Big Lychee, Various Sectors

From the Guardian – Lord Sumption does an interview with BBC radio…

“The real problem, I think, in Hong Kong is the paranoid atmosphere there,” he continued. “This is said to be a response to the 2019 riots, but there were already laws perfectly capable of dealing with those. The object has become increasingly clear of the national security law was to crush peaceful political dissent, not just riots.”

Sumption said China was increasingly intervening in legal decisions in the territory.

“There is the problem that under the basic law, if China doesn’t like the court’s decisions, they can reverse them by what is called an interpretation, although it’s usually just a legislative intervention … It was initially unclear how frequently this would be used, but recent incidents have indicated that the Chinese are determined to use this provision in order to ensure that its opponents lose.”

At the end of May, 14 pro-democracy activists were found guilty of subversion in the largest application of the national security law to date. They included the former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung and Helena Wong, the journalist turned campaigner Gwyneth Ho and others who joined the mass protests of 2019.

“I think that the picture is getting darker,” Sumption said. “The judgment on 30 May against the 14 democracy activists was a major indication of the lengths to which some judges are prepared to go to ensure that Beijing’s campaign against those who have supported democracy succeeds.”

Reported by the SCMP, Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office offers a forthright view of Lord Sumption in an online commentary…

It said Sumption’s “dishonesty, untrustworthiness and lack of integrity” fully showed that he had willingly allowed himself to be “politically hijacked”, becoming a tool to politicians from the United Kingdom and other foreign countries.

“By destroying his own reputation and choosing to stand on the wrong side of history, he will inevitably face endless regret,” it said.

…The commentary also took aim at Sumption’s remark that justices had to operate in an “impossible political environment created by China”, which required “unusual courage” to “swim against such a strong political tide”.

“In order to provide a tribute to the UK and politicians from certain countries, Sumption has trampled on the dignity of the rule of law and insulted his fellow judges – this can be considered a disgrace to the legal profession,” it added.

Via the Standard, Patrick Keane, one of the Australian judges on the Court of Final Appeal’s overseas panel, says the Hong Kong judiciary remains independent…

…a red line for him would be if the government is pressuring the judiciary or refusing to accept the decisions of the courts, which he does not believe is happening.

”There can be a point it has been diminished to an effect that trials are show trials – from those I’ve spoken to they don’t see themselves as conducting show trials,” he said.

Critics have said calls from Beijing for the judiciary to be patriotic and direct criticism of decisions in political cases undermine the local system.

“Do you think it amounts to political pressure when news media in Australia criticize judges who give sentences they deem to be too short?” Keane said.

Is there an Australian equivalent of Ta Kung Pao?

The Hong Kong government imposes sanctions on ‘absconders’ like Nathan Law. As well as revoking their Hong Kong passports, the authorities have banned anyone from giving them financial assistance. Ronny Tong says even following them on online platforms could now be illegal…

Subscribers to the six absconded national security fugitives’ Patreon or YouTube channels might breach the law, Executive Council member and senior counsel Ronny Tong Ka-wah said.

The latest measures will effectively prevent the fugitives from receiving funds for activities endangering national security, he said.

Tong said paid subscriptions show an obvious intent to support their illegal activities overseas.

As subscribers can see the fugitives’ content, they cannot argue that they did not know what they were supporting, he added.

Tong said free subscriptions that do not involve funding may also help the fugitives indirectly, as they can receive money with a high number of subscriptions.

He said Hongkongers should act carefully and avoid subscribing to the fugitives’ channels.

What about just looking at them?

For a breath of fresh air – a quick video panning Victoria Harbour ‘after rain’, with city lights reflecting from clouds, etc.

The government and its supporters could refrain from making too much of ex-Court of Final Appeal judge Lord Sumption’s harsh words about rule of law in Hong Kong. But, if the fuss over Stephen Roach’s straightforward economic analysis is anything to go by, they are more likely to dwell on it. Responses from the Chief Justice and legal bodies here. Ronny Tong here – uses the word ‘philological’.

The Chief Executive doesn’t have much choice when answering questions from the press. He comes prepared with a sort-of ‘gotcha’ – in the form of Sumption’s Times article three years ago saying that ‘although Hong Kong did not have democracy while under colonial rule, its rule of law was maintained by judges’. John Lee also says judges should focus on the law, which is their area of expertise, not on politics.

