Big Lychee, Various Sectors

The Hong Kong government is thinking of making it illegal to ‘insult public officials’. This prompts three questions. 1) What will we do all day? 2) If they are this angry at being called stupid, doesn’t it suggest they really are? And 3) Why is such a draconian law necessary?

I’m stumped by the first question, and I’ll leave the second for others to consider. But the third is easy. Read on…

The government is relaxing pandemic regulations to allow people to go to Disneyland, gyms, etc or be seated four to a table in restaurants in the evenings – but public gatherings are still limited to two, and beaches and kids’ playgrounds remain closed. 

Legal assistant Chan Tsz-wah, age 29, is charged with ‘conspiracy to collude with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security’ (it seems he urged US sanctions) and ‘conspiracy to assist an offender’. Jimmy Lai, already in jail, has also been arrested. (Some discussion here.) Hong Kong Watch comments:

It is a damning testament to the deteriorating human rights situation in Hong Kong, that in 2021 Chan Tsz-wah faces ten years to life in prison under the National Security Law…

The trial begins of nine pan-democrats, including inoffensive aging campaigners like Martin Lee (age 82), Margaret Ng, Albert Ho and Cyd Ho, as well as Jimmy Lai (have they got him for jaywalking yet?). They are accused of unauthorized assembly – namely, the August 18, 2019 mega-demonstration that nearly everyone went to.

Meanwhile, back at the pandemic: the government seems to have lumbered us with a sub-par vaccine. For lack of better explanations, people are wondering whether officials chose Chinese-made Sinovac as a show of patriotism, and even delayed vaccination roll-outs to ensure the Glorious Motherland’s product gets the glory of being first. (They’re also talking of compensation for anyone killed by the stuff. Routine diligence, I guess – but it doesn’t exactly strengthen my laid-back it’s-just-a-drop-of-inert-liquid attitude.)

Let’s face it – if you were responsible for the above (or similar) idiocies, wouldn’t you want a law banning people from pointing out how incompetent you are? 

(But hey – isn’t calling Carrie Lam a dumbass already illegal under the law against revealing state secrets?)

Do I go to jail for ‘fake news’ now? I read somewhere vaccinations have already started in Lebanon.

By way of restitution – some free PR advice for the Hong Kong government. We’ll be charitable and assume that the administration is constantly postponing the start of vaccinations out of all-purpose incompetence rather than specific malice. 

The aim is to at least make a virtue out of the delay and counter public skepticism, especially about Mainland vaccines. The method: forcefully point out that by the time our citizens get their shots, millions of other people around the world will already have received theirs – serving as guinea pigs – so Hongkongers can be sure they’re safe. That’s it. Basic, no-nonsense spin.

The Hong Kong Bar Association has slammed the government for planning changes to the immigration law that would enable it to bar individuals from leaving the city. (Reports here and here.)

The government gets in an almighty righteous huff, claiming with a straight face that it would never infringe the Basic Law or Bill of Rights. (Report here.) But of course we have already been told that the NatSec Law overrides those two documents – so obviously the government is lying again, right?

But here’s another angle, drawing on an earlier government explanation to LegCo, and concluding that if the proposal has any political purpose it would be more to ‘deny entry to HK at the point of departure, instead of when they arrive’. 

Maybe critics have indeed misunderstood the government’s intentions and wrongly assumed the worst – exit bans on dissidents – when the planned amendment is in fact only about inbound refugee-seekers.

But (leaving sloppy official wording aside) why shouldn’t people believe a report about new powers to prevent critics from fleeing?  It sounds exactly like what the CCP’s NatSec Regime would do next, straight after imposing NatSec brainwashing on kids and just before tighter Internet censorship or whatever they have lined up for next week. As the 10% take-up rate of the pandemic contact-tracing app shows, the government has long gone past the stage when the public has any trust in it.

Update: much more on all this from Aaron Mc Nicholas.

