Big Lychee, Various Sectors

‘Sources’ say Chief Secretary (for nine months) and ex-cop John Lee might ‘run for election’ or ‘enter the race’ for Chief Executive. There being no election or race (ignore blather about candidacy, convenors and campaigns), this means Beijing is appointing him as Carrie Lam’s replacement. The CCP has tired of Carrie’s warmth and charisma and decided to go full grim authoritarian apparatchik.

To the extent it makes any difference in terms of substance, expect an even more top-down, slavishly loyal, law-and-order-obsessed NatSec Regime to mop up remaining dissent and civil society (recent examples here and here). Internet censorship, surveillance, anti-terrorism patrols. Zero tolerance for laughing. The police state c’est moi. Many will look back at 2017-22 as a gentler time – probably from overseas.

Another rumour: Financial Secretary Paul Chan will ‘consider running’. Would a regime that backs Putin in Ukraine pick Paul Chan? Thank you. Also – the apparent leaks are all a joke to manage expectations so everyone is overjoyed at another five years of Carrie. As if people’s feelings are a consideration.

Today’s guest artist (click on a pic) dedicates her song to Regina Ip.

Enjoy the cheerful chaos of Covid policy while it lasts. The Mainland Chinese folk-medicine expert advises Hong Kong to implement the ‘Three Easies’ and the ‘Three Reductions and One Priority’. And the Hong Kong government unveils its latest exercise in futility: universal but voluntary self-testing over three consecutive days, with those testing positive kindly requested to inform the authorities. 

Doing it for just one day would be too easy – you must put serious effort into putting yourself at risk of being sent off to an isolation camp, and don’t expect any actual incentives encourage participation.

Some say the idea is to use (predictable) non-compliance to justify a subsequent compulsory mass-testing. Others think this city-wide self-testing will justify not doing that. As ever, we are left in bewilderment.

I guess columbariums are closed? Some Ching Ming links…

Hongkonger Eric Yip wins the UK’s national poetry competition. He’s 19. Sneaks up on you, and is even more compelling on a second reading.

George Magnus on China’s political and economic outlook – ‘There is no liberal reform agenda in China anymore’.

Antony Beevor (of Stalingrad and Berlin fame) on Putin fighting WWII…

An almost Stalinist determination to right the Russian military—backed by the execution of deserters and failing officers—could well extend the conflict in a bloodbath of relentless, grinding destruction.

A look at the town where Volodymyr Zelensky grew up.

A history of Singapore’s 1979-onwards ‘speak Mandarin’ campaigns in posters and other publicity materials. In 1957, most Singapore Chinese used Fujian/Guangzhou languages – and only 0.1% spoke Mandarin.

If you’re passing the FCC, check out the exhibition of up-close photographs of scary Hong Kong wildlife by Lawrence Hylton.

The Guardian on the UK judges’ departure from Hong Kong’s CFA…

[Activist Chung Ching Kwong] told the Guardian the campaigners had been seeking to have the British judges removed from the court of final appeal as their presence was “no longer acting as a moderating force, as the government has claimed, but was giving a false sense of legitimacy to the Hong Kong government”.

Kwong said the non-permanent judges had no impact over political cases, and so there was no positive influence they could wield by remaining.

The foreign part-timers’ presence on the CFA is purely symbolic. Thread on the neutering of Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal…

The CFA can do very little when the legal system as a whole has deteriorated to the extent that it has

Overseas [judges] will only ever see a carefully curated subset of cases (and you can bet your bottom dollar none of them will be “sensitive” ones)

From Transit Jam, Hong Kong government continues its fight against two-wheeled transport.

From China Quarterly, a long paper on Hong Kong’s 2019 ‘Freedom Summer’. Heavy on the serious academic jargon/sociology-babble – but about the spontaneity and community spirit of the uprising. 

RFA interview with Samuel Bickett.

In the Spectator – how Henry Kissinger was co-opted by China.

And on other matters…

Trump’s golf statement on March 28. And a golf magazine’s story on his sportsmanship…

…the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele.”

Great moments in statistics/cartography: the most popular topping/sauce to go on chips in the UK by county, no less…

Observations include a distinct ‘Gravy Belt’ extending further than stereotypically imagined, curving into Mid/West Wales … Cheese did best in remote rural areas such as the Scottish Highlands.

A symbolic slap in the face for officials insisting that Hong Kong still has rule of law. The two top members of the UK Supreme Court resign from the city’s panel of overseas Court of Final Appeal judges, stating that they…

…cannot continue to sit in Hong Kong without appearing to endorse an administration which has departed from values of political freedom, and freedom of expression…

HKFP report, including comments from British government officials.

Playing it ever-so cool, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice issues a whiny blog-statement that rebuts the UK’s criticism of declining rule of law in Hong Kong without actually mentioning it.