It’s unlikely that Sumption will entertain the opportunity of a Roach-style public debate with the Hong Kong establishment. But if he did, he could suggest that maybe one or two things have happened in the last three years to convince him to change his mind. (He specifically called out the judiciary for its HK47 convictions.) And he might say that John Lee, as someone who has spent most of his career as a cop, is hardly an expert in politics (or economics for that matter). He could even stress his point that the intrusion of politics into the rule of law is the whole problem. 

That issue isn’t going away. Prosecutors close their arguments in the Jimmy Lai case, and the defence are preparing to argue that Lai has no case to answer. The authorities might want to prepare for more resignations of overseas judges.

Some other reading…

In the Diplomat, Eric and Anouk Wear look at recent arrests and other measures by Hong Kong authorities ahead of the June 4 anniversary…

Few places in the world police collective memory and art with this degree of rigor. How has this occurred in Hong Kong, which until recently ranked high for free expression?

…[Xi Jinping’s concept of] “cultural security” … is an extremely vague and ambiguous concept of “national security,” which can be applied to arts and culture without any of the safeguards necessary to ensure that a state is in compliance with international human rights standards.

Hong Kong Secretary for Security Chris Tang spoke of art as “soft resistance” and called artistic expression a  “common modus operandi of those seeking to endanger national security.” Similarly, Chief Executive John Lee asked everyone to tell a “good story” of Hong Kong and has defended purging the city’s libraries of books containing “bad ideologies.”

Vague and ambiguous statements such as these encourage de-platforming and freelance censorship in the private sector. Creative artists protect themselves by self-censoring, steering away from politics and social reflection.

…By snipping off any buds of reflective discourse or “wrong” memory, society is channeled into narrowly productive ends. Those who can’t come to terms with this will either flee or find themselves harassed or in custody, as people in Hong Kong who seek to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre have experienced.

The Hongkonger on how Hong Kong NatSec police recruit informants and find ways to pressure dissidents overseas.

Five years after the 2019 protests, RFA interviews Hongkongers in exile – many with bounties on their heads.

And AFP talks to Hong Kong novelists in exile.

Jonathan Sumption, one of the UK judges to recently resign from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, writes in the FT about his reasons for quitting…

The Basic Law … expressly authorises Legco to reject the budget, and provides that if it does so twice, the chief executive must resign.

Nonetheless, the High Court decided that rejecting the budget was not a permissible means of putting pressure on the chief executive to change his policies … The result is that Legco cannot exercise an express constitutional right for a purpose unwelcome to the government. Putting a plan to do this before the electorate was branded a criminal conspiracy.

…the decision is symptomatic of a growing malaise in the Hong Kong judiciary … But they have to operate in an impossible political environment created by China.

…Pro-democracy media have been closed down by police action. Their editors are on trial for sedition. Campaign groups have been disbanded and their leaders arrested.

…There are continual calls for judicial “patriotism”. It requires unusual courage for local judges to swim against such a strong political tide. Unlike the overseas judges, they have nowhere else to go.

Intimidated or convinced by the darkening political mood, many judges have lost sight of their traditional role as defenders of the liberty of the subject, even when the law allows it. There are guarantees of freedom of speech and assembly in both the Basic Law and the National Security Law, but only lip-service is ever paid to them. The least sign of dissent is treated as a call for revolution. Hefty jail sentences are dished out to people publishing “disloyal” cartoon books for children, or singing pro-democracy songs, or organising silent vigils for the victims of Tiananmen Square.

HKFP story with more background here.

The government’s response, dated 1.55 am, comprises some 25 paragraphs and goes over most of Lord Sumption’s points one by one…

…the Court of First Instance held that … Indiscriminate vetoing of the Government’s budget and public expenditure proposals, in order to compel the Government to accede to political demands and force the Chief Executive to dissolve the Legislative Council and ultimately resign … amounted to … offence of subversion of State power.  

…Real threats to the independent exercise of judicial power currently faced by the HKSAR courts indeed come from foreign government officials, politicians and political organisations, including blatant attempts to interfere with ongoing legal proceedings, and the despicable threats to impose so-called “sanctions” against judges…

…During the Hong Kong version of “colour revolution” in 2019, massive riots and violence occurred incessantly. Shops and public facilities were vandalised, set on fire and destroyed. Terrorist activities intimidated the community. People expressing opinions different with that of the black-clad mobsters would be intimidated, doxxed and beaten up.

 Any responsible government facing the same chaos experienced by Hong Kong in 2019 would take decisive action to curb the insurrection and violence in order to safeguard national security and protect the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Lord Sumption’s claim that the ordinary laws of Hong Kong were perfectly adequate for dealing with the riots is in total disregard of the actual situation of the insurrection.