In case you missed the HKFP‘s recent run of recommendable features… A 1967-era Leftist protester meets a young 2019 pro-dem one, and, despite many differences, both loath Carrie Lam. An interview with the annoyingly reasonable-sounding guy behind the biggest blue-ribbon Facebook group (a scion of pro-Beijing Macau elites who runs a company investing in Xinjiang). Op-eds on: the proposed fake-news law; the difference the NatSec Law – exemplified by the Jimmy Lai case – has made to the Hong Kong legal system; and fatalism vs change in Hong Kong. Some profiles of Hongkongers moving to the UK. Hotel quarantine artwork. And how people imprisoned after the 2019 uprising are keeping friends on the outside up to date by writing letters that are posted online. Apparently…

Prisoners may write and send as many letters as they wish to any person…

Why do I get the feeling the vindictive NatSec Regime will want to tighten up this relatively liberal rule before long? (You can write to them – be a penpal – too, including via email.) 

A message from Regina Ip.

And a thread on the annual fortune- disaster-stick draw at Che Kung Temple.

The Court of Final Appeal rules that Jimmy Lai cannot get bail while awaiting his NatSec trial (‘collusion with foreign forces’ – also known as meeting Americans and Tweeting). The court basically says its hands are tied by Beijing’s NatSec Law, which inverts the usual presumption in favour of bail, and perhaps makes it virtually impossible. 

The implication is that you are now in the NatSec Parallel Universe, where the protections you thought you had under the Basic Law or ICCPR (or juries) do not exist. This could mean that if you are charged with a NatSec thought-crime like inciting secession, you are wasting your breath claiming ‘freedom of speech/expression/the press’. NatSec overrides all those fancy freedoms and rights. The Court of Final Appeal essentially has no jurisdiction; the CCP is the law. (See comments here and here, and from HK Watch.). You are screwed. 

But what did you expect? If the CFA had come up with a different decision, Beijing would simply sweep the judgement aside in some way. Maybe that was the topic at the mystery meeting between the Chief Executive and the Chief Justice: we are all screwed.

On a relatively light note, the HK Police have gone back to discovering dastardly scary bomb-outrage terrorism plots again. Will anything come of this one? There were several others last year – police making a big show after finding stockpiles of beer bottles, fertilizer, toenail-clippers, etc – and the cases mysteriously vanished without a trace, as if they were fabricated stunts designed to make widely reviled cops feel they were heroes.

In case you are a Hongkonger of Chinese descent and are arrested for such a terrorist plot (say, possession of suspicious quantities of chewing gum) and you’d like your friendly Canadian or whatever Consul to come and see you, bear in mind that the Hong Kong government has suddenly decided to stop recognizing dual nationality. This conforms with international practice, but it raises the obvious question of why it was not observed for 23 years since the handover. Answer: to finesse the contradiction that hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers hold foreign passports while simultaneously living here as Hong Kong PRC citizens – at a time when Beijing was in the mood to be flexible despite its phobia about dual nationality. In short, the CCP has closed a loophole in order to assert full ownership of the emperor’s subjects.

And the government wants to introduce a law against disseminating ‘fake news’, because what self-respecting authoritarian regime doesn’t do that? This is on top of the disinterment of colonial Elizabethan sedition laws. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that, before long, one brief outburst of satire could land you in prison for NatSec, for ‘fake news’ and for incitement-of-disaffection offenses.

We’re not finished. Because brainwashing primary-school students isn’t enough, the government will be educating its own civil servants in the new correct understanding of the NatSec-era order. All that stuff we said in the past about the Basic Law and a high degree of autonomy was wrong. This is the new truth.

If it’s any consolation for the endless horrors, the CCP is increasingly treating the local pro-Beijing loyalists like little kids. And recent reports about companies leaving Hong Kong out of legal contracts has obviously hit a raw nerve among officials (note hasty Chinglish in copy). 

So Happy Cow Year! Some holiday links…

Alvin Cheung in Critical Asian Studies journal has a (concise) go at those China-watchers, ‘experts’, panda-huggers and tankies who still find it hard to admit the CCP is crushing Hong Kong.

Also on an academic note, Kevin Carrico on Hong Kong’s universities under the NatSec Regime.

What is left of Hong Kong’s universities today, then, is thousands of scholars and students who came of age in a free learning environment and are now facing an unfree environment that is only likely to become ever more repressive. 

