the Mainland. But with bigger private-sector homes costing at least double or treble the resale value of the housing estate unit, it doesn’t offer most tenants much of an upside.

The authors point out the standard socio-economic advantages of encouraging home-ownership – ‘empowerment’, building equity and enabling greater mobility. The last point is especially valid, as being stuck in a distant housing estate almost certainly reduces job options. They don’t mention the possible drawbacks. For example, with less subsidized rental housing stock, where do the poor live? But these pros and cons have nothing to do with the article’s supposed concern of solving the fiscal problem.

And would it actually do that? If successful, it would provide the government with a helpful windfall. But it would not generate longer-term recurrent revenues, which – along with lower expenditure – is the only sustainable way to solve the budget deficit. It’s like the West Kowloon Cultural Hub-Zone selling luxury flats to make ends meet: once you’ve burnt through the cash, you’re still losing money.

Speaking of the SCMP, Zichen Wang of Pekingnology has some points to make about the paper. As a former Xinhua staffer, he likes to think of Jack Ma’s organ as occupying a unique and noble position connecting China and the West. But he can’t help tearing into some of its Mainland science reporting …

Regrettably, alongside its wealth of credible reporting, SCMP has also developed a distinct genre of science stories based entirely on a single paper published in a Chinese (sometimes quasi-) academic journal. A recent prime example is a recent article, China unveils a powerful deep-sea cable cutter that could reset the world order, which has since spread widely, misleading Bloomberg, CNN, MERICS, and Lowy Institute, as well as top China experts on Twitter.

Among the faults he finds…

These reports exaggerate early-stage findings, concepts, and designs, presenting them as finished deployments without sufficient scrutiny despite the well-documented low conversion rate of academic research to actual industrial application … [They] sensationalize and politicize the research by taking it out of context and linking it to current events … A key tactic is attributing everything to the actions of the Chinese government … the SCMP fails to adhere to best practices followed by reputable English-language outlets, which often consult external experts in relevant fields to provide readers with a more comprehensive and impartial view of scientific developments … Another issue is the overwhelming focus on research with potential military implications … The descriptions and narration in these reports are so hyperbolic that they sometimes sound like science fiction.

He surveys eight examples. In the case of the ‘undersea-cable cutting’ thing…

…the Chinese [academic] paper was published on Feb 24 in a pay-to-play journal churning out admission decisions within a week and only available in a subscription-based database, until being drummed up by the SCMP a full month later on March 25. It’s mindblowing that “China unveils” and “officially disclosed” it, as the SCMP story fictionalized, quickly translates to the “very public unveiling” received [overseas] where some “strategic communication” is now speculated.

Other examples include the stories ‘Was doomed US submarine caught by a monster whirlpool in the South China Sea?’ and ‘How China is solving F-22’s stealth coating cracks with 3,000-year-old silk weaving tech’. (Competition idea: write an absurdly far-fetched China tech headline, SCMP-style.)

Why is SCMP management pushing this sort of coverage? Is it to get clicks, or out of over-eager patriotism?

China Digital Times summarizes online debate about Li Ka-shing’s patriotism, or lack of it…

…many online articles and comments supportive of Li have been deleted by platform censors. CDT Chinese editors have archived ten recent essays and articles on the subject, at least three of which have since been censored. A now-deleted satirical essay from WeChat public account 捉刀漫谈max (Zhuōdāo màntán max, “Ghostwriter Chat max”) posed the facetious question “How About If Li Ka-Shing Just Sells the Ports to Russia?” and mocked the blind nationalism of those urging Li to ignore business fundamentals and bend the knee to Beijing. An article by WeChat blogger Xu Peng noted the irony of those who would criticize Li for not being “patriotic” enough—despite his decades of generous donations to charitable causes in China—while conveniently overlooking nationalist pundit Sima Nan’s rather unpatriotic record of tax evasion. A now-censored article by science and current-affairs blogger Xiang Dongliang pointed out that CK Hutchison’s proposal only involves the sale of usage rights to the ports—because the ports themselves are under the sovereignty of the nations in which they are located—and that the company does not plan to sell the usage rights to any ports located in China or Hong Kong. Xiang argued that the proposed sale is motivated by CK Hutchison’s need to hedge economic and geopolitical risk, and that absent other Chinese buyers (who would be subject to the same challenges), it is only rational for the company to offload usage rights to the ports to American consortium BlackRock. If the Chinese government and online nationalists are genuinely concerned about port control falling into American hands, Xiang wrote, they should encourage so-called “patriotic” Chinese companies such as Huawei or Hongxing Erke to bid for the ports instead.

Brian Kern lists imprisoned pro-democracy Hong Kong figures by former political position, length of sentences and number of arrests…

225 pro-democracy leaders have been arrested 380 times. Some have been arrested as many as seven times each.

128 pro-democracy leaders have been convicted 184 times. Some have been convicted as many as six times each.

75 pro-democracy leaders have been imprisoned, receiving a total of 125 sentences, with five sentenced to a total of more than 100 months (eight years and four months) each.

A report from a Brookings Institute guy following a recent visit to China…

There appears to be a widely held view among China’s policy community that Trump’s [tariffs] announcement is designed to undermine China’s economic competitiveness, rather than as a source of leverage for negotiations to resolve specific trade irritants. This colored PRC response.

Asia Times looks at the repercussions of the recent earthquake-related construction mishap in Bangkok…

China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects are being scrutinized in Thailand after Myanmar’s 7.7 earthquake pancaked a 30-floor building 966 kilometers (600 miles) away that Chinese engineers were constructing in Bangkok.

The incomplete skyscraper was the only building to collapse in the lightly damaged Thai capital. But the disaster exposed allegedly substandard steel reinforcing rods that had snapped, reducing the building to a huge rubble pile that crushed about 87 construction workers, including 15 confirmed dead and 72 who disappeared.

…The investigation began with a bizarre, troubling sight. Two days after the March 28 quake, four Chinese men were filmed grabbing in their arms as many construction-related documents as they could carry and running away from the rubble site.

A must-see interview with historian Frank Dikotter, of HKU and elsewhere. Some of what he says you might already know, but there is a ton of fascinating stuff here.