It even mentions mega-events. RTHK summary here.

HKFP op-ed explores all the ways the HK47’s primary elections could have led to a constitutional crisis, and finds none. After overcoming numerous hurdles, including their re-election to LegCo, the 47 could at most have brought about another CE ‘election’. Yet the judges convicted those found guilty for plotting a ‘constitutional crisis’, with ‘dire consequences’ and a ‘paralysing effect on the operations of the Government’.

Stephen Roach’s remarks at the FCC last week…

[When I first visited Hong Kong in the 1980s] China was just beginning to stir, and this city was perfectly positioned as a major beneficiary of what turned into the world’s greatest development miracle. It all worked out brilliantly, lasting longer than anyone expected. And now, as I wrote last February in the Financial Times, it’s over.

Harsh words, I know. Take them more as a metaphor than an epitaph. So, what’s really over?  What’s over, in my opinion, is the imagery that many still cling to in looking to the future of a prideful city—Asia’s world city, Milton Friedman’s favorite free market. The Hong Kong of old is not the Hong Kong of today, and especially not the Hong Kong of tomorrow. The title of my article was intended as a wake-up call, an appeal for you in Hong Kong to come to grips with this seemingly harsh realization.

Any city-state economy – old Venice, modern-day Singapore, Dubai – thrives by providing a location for activities that for whatever reasons don’t take place in its surrounding jurisdictions. Without demand in the hinterland for spices or money-laundering services, it is just a dot on the map. Even when Hong Kong boomed as an apparently isolated (from the Mainland) manufacturing base in the 50s and 60s, it relied on an influx of Mainland industrialists and workers (as well as sanctions-busting cross-border trade). All Roach is saying is that Hong Kong can only do as well as the Mainland, which is now looking at a long period of relative stagnation, and the city needs to accept it and adjust.

Aside from the usual NatSec-era oversensitivity, perhaps the Hong Kong officials have reacted badly to Roach’s basic point because they know it is true. Tam Yiu-chung, quoted in Ta Kung Pao (in Chinese), accuses Roach of ‘smearing One Country, Two Systems’. Regina Ip complains…

…Roach’s remarks betray the same shallowness and short-termism as befit a stockbroker, writing off investments when the going gets tough.

It is true that Hong Kong is facing some tough economic headwinds because of geopolitical uncertainty and structural problems. But its future is bright, because Hong Kong is working hard to restructure its economy.

But is it? All we see is officials trying to resurrect yesterday’s industries, from mass-tourism to the container port to the real-estate scam. The best transition Reg can point to is a merging of Hong Kong with the rest of the Pearl River Delta, which doesn’t really suggest a new special role so much as evaporation of the old ones. (This is before factoring in concerns over rule of law, etc.)

Local officials and pro-government figures’ inability to respond calmly and confidently to criticism reflects their inability to accept that the old boom days are over.

Pic of the day: students at a Taipei high school repurpose the campus’s statue of Chiang Kai-shek.

Former Morgan Stanley boss Stephen Roach came back to Hong Kong a few weeks ago after a previous spat…

“There ain’t gonna be any resilience here if China continues to underperform, period,” he said, pointing to the parallel slowdown in growth rates for the city and country at large. “It’s not something that I think you can necessarily count on to persist and project into the future.”

Rather than ignore him, the government issues a lengthy statement that can best be summarized as ‘ growing steadily blah blah international financial centre blah blah NatSec blah Greater Bay Area blah green finance blah Belt and Road blah blah’.

Back home in Connecticut (we’re not worth a long stay), Roach says the Hong Kong government is in denial…

…Roach told the Post on Thursday morning he was delighted the government had heard his message, but was discouraged to see it had dismissed his “data, and analytical-based arguments”.

He said the authorities’ rejection of his message over the troubles ahead for the economy lacked an “analytical” angle, and he was worried by their decision to resolve “tough problems” with a “descriptive spin”.

…During his speech, Roach noted the premise of his argument was based on the close connections between the economies of Hong Kong and the mainland economies following greater cross-border integration through flows of trade and finance, as well as tourism.

“The Hong Kong economy has effectively been swallowed up by the mainland economy – hook, line and sinker. With the Chinese economy likely to underperform over the foreseeable future,” he said.

He concluded that Hong Kong was unlikely to “spring back to life on its own”.

…“I would welcome the government’s response to my core arguments rather than counter their seemingly desperate attempts to throw up a smokescreen and deflect attention elsewhere.”