The HK Monetary Authority’s boss issues a Q&A painting a rosy picture of capital flows and talent retention – following reports by the usual bad elements (FT, Bloomberg, etc) about funds and bankers fleeing to Singapore or elsewhere, out of the reach of the CCP. Influxes of Mainland capital and financial professionals keep the numbers looking good.

A 30-minute ABC Australia video on the ‘crushing of a rebellion’ and what Hong Kong protesters are now doing.

Jerome Cohen on an Irish businessman held hostage in China for two years…

Why any multinational corporation would allow its employees to travel to China to settle a dispute is beyond me. 

That was quick. Human Rights Watch bids farewell to Clubhouse on the Mainland.

PIIE on why Trump’s China trade deal was a flop (more about the US than the Chinese economy, but interesting).

On more worldly matters…

For hardcore market followers only, John Hussman on why this is a bubble…

…Fed easing “supports” the stock market only by affecting investor psychology. The Fed buys interest-bearing securities and replaces them with zero-interest base money…

You can try to get “out of” cash by buying stocks, but only by bidding up stock prices enough for a seller to accept the cash in return … the psychological impulse to own something other than cash, regardless of price, has created a situation where stock market valuations have been bid up to levels that imply negative S&P 500 total returns for well over 12 years.

And a really cool time-waster: radio garden – links to zillions of radio stations via Google Earth.

AFP reports that the first NatSec case before the Hong Kong courts will not have a jury. There are three grounds for dispensing with a jury in NatSec cases (which are heard by special NatSec judges chosen by the Beijing-appointed government). One is that state secrets would be discussed in court; another is that the trial involves foreign forces.

Neither remotely applies in this case: the accused is Tong Ying-kit, who held a ‘Liberate Hong Kong’ flag (‘incitement to secession’) while driving his motorbike through a group of cops (‘terrorist activities’) during the 2019 protests. So that leaves only the third flimsy excuse: the personal safety of jurors and their families. Presumably, this will be the catch-all reason for never having juries – and any risk of their pesky not-guilty verdicts – in NatSec cases (maximum sentences for which are life).

The AFP story ends…

Inside China, criminal courts have no juries, answer to the party and have a near-universal conviction rate.

Also, in political cases on the Mainland, defendants’ lawyers are often barred from representing their client and/or subject to intimidation themselves. Only a matter of time before that happens here.

But did anyone seriously imagine the CCP would tolerate a jury? It can’t even handle its people discussing sensitive subjects. Only a matter of time…

Internet radio host Wan Yiu-sing is arrested for ‘seditious intent’ (he’s already on bail for some other trumped-up BS). The law has its roots in late 16th Century England, but has now been scrapped in the UK (except for aliens, it says). 

Sedition is classified as words that incite “hatred or contempt” for the government or cause discontent and dissatisfaction among residents. So either Wan (and Tam Tak-chi) have caused all this – undeniable – ‘discontent and dissatisfaction’, or the government should be arresting itself.

Instead, schools’ NatSec propaganda artwork is taking us into a strange world where the disturbing meets the farcical. Here’s the… OK, I don’t know what it is. (Apparently from a guide to teachers to help them identify patriotic kids’ face decals and bad elements’ hairstyles?) And behold, the immense, tireless effort low-level civil servants put into the Let’s Get Brainwashed on National Security video. 

It looks as if education bureaucrats are deliberately sabotaging Beijing officials’ commands by taking the orders to engineer young people’s souls 100% literally – with a straight face – and producing laughable and obviously counterproductive materials like this. But it could be that the Bureau’s staff are slavishly devoted to the CCP’s mission to reshape Hong Kong kids’ minds, unaware that their output is too grotesque to convince even the most suggestible 10-year-old. Either way, the Mainland overseers presumably lap this stuff up.

Some links from the weekend…

Michelle Kuo and Albert Wu interviewing Sebastian Veg on Hong Kong/Taiwan and Chinese identity, the Umbrella Movement vs the 2019 Uprising, the shift in Beijing since 2012 and more. Part 1 of the conversation, from mid-Jan on the NatSec Law/Regime, is here – perhaps best to read it second. Lots of interesting ideas.

Drawing on Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Václav Havel and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Quillette piece on personal responsibility under dictatorship in Hong Kong. (A must-read for the education bureaucrats.)