The Chief Executive addresses the issue rather more directly – except you will never know, thanks to the government’s secret press-release weapon of using 100 words where 20 would do, so anyone attempting to read it all the way through will fall asleep halfway. We can imagine that Carrie finds this a welcome distraction from the never-ending zero-braincells Covid nightmare.

The Law Society begs the judges to reconsider – almost rather touching. The Bar Association indulges in some even more feeble hand-wringing. The word ‘regret’ needs a rest,

For a genuine pithy-and-pissy mouth-frothing rant, we must turn to China’s officials in Hong Kong (the Foreign Affairs ones), who deliver some serious freaking-out about ‘playing the foreign judges card’, ‘smearing the NatSec Law’, etc. What’s interesting here is that they genuinely seem miffed about the justices pulling out. They could be defiant and patriotic and say (as many Chinese nationalists do) ‘We don’t need no stinking foreign judges’, de-colonization, blah blah. 

Former CE CY Leung gets similarly irate on a social-media post – even accusing UK officials of damaging separation of powers by pressuring the judges to quit.

Samuel Bickett has some criticisms of his own…

Lords Reed & Hodge resigned under political pressure, yes, but on the way out they defended the indefensible: A court system filled with judges who have cravenly abandoned their duty to the law & the defendants whose fates they control.

Since the authorities started using the NatSec and archaic sedition laws, observers have debated whether the presence of these overseas judges helped protect rule of law in Hong Kong or unwittingly provided a veneer to a rotting system. The jailing without bail of people like Claudia Mo, Jimmy Lai, Long Hair and so on – essentially for their opinions – surely answered that question. The Canadian and Australian part-timers still on the CFA will now also presumably withdraw.

You might have thought that Justices Reed and Hodge jointly win Judge of the Day Award. But no! That prize goes to a more junior and locally employed judge arguably proving that independent courts can still exist in Hong Kong. An unvaccinated woman applies for a judicial review of the government’s Vaccine Pass. Judge Russell Coleman turns her down, but in his decision makes some rather pointed remarks about officials’ handling of Covid. For example…

There may well be room for people to say that a number of decisions and announcements made by the HKSAR Government relating to the Covid-19 pandemic have seemed to be: lacking in logic or common sense; riddled with inconsistencies; short on empathy and human understanding; detached from local personal and business realities; focused on distractions, hence being reactive to what seems urgent at the expense being proactive to what is important; blind to the need for a coherent longer-term strategy and contingency planning and the clear public communication of it; and sometimes even apparently contrary to the very ‘science’ which is invoked to justify them.

Ouch. And… 

…the HKSAR has pursued a policy to combat the pandemic which is in line with the policy pursued in Mainland China, but one increasingly out of step with most other countries and regions.  That policy has been called the “zero Covid” policy, later shifted to or renamed as the “dynamic zero Covid” policy – though it did not inspire confidence that the person in charge of implementing the shift in policy could not give a clear description of it, also showing that a nice slogan is not a substitute for an actual strategy.

The neat thing is that this brutal editorial these comments do not (to this layman) really inform his argument or need to appear in the written decision – but I guess judges need to get things off their chests too.

Which brings us to Hong Kong’s tragic Covid policies, and the prioritization of praising Beijing over using science. A government website lists, with a straight face, certain Chinese traditional medicines as having the following medieval-sounding qualities… 

To clear scourge, remove toxin, diffuse the lung and discharge heat … Dispel wind and unleash the inhibited lung energy, clearing heat-toxicity … Relieve exterior syndromes and remove dampness, regulate Qi and harmonize the function of the spleen and stomach.

(Link via Tripperhead, who deserves a Gold Bauhinia Medal – and is profiled on a Bloomberg vid.)

The pressing, overriding, number-one, get-on-with-it!!! priority must, surely, be to vaccinate the elderly. Instead, Hong Kong officials roll out the red carpet for a delegation of traditional Chinese medicine experts…

Traditional Chinese medicine will be very effective in reducing severe illness and deaths,” [CE Carrie] Lam said.

…”Elderly patients in Hong Kong have more severe illnesses and a higher death rate,” [Mainland TCM expert Xiaolin] Tong said.

“Chinese medicine has its advantages, especially in treating elderly patients with chronic diseases, because it not only targets the coronavirus but also helps treat their other illnesses.”

Full-blown adulatory press release here. More breathless praise for ceaseless Mainland anti-epidemic supplies. 

You will soon be getting your very own anti-epidemic service bags with free boxes of quack voodoo placebos with mystery herbal ingredients that might damage your liver. Check out the logistics and manpower. (Can we grind up the TMC pills as fertilizer for potted plants? Hate throwing stuff away.) 

More official messaging reflecting government priorities: the latest (in fact, first) Safe Community Newsletter from the Inter-Departmental Counter-Terrorism Unit. The oh-so Civil Service graphic design is itself borderline aesthetic terror.

A few more links, for ambience…

Professor Philip Cowley on how Hong Kong’s zero-Covid mania backfired…

Hong Kong ran out of coffins as well as smugness. 