He also said in his speech that it was important for the financial hub to continue to allow for constructive criticism.

…“Solutions come from solving tough problems, not from PR statements.”

Hypersensitive reactions suggest that the critic concerned has hit a sensitive nerve – or in plain words, is right. The huge uplift in Hong Kong’s economy over the last 40 years mirrored, and resulted from, that of the Mainland. The city was in a unique position to leverage China’s abandonment of Stalinist economics, and it was an amazing coattails-ride. That phase of history is over. Officials would show real confidence in Hong Kong’s future if they acknowledged that and let go of the old high-property-prices zillions-of-tourists model.

Timothy McClaughlin adds…

Hong Kong has some of the highest rents in the world but Stephen Roach lives in the government’s head for free.

After fretting about the exodus of shoppers to Shenzhen, officials claim it is a success story for the Greater Bay Area. Insofar as it’s a success story for market forces and lower prices for consumers, they’re right. 

Two British judges resign from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal, one citing the political situation in the city.- unless you read RTHK, in which case he doesn’t.

In case you haven’t seen it – CE John Lee congratulates Ronny Tong on his puberty, twice, in video and text. (I mean it’s nothing – my brother’s 21st birthday was 40 years ago, and I still haven’t sent him a card.)

Some weekend reading…

Atlantic on Beijing’s bid to out-tech the US…

Xi gambled that he could partner with Russia and Iran, undermine the U.S.-led global order, and build a military designed to challenge American power—do all that and still benefit from the U.S. technology the Chinese economy needs to advance his ambitions. Perhaps he believed that capitalist greed would override national-security concerns, or thought he could rely on inaction from a divided and preoccupied Washington. Perhaps, too, he underestimated the complexities of the semiconductor industry and what it would take to develop the chips China needs.

Whatever Xi’s assumptions, he picked a chip war with a superior power before he had the armory to wage it.

And Lowy Interpreter looks at China’s claims to own much of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone waters.

So intercepting US 8964 – a sort of Alfa Romeo-ish sports car – is an annual thing.

China Media Monitor tries asking Mainland AI chatbots some awkward questions about a historical event…

My most candid query about June Fourth was a quick lesson in red lines and sensitivities. When I asked iFlytek’s “Spark” (星火) if it could tell me “what happened on June 4, 1989,” it evaded the question. It had not learned enough about the subject, it said, to render a response. Immediately after the query, however, CMP’s account was deactivated for a seven-day period — the rationale being that we had sought “sensitive information.”

…“How did Zhao Ziyang retire?” I asked guilefully. But Spark was having none of it. The bot immediately shut down. End of discussion.

…In another attempt to confuse Spark into complying with my request, I rendered “1989” in Roman numerals (MCMLXXXIX). Again, Spark started generating an answer before suddenly disappearing it, claiming ignorance about this topic.

However…

Spark was not able to offer any information in Chinese on why the [liberal World Economic] Herald closed down, but when asked in English it explained that authorities shut down the newspaper and arrested its staff because they had been critical of the government’s “human rights abuses” — something the government, according to the chatbot, considered “a threat to their authority.”

I remember Alta Vista. It took ages, but it was so much less irritating. (A few months ago, I noticed a new icon in the bottom right of my Windows PC screen. Turned out to be Microsoft’s AI thing. I asked it to describe the archaeological role of bananas. Got a long rambling response mentioning the Latin name of the species, the history of its human cultivation, and an apologetic explanation that such material rots and so leaves little evidence in ancient sites. Haven’t had a reason to use it again.)

Foreign Policy asks why the national leadership doesn’t do something about China’s economic problems…

…zero-COVID and the messy exit, the extended attack on private tech firms, the heightened attention to ideology, an unrealistic pursuit of technology self-reliance, and growing tensions with the West. These fears translate into weak consumer demand, restrained business investment, and efforts to move wealth and family abroad.

The article gives four possible reasons (which overlap): they don’t know; they don’t care; they’re stumped; or they see it as the next stage on the path to national greatness. The third sounds about right…

…Xi and other top leaders are well informed but they are facing a variety of problems that are not easy to fix. The list is long—the real estate crisis, ballooning local government debt, the plummeting fertility rate, rising inequality, disaffection in Hong Kong, and expanding tensions with the West and most of China’s neighbors—and solutions are far from simple.

The author is simply surveying business people in Beijing, and this is far from a must-read on China’s economy. But for an idea of how much more illiterate it could be, try the SCMP’s My Take column today. In its desperation to blame the US for everything, the paper’s tankie chatbot denies that China has an overcapacity problem…

Under the label “overproduction”, the Western criticism is really launching a new trade war as part of its full-spectrum containment of China and its alleged threats.