And in Asia Times, Francesco Sisci on China’s view of politics as war by other means…

China is facing a challenge unprecedented in its history: to criticize and change the world or to be part of the world. 

In another boost for the UK’s BNO passports, the Hong Kong government issues measures for schools (‘specific measures’, no less) to make kids obey the NatSec Law and not sing rebellious songs or link arms.

Every school must nominate teachers or committees to ensure that students are taught that the NatSec Law is necessary and wonderful, and they are privileged to be subject to it. If schools find any student mentioning politics, they must call the police under the new Emergency Kids-discussing-politics Crisis Procedures. 

The aim is to…

…strengthen students’ virtue cultivation … and help them understand the constitutional order … and their national identity

There’s also removal of books from libraries, careful examination of notice-boards and similar fun stuff. Biology lessons are going to get weirder.

Kindergartens are included in this creepiness. And international schools will be expected to enter into the spirit of things.

See here also for the propaganda video for primary-level kids. Since most eight-year-olds are probably into (age-appropriate, wholesome) manga and anime, they will note that the vid features the same civil-service-designed cartoon characters you get in all the other infantile, condescending government publicity campaigns – and no doubt draw their own conclusions about cultivating virtue.

Coming soon: Xi Jinping Thought for kiddies, and exchange tours with Young Pioneers.

(Additional information for parents here.)

Yesterday evening, the HK Police smashed my door down, forced me to provide an anal swab, handed me a can of luncheon meat, and warned that I will be arrested if I step outside for the next 18 hours. Or at least it feels like it. Think I’ll call an end to the week before it gets any worse (unless it gets really worse). Links…

Some 10 years ago, the Hong Kong government introduced a ‘Liberal Studies’ high-school course to encourage critical thinking. Next thing, we get the 2014 Umbrella Movement and then the 2019 Uprising – so pro-Beijing figures concluded the curriculum had worked too well. Now, your average shoe-shiner is too afraid not to be seen blaming it, along with the CIA, for the city’s discontent. The most petrified and spineless are using their time and taxpayers’ money focusing intently on renaming the subject. 

From HKFP: a pointed reminder of how the Hong Kong government’s anti-pandemic efforts are largely pointless, heartless, wasteful theatrics; a call to hold Beijing responsible for its role in letting Covid-19 loose on the world; and, if the disease strikes, a reminder that traditional voodoo won’t do the trick.

Regina Ip, getting desperate in her old age, is churning out Tweets about Uighur pop stars that prove everything is fine up there. Alternatively, here’s the latest stomach-churning gruesomeness from Xinjiang (rapes in concentration camps – feel free to skip).

One thing the Hong Kong government hasn’t had to do yet: the regime in Belarus is knocking down snowmen with a red stripe across the middle – representing the flag/symbol of the revolt. 

A reminder that, historically, Chinese rulers haven’t cared much about Taiwan.

Hey – it might be interesting! In Atlantic, Jeffrey Wasserstrom asks why there are no biographies of Xi Jinping.

Why Beijing is worried that young people aren’t marrying.

In case you missed it, why the US should leverage Chinese domestic discontent with Xi Jinping, and other recommendations from ‘anonymous’.

Former US industry bosses and others call on the Biden administration to pursue decoupling with China in tech.

And (it’s perfect weather for it) some live Hong Kong archaeology action.

More ambush lockdowns on Monday night, with no Covid carriers found. Just some people stuck in a hair salon overnight. And then last night’s, which disrupted some guys having their hair dyed/permed. (Low-rent neighbourhoods have more hair stylists – that’s my theory.)

What’s the purpose?

Does it have a scientific basis in combatting the pandemic, even when no cases are identified, and even though antibodies cannot be detected during a (approx two-week) incubation period? Is it churlish to criticize officials for taking the threat of Covid-19 so apparently seriously (deep throat saliva collection packs at every post office)?

If the ambush lockdowns are not scientifically valid, could it be that Carrie Lam and her colleagues – owing to stupidity or bad advice – nonetheless sincerely believe the operations are worthwhile?

Is it a performance to show Beijing how tough, determined and zealous the Hong Kong administration is? (Beijing has urged local authorities to address the pandemic. And these lockdowns are small-scale versions of those that have taken place in the Mainland.)

