While former top Chinese Communist Party guy in Chongqing gets the Discipline Inspection Purge treatment, current top CCP guy dutifully serving at Secretary General Xi Jinping’s side remains safe – despite apparent possible (as in circumstantial evidence that stinks to high heaven) daughter’s ties to billionaire-princeling scooping up overseas assets, including stakes in Hong Kong’s very own Peninsula Hotels.*
A thoughtful comment yesterday suggests that free-thinking Hongkongers establish a local ‘Communist Party’ to oppose this very sort of corruption and cronyism, and to create widespread mirth when the other Communist Party tries to ban it. And right on cue – behold the CPHK’s website for our enlightenment.
Other recommended reading comes from Penguin Books, who have just released a series of slim Hong Kong-themed volumes (which should probably have a dedicated website but don’t). Ones attracting attention include this and this. I downloaded this one, not just because I owe the guy a beer, but because it neatly summarizes the legacy of the CCP’s original screw-up in Hong Kong – co-opting a handful of rent-seeking cartelized parasite families and letting them plunder the city’s people and economy, turning it into the mess of lost opportunities, broken promises and rebellion we see today.
*Other murk just in – on HNA – here.
Shirley Yam is a badass. Have always liked her columns since way before the alien headed one bought SCCPMP.
Love the ‘do on the senior Mr. Li: straight from the “Beijing #27 Over 60 CCP/PLA Leader Barbershop & Stylist”
You do keep stirring it. Like you were wrapped in a Union Jack on a sinking ship.
The River House is proud of you.
Cool Britannia!
Pip, pip.
Shirley Yam – excellent. What a corrupt bunch of fuckers. We we really have no chance against this ingrained and endemic level of corruption in our neo-colonial masters. The Tooting, sorry, Hong Kong Popular Front is the only way to go …
I know that readers and Hemlock could care less, but Xi Jinping is the General Secretary of the CCP not Secretary General. Actually the fellow who may be in a load of trouble thanks to some superb HK detective work uncovering his careless daughter’s corruption and greed is the Secretary General of the CCP and close ally of Xi, . . . Li Zhanshu. All the paper work, daily schedules and reporting lines of members of the Standing Committee and Politburo are handled by the secretary general.
Rather than attempt to form a HK Communist Party from the chrysalis of one or more of the pan democratic parties and inevitably risk the DAB quickly playing copy-cat producing a situation where at least initially there would be a HKCP (Claudia/Longhair) and a HKCP (Starry/Regina), why not have one of the stronger pan democratic parties enter into a strategic alliance with one of India’s Communist Parties that opposes Beijing. This would rankle at a number of levels.
Big Al
Much as I enjoyed the Tooting Liberation front, ultimately he/they achieved nothing, and simply provided comic relief.
Unless something happens up north, HK basically is bleeped long term. The best it can hope for is Singapore style subservience to the ruling “family”
Shirley Yam – investigative journalism at its best. How much longer will she last at SCCPMP, I wonder.
PS I thank the regional propoganda head for the establishment of the Communist Party of Hong Kong, or at least its website. Well worth monitoring and promoting.
Hong Kong is used to having competing organisations such as the pro- and anti-Beijing trade union bodies. Competing Communist Parties would be an interesting new twist on local tradition.
I couldn’t read what l assume is the Shirley Yam article; the link opened nothing.
The Penguin Specials look fun.
Is Sir Stanley Twat’s silence today the result of his rage that Penguin haven’t expressed any interest in publishing his inane witterings?
As he would say, when apeing Private Eye, “l think we should be told”.
I trust everyone enjoyed Sun Zhengcai and the Case of the Disappearing Delegation (4th pic), in the SCMPeoplesDaily “Discipline Inspection Purge treatment” link.
It’s good to see Communism with Chinese characteristics has learnt from the mistakes of those Stalinist purges of old: instead of photoshopping out the purgee, they photoshop out the purgers.
Sadly David King is no longer with us, so the obvious sequel to the wonderful “The Commissar Vanishes”, “The Delegation Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Xi’s China” will likely never be made. But plus ça change, eh?
The SCMP’s senior editors have concluded that the commentary piece published on July 18th (online) and 19th (in print) “How’s the Singaporean investor in the Peninsula’s holding company linked to Xi Jinping’s right-hand man?”, on further examination, does not meet our standards for publication because it includes multiple unverifiable insinuations. We apologise to our readers for this regrettable misstep, and will examine and improve our editorial process as a result.