Wrong. Even China’s leaders themselves acknowledge – at least implicitly – that after several decades of diverting household savings away from consumption into investment, the country has a severe and unsustainable imbalance that distorts international trade. 

It was impossible for anyone in Hong Kong to forget that yesterday was the anniversary of the 1989 Beijing massacre: thousands of cops plus their ‘Sabretooth’ armoured vehicle were on the streets to provide a high-profile reminder. They kept an eye on activists, artists, strolling diplomats, bystanders with knowing looks holding little cups of soft-serve ice cream, and confused tourists intercepted by law enforcement for accidentally switching on their phone flashlight. 

A full report on the weirdness with great pix at HKFP. Some more from the Standard.

This could be a new annual event!

It’s ‘police overtime’ day. Ronny advises that you remember Tiananmen privately. What’s going on elsewhere.

Some random recommended reading…

From Asian Crime Century – picking up from the UK arrests of three men for conducting illegal activities for ‘Hong Kong intelligence’, a fascinating history of the Hong Kong Police Special Branch and its descendants today…

Superintendent “Our Frankie” Shaftain, the head of CID and a Special Branch section dealing with subversion … led the police intelligence efforts during the battle for Hong Kong in 1941, and was responsible for major decisions such as the summary execution (by machine gun) of collaborators in an alley next to the Lane Crawford department store…

Fast-forwarding to the post-1997 era…

…The outcome of [a] somewhat single minded focus by [the Security Wing] on Falun Gong seems to have been a decline of insight into what was happening in Hong Kong society. SW and the Hong Kong Police leadership had no insight into the nature and extent of new protest movements that developed in the first two decades of the 21st century.

…The police were unable to stop the [2019] protests, and it was apparent through 2019 how little the police, and by implication SW, understood about the new wave of youth led protest movements. Clearly SW and political intelligence policing in Hong Kong had failed from 1997 to 2020.

This assumes that Beijing’s officials did not intervene in 2019 and order local authorities to treat the protests as a law-enforcement, rather than political, issue. However…

…The Office for Safeguarding National Security is effectively an outpost of the Ministries of State Security and Public Security…

…In September 2023, by then head of the PRC Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Zheng was reported to have stated that the authorities should be vigilant against anti-Chinese forces, continue to “rigorously enforce” the national security law, that there are still “hostile foreign forces” trying to disrupt Hong Kong’s development and stability, “anti-China elements” are attempting a comeback, and the Hong Kong Police should “build a solid defense line” for national security. The statement seems to be a continuation of the provision of backbone to the Hong Kong Police to take the lead in suppressing political dissent and criticism of the CCP.

…Because of the large overt deployment of senior MSS and PSB staff to the city and their expanded role in local government committees, it is unlikely that the Hong Kong Police has operational independence in national security matters after the establishment of the MSS led Office for Safeguarding National Security in 2020.

The article concludes with some theories about why the ETO-linked operation was apparently so amateurish.

Thorough post by Kevin Yam on overseas judges serving in Hong Kong…

…the advantage of the likes of Lords Hoffman and Sumption staying on the Hong Kong court is, while well-meaning, cosmetic and illusory, and do nothing to hold back the tide. Without this advantage, one is then left with their presence being an endorsement of an authoritarian system of laws and government. They should not stay.

US Customs are checking every item on air freight arriving from China.

“…CBP is finding a lot of illegal stuff. There is fentanyl, drug-making equipment and misdeclarations of value to meet the de minimis threshold.” 

…Fentanyl caused the death of 200 Americans every day in 2022 and over a quarter of a million have died from a fentanyl overdose since 2018. Fentanyl-type drugs reportedly caused the death of 100,000 Americans last year alone. 

From China Leadership Monitor, a lengthy discussion of ‘lying flat’. It started as online slang, then became a way for the young to express despair at China’s system. After officials blasted the phrase for a while, it became acceptable as a way to criticize foreigners – and at one point, the Hong Kong government…

Chinese Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) member and pro-Beijing think-tank director Cheung Chi-kong lambasted Hong Kong officials in general, and Chief Executive Carrie Lam in particular, for being “opportunists” who half-heartedly pursued “dynamic clearing” while secretly believing the British and American models of co-existence with the coronavirus to be “superior and civilized.” “‘Lying flat’ and ‘co-existing with the virus,’” Cheung railed, “is definitely not the choice of most Hong Kong people, and this ‘elite faction’ cannot possibly represent Hong Kong, let alone the whole of the Hong Kong people.”