Is it an excuse to spend public money on Mainland-sourced testing services?

Or are the raids, with heavy police participation, trial runs/training exercises for NatSec Regime neighbourhood lockdowns in the event of another 2019-style uprising? (EG, reports of a 12-year-old girl singing Glory to Hong Kong, or suspicions that a resident has an unregistered SIM card.) Or a way to condition the community to accept heavy-handed enforcement action – intimidation – generally? Note threats to knock doors down.

For conspiracy-theory fans (assuming the last one is not hugely unbelievable): do the CCP really just want everyone’s DNA?

More than one of the above?

At best, it seems excessive, given the virus’s limited spread in Hong Kong. At worst, cynics can’t help considering the government’s apparent reluctance to get on with vaccinations and the broader context of a city in suspended rebellion. Covid-19 has already served as a pretext for forbidding public assemblies. In what other ways might the NatSec Regime find the crisis useful?

The SCMP has a helpful explainer on how to tell if the jack-booted Ambush Raid Testing Squad are coming to kick doors down in your tenement block.

One more question to ponder: are ambush lockdowns a ruse to introduce the waddle-like-a-penguin test?

Paul Harris hit the ground semi-kowtowing when he took over as chairman of the Bar Association two weeks ago. He expressed opposition to violent protest as sternly as any government minister. He also tentatively suggested that Hong Kong could restore extradition arrangements with Western countries if Beijing made a few changes to the National Security Law, so it doesn’t blatantly override rule of law. That would fix the awkward situation where a murderer could flee Hong Kong and never face justice.

This polite and constructive proposal went down like a cup of cold sick among Beijing’s local officials. It wasn’t just because he also said the New Year Purge of over 50 pan-dems was a blatant abuse of the law. And of course it didn’t help that the ‘rule of law’ he mentioned is the Western variety the CCP detests. But Harris’s greatest wrongdoing was probably suggesting that the Hong Kong administration and local pro-Beijing figures might take the lead in creating dialogue with the Chinese government. This win-win/charming/naive idea would, to the CCP’s ears, sound like an attempt to usurp its influence over the city. Beijing tells the local administration and shoe-shiners what to think – not the other way round. Foreign lawyers don’t tell anyone.

Thus the Liaison Office issued a statement accusing Harris of ‘personal arrogance and ignorance’, ‘dragging the Bar Association into the abyss’, ‘challenging the constitutional order’ (for daring to suggest a CCP edict was imperfect) and so on. And the local Liaison Office-run media are blasting Human Rights Monitor (founded by Harris) as a US-funded agency, and declaring that the Bar Association is turning into a new Civic Party and should be stripped of its right as a professional body to decide who can or can’t be a barrister. And now Beijing’s propaganda team drags an assortment of obscurities into the orchestrated barrage of criticism.

The moral is: if you don’t want your head bitten off, don’t be cute and make sensible suggestions to the CCP. Your role is to obey, not think.

In other legal matters, the Court of Final Appeal heard Jimmy Lai’s bail case yesterday. The government argued that…

…the default position for suspected national security law violations is that no bail should be granted to defendants.

Which basically means the regime can put anyone in jail for months – many months – on the flimsiest, most absurd charges, so long as it comes under the vague NatSec Law. And, if you are Jimmy Lai, transport you in chains in an armored truck under armed guard, just to send the rest of us that message (again): Your role is to obey, not think.

The hearing is also controversial because there is no overseas Court of Final Appeal judge present. For an extra dash of weirdness, in the actual trial starting in a couple weeks, Lai is being defended by Audrey Eu, while her brother Benjamin Yu is the prosecutor (replacing Dave Perry QC). This would not be allowed in some jurisdictions because, in theory, one sibling might (say) go easy on the other, to spare him/her embarrassment. HKFP explains. 

And then the Diplomat (picking up on Stand News) mentions an (easily) overlooked trend in the weaponization of Hong Kong’s courts: a multitude of individually minor travesties of justice in lower-level hearings before magistrates and district courts in which the police get away with providing false testimony.

To end on a cheery note, try a sample of the sudden outbreak of obituaries – from the Australian, the Guardian and the Business Standard.