The Guardian…

The panel of Hong Kong national security judges had set down two days for the hearing but dispensed with the core business in about 15 minutes. In the city’s largest ever national security trial – involving the prosecution of pro-democracy campaigners and activists from a group known as the “Hong Kong 47” – almost all the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion.

Their crime was trying to win an election, holding unofficial primaries in 2020 attended by an estimated 600,000 residents.

…Claudia Mo, a former journalist and popular legislator known affectionately as “Auntie Mo”, pleaded guilty. Mo, a passionate but unflappable advocate for Hong Kong’s democracy, had frequently spoken to the foreign media over the years. For these conversations she was denied bail.

When police smashed through her front door, they also seized her phone and laptop, from which they presumably found the WhatsApp conversations she had had with the Guardian and Observer and other outlets. In jail, the 67-year-old has reportedly run language lessons for other prisoners. She was denied permission to visit her husband, British journalist Philip Bowring, when he was ill.

The Economist…

The three presiding judges wasted little time in presenting their verdicts in the case of the “Hong Kong 47”, members of the city’s pro-democracy political opposition. Over the course of two minutes on May 30th, the justices declared 14 of the defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion in the biggest national-security trial in the city’s history.

…The verdicts, which are likely to result in prison sentences (in some cases for perhaps as long as life), represent the ongoing strangulation of dissent in Hong Kong.

…The most cynical view is that the government was growing embarrassed by its 100% conviction rate in such trials. But the justice secretary looks likely to appeal against the [two] not-guilty verdicts.

Perhaps feeling unease over endless NatSec arrests and trials, some pro-establishment figures have suggested in recent months that once the high-profile HK47 and Jimmy Lai cases are over, things will calm down. So far, that looks like wishful thinking. From big round-ups…

A Hong Kong woman, who was among seven arrested under the city’s new security law, has also been accused of violating the Beijing-imposed security law over funding overseas activist Nathan Law and others.

“Investigation revealed that she supported with money fugitive Law Kwun-chung and other individuals through an online subscription platform, with the amount of funding amounting to approximately $140,000, ” Hong Kong’s national security police said, referring to Law by his Chinese name, in a statement released on Friday afternoon.

…police said that the 53-year-old woman was also suspected of “providing pecuniary or other financial assistance or property for the commission of secession by other persons,”

…to hassling of small, apparently pro-democracy bookstores…

At around 4:30 today, police officers from the nearby Sham Shui Po police station went to Hunter Bookstore and accused them of blocking the street with their sofa outside. After the sofa was moved indoors, police started recording ID numbers of everyone who enters or leaves 

A summary of NatSec’s 47th month.

Nor does the government’s PR look likely to get any calmer, as the function comes under former law-enforcement officers. SCMP reports that former cop John Tse, currently the CE’s communications secretary, will become Government Information Coordinator…

He became a well-known face during 2019’s social unrest when he led the force’s daily press conferences while still a serving chief superintendent.

…Tse will earn between HK$249,500 (US$31,850) and HK$264,800 a month.

…Apollonia Liu Lee Ho-kei, the deputy secretary for security, was last month appointed to succeed Fletch Chan Wai-wai as director of information services.

Liu spearheaded the passage of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance through the legislature in March.

She had earlier written letters to foreign media, such as Britain’s The Guardian, to “condemn” their reports on the new domestic national security law.

Fourteen pan-democrats of the HK47 are found guilty of conspiracy to subversion.

Chief Superintendent Steve Li gives his NatSec Police section a pat on the head for a job well done. Does the phrase ‘like shooting fish in a barrel’ come to mind?

“According to the court’s judgement, you could see this is a very serious crime. While [the 14 convicted defendants] had different roles [in the primary election] … they were all entirely lawless and flouting the law.“

Exactly how lawless seems to be debatable. On Twitter, Kevin Yam…

Those convicted were essentially accused of promising to filibuster the budget to force a promise on democratisation. 

And Matthew Brooker…

They tried to win an election

Their crime was they might have succeeded, despite a gerrymandered system that was designed to prevent that ever happening

It is odd: if planning to reject a budget and thus require the administration to dissolve the legislature and ultimately to stand down is illegal, why does the Basic Law specifically allow for it? (The key prosecution word here is ‘indiscriminately’, though that doesn’t appear in the mini-constitution.)

The government will appeal the two acquittals. Skeptics might see stage-management…

As expected, not all the defendants would be convicted. It seems to be a tactic to show that the court did consider the “evidence” before making its decisions. However, the whole trial was simply a farce. 

International coverage is plentiful, and largely negative. The NYT…

The convictions show how the authorities have used the sweeping powers of a national security law imposed by Beijing to quash dissent across broad swathes of society. Most of the defendants had already spent at least the last three years in detention before the 118-day trial ended.

…Their offense: holding a primary election to improve their chances in citywide polls.

“The message from the authorities is clear: Any opposition activism, even the moderate kind, will no longer be tolerated,” said Ho-fung Hung, an expert on Hong Kong politics at Johns Hopkins University.

…In the past, pro-democracy activists had held primaries, without issue, to select candidates to run in the election of the city’s leader, Professor Hung said.

“The fact that they were arrested and convicted and even put behind bars for so long before the verdict manifests a fundamental change in Hong Kong’s political environment: Free election, even the pretension of a free election, is gone,” Professor Hung said.

The FT…

Most of the 47 defendants have been detained for more than three years after being denied bail. They span the city’s opposition camp, including politicians and former lawmakers, social workers, civil society leaders and journalists.

The verdict comes as Hong Kong is attempting to revive its reputation as a global financial centre and woo back foreign businesses that fled in the wake of pandemic restrictions and a political crackdown by Beijing and local authorities after pro-democracy protests in 2019.

Thomas Kellogg, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law, said the court was “poised to put many of the top figures in Hong Kong’s pan-democratic camp behind bars”, predicting sentences that could be “some of the heaviest sentences yet handed down under the national security law”.

Reuters…

Once one of Asia’s most liberal cities, China-ruled Hong Kong is experiencing a years-long crackdown on dissent under China-imposed security laws that have silenced liberal voices, unnerved investors and triggered a wave of emigration.

…[The 14] were found guilty by three judges of conspiracy to commit subversion for holding an unofficial primary election in 2020 that was deemed by Hong Kong authorities as a plot to paralyse the government and “subvert state power”.

…In what U.N. human rights experts  and the U.S. say is a departure from established common law practices, Chow and other democrats were denied a jury trial, and 32 of the 47 have languished for over 1,000 days in detention without bail.

The WSJ…

The authorities alleged that [the 47’s] plan, which included a primary among candidates who pledged to block government legislation and force the city’s Beijing-backed chief executive to step down, amounted to an illegal subversion of state power.

Defense attorneys and human-rights advocates said the pro-democracy activists were engaged in standard electoral politics using powers enshrined in Hong Kong law.

…The authorities’ case against the 47 amounted to a swift decapitation of the city’s pro-democracy opposition.

“There’s no doubt that the January 6 arrests—and the subsequent prosecution, which is only now coming to an end—were absolutely transformational,” said Thomas Kellogg, the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law.

Before then, the possibility remained that the Hong Kong government would use its new legal powers narrowly, targeting just the most extreme activists, such as those who called for Hong Kong’s independence from China.

“Instead, the law would be used as a legal wrecking ball, one that would be swung in the months to come at a growing number of journalists, activists and others,” Kellogg said.

…“You may think there’s actually time to prepare because they would prosecute the most famous and then next most famous and then the next,” said a former colleague of [hospital workers’ union leader Winnie] Yu’s. “In this case they arrested all of the public faces. Just overnight, everyone got caught.”

The Global Times is more understanding…

Legal experts believe that the court’s ruling is reasonable, beyond dispute, and demonstrates judicial independence and the justice of the rule of law.

“The case process fully embodies the spirit of the rule of law and the NSL for Hong Kong,” Louis Chen, a member of the Election Committee and general secretary of the Hong Kong Legal Exchange Foundation, told the Global Times on Thursday.

…The judicial authorities of the HKSAR handled the case according to law, fully preventing, stopping, and punishing actions that endanger national security. This is reasonable, legal, and just, and should not be subject to criticism. The central government firmly supports this, [a] spokesperson said.

On a separate (or not) subject, Domino Theory on Taiwan-based artists and performers finding Hong Kong becoming like the Mainland…

Alice, a young theater actress, has recently given up the opportunity to go on tour in Hong Kong … She had been trying to apply for a short-term work visa in Hong Kong for the past three months. After several email exchanges, she finally received a notice from the Immigration Department. The email listed old social media posts, word for word, and asked her to explain herself and her political stance. “I’m a Taiwanese person who grew up in a free and democratic country. I shouldn’t have been treated like this,” she said.

…she remembered how she shared a post about “Revolution of Our Times,” a documentary covering the 2019 Hong Kong protest, on her Facebook page. She never anticipated receiving a letter from the Hong Kong immigration authorities some years later questioning her about her post.

One last Tweet on a topical issue, from Bill Bishop…

Trump conviction tricky for PRC propagandists. On one hand, highlights a rotting and fracturing democracy. On other hand, highlights that a former top leader can be arrested, put on trial, judged by jury of peers and convicted, for relatively small acts of corruption. Not an obvious propaganda win-win

While some government officials expressed satisfaction when Glory to Hong Kong disappeared from certain online platforms, there wasn’t much overt gloating. Which was just as well, since the subversive song is back. The news last week was that the UK-based distributor – a self-publishing service that helps indie musicians monetize their work – had removed the title from streaming sites. The originator of the piece has now restored it. And the clicks no doubt keep coming.

The big news story for today will be the verdict for 16 of the 47 opposition figures arrested back in 2021 for plotting to ‘subvert state power’. Good backgrounds from HKFP and the BBC. As someone following this closely pointed out, the authorities can’t tolerate the idea of prominent and popular activists – Long Hair, Joshua Wong, et al – being out on the street where they can be a focus of attention or even some sort of potential alternative power centre.

Meanwhile, some early weekend reading…

The Jamestown Foundation looks at a new Chinese university textbook called An Introduction to the Community of the Zhonghua Race (中华民族共同体概论)…

…the textbook is critical of past preferential policies for minorities. It argues they “deviated from their original intention” and “solidified ethnic differences and fostered a narrow ethnic consciousness that gave rise to the false thesis of ‘ethnic minority exceptionalism’” … This has caused “some minorities”—again left unnamed, but the Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Mongols are the obvious referent—to distort their histories and “use the protection of cultural diversity to cling to backward ways of life and stereotypes.”

…The historical imaginary behind this molding process is deeply influenced by the late sociologist Fei Xiaotong (费孝通), and his dialectic reading of the “multiple origins, single body (多元一体)” structure of Chinese racial evolution…

…The Zhonghua race, according to this theory, emerged some two million years ago with a distinctly Chinese group of hominids. It then organically grew by drawing in and absorbing surrounding peoples into its superior Huaxia-cum-Han core, expanding in size and geographic distribution without either interruption or division. Like a giant “snowball (雪球)” in Fei Xiaotong’s words. In this story of national becoming, Tibetan, Mongol, Uyghur, and other indigenous peoples exist only in their genetic service to an eternally evolving, Han-centric “mega-community (超大规模共同体).”

At China Heritage, a New Zealand academic asks why fewer people are interested in learning Mandarin…

…one of the main problems is that the Chinese culture promoted overseas by PRC apparatchiks is totally unappealing to the majority of young people…

Calligraphy and Peking opera and the “Butterfly Lovers” simply won’t cut it with the majority of people under fifty, and yet this is the stuff that is constantly trotted out to the world as “Chinese culture” for foreign consumption … most of the money to promote Chinese culture overseas comes out of PRC state coffers and passes through the hands of out-of-touch bureaucrats eager to show their fealty to Xi Jinping’s ideas of “Superior traditional Chinese culture” and “cultural confidence”. As a result, the sorts of things that might appeal to prospective foreign learners — the works of the innumerable musicians and artists who have refused to serve the narrow interests of the state, for example — are passed over altogether in favour of people waving their arms around in long sleeves or cosplaying as Uyghurs to recorded music.

This is itself a reflection of what has happened within the PRC itself over the last decade

…The people in charge of promoting Chinese culture and language have succeeded in turning one of the world’s richest cultures into a total yawn-fest.

On the other hand – in a triumph of Chinese soft-power, Cambodia names a highway Xi Jinping Boulevard, which…

…connects National Road 4 in Phnom Penh’s Por Senchey district, to National Road 1 in Kandal province’s Kien Svay district. The construction work, undertaken by the Chinese company Shanghai Construction Group Co Ltd, began on Jan.14, 2019, and included four flyovers and eight bridges. The boulevard spans 15 km (9 miles) in Phnom Penh and 38 km (24 miles) in Kandal.

From The Hongkonger, Hong Kong’s historic role for anti-government activists (Sun, Rizal and Ho)…

It may seem hard to believe now, but there was a time when Hong Kong was a haven for revolutionaries who fled their own country to seek safety elsewhere.

For nostalgia buffs, a Discovery Channel documentary on Hong Kong in 1992.

And some BBC radio shows on China. This one, in particular.