Bloomberg op-ed on the end of ‘antifragile’ Hong Kong…

…the administration’s public statements have tended to emphasize the city’s inability to cope and dependency on help from mainland China.

(An interesting point: unless you’re past your mid-40s or so, you have no memory of a time when Hong Kong had leaders who displayed pride and confidence in the city.) 

HKFP on people stranded overseas giving up hope (loosely defined) of returning to Hong Kong anytime soon.

The above picture shows:

1. a pizza factory
2. the left-luggage facility at an airport
3. Hong Kong…

…has further expanded its capacity at public mortuaries, as well as for body identification and cremation, to cope with an accumulating number of corpses.

No scientific logic involved, but the Hong Kong government ‘streamlines’ the flight suspensions regime in such a way few will notice much difference. And with impeccable timing, the Airport Authority announces that the third runway will start operations later this year. (As a Mainland-built Covid isolation facility?)

Much of the mental trauma Hong Kong people are undergoing arises not just from the effects of harsh and unscientific Covid policies, but from trying to work out why?

From a (probably paywalled) Economist story on Beijing’s obsession with internal stability ahead of the CCP congress later this year…

If officials relax the [zero-Covid] policy to protect the economy they would risk a surge of cases that could overwhelm China’s fragile public-health system.

Surely the root of the Hong Kong dilemma. If Hong Kong transitions to ‘living with Covid’ ahead of the Mainland, what message does that send the Chinese public about the CCP’s infallibility? We have to drag out absurd flight suspensions so as not to look different.

And then the icing on the cake: an HKFP article points out how omicron has given Beijing an opportunity to reduce barriers between the Mainland and Hong Kong systems via traditional medicine and health workers. (Extra context: a relentless focus on travel-, quarantine- and school-related policies that encourage the middle class and expats to leave.)

As Dr Owens mentions in his latest, the greatest suffering falls on the least well-off. And…

The failure to define a strategy has resulted in an attempt to walk a tight rope, balancing on the one side, science and evidence, and on the other a political constituency seemingly unable to understand the most basic concepts of biology.

And how did this get past the SCMP’s Party Secretary? The patriotism/Nat-Sec-driven dismantling of district civic groups – and official boycotting of remaining pan-dem activists – has undermined the fight against Covid at neighbourhood level…

“It took a few months for the government to break community links that had taken 40 years to build up. We can’t expect anyone to have the ability to rebuild them soon.”

The official explanation for Shanghai’s use of phased lockdowns in handling its latest outbreak: the region’s economic importance to the rest of the world. Sounds like making-it-up-as-we-go bullshit. Probably a sign of tension between zero-Covid ideologues and science-based pragmatists as the city is poised to go the way of Hong Kong.

For chart geeks – HKFP presents highlights of Hong Kong’s omicron saga in graphic form.

And, on non-Covid affairs, how Beijing is enforcing correct thinking on Ukraine among educators.

A telling tale of two cities: Singapore follows science and eases Covid travel restrictions and mask-wearing, while Hong Kong imports Mainland Chinese folk medicine ‘experts’. After consulting some oracle bones, I wonder whether public acclaim for the voodoo stuff is a patriotic face-saving quid-pro-quo for letting Hong Kong deviate from some of Beijing’s more pointless zero-Covid obsessions like compulsory mass-testing. These are quite charitable oracle bones.

Remember when Hong Kong used to laugh at Singapore?

So what are the chances that within one month we will get reports of people being rushed to hospital with liver problems after taking the Traditional Chinese Medicine?

For a hard-hitting account of how Mainland-imposed politics has cost Hongkongers’ lives, see this Bloomberg piece…

Hong Kong’s situation is the product of several specific policy failures, which stem partly from Beijing’s decision to take greater control of the financial hub after 2019’s pro-democracy protests.

More from Vice…

…more than its ferocity, this wave of outbreak has stood out for how preventable it was, experts say.

An HKFP interview with newly released/expelled Samuel Bickett.

Regina Ip is going full tankie these days – the US made Putin slaughter thousands of Ukrainian civilians because evil West something something.

An HKFP op-ed on China’s problem with winning trust.

After hinting that compulsory universal Covid testing is not going to happen, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam again seems to reverse course, suggesting that it might indeed still go ahead. This seems to be a way to pacify pro-government lawmakers who – at officials’ request – dutifully supported the plan, only to be left looking stupid when the government U-turned and announced an easing of anti-Covid measures on Monday.

Not that the authorities’ policies are looking much more coherent. The CE is now saying the moving of school summer holidays to March is to reduce infections, though she first presented the plan as a way to free up space for mass-testing. Enforcement squads are still locking down buildings in pursuit of Covid cases – when maybe half the population has now been infected. Carrie actually seems proud that quarantine regulations for arrivals and airline suspensions are still making travel near-impossible, when other countries are now waving vaccinated passengers through. And she is openly rejecting expert advice on ‘transitioning to endemicity’ on the grounds that it’s based merely on academic models. Not least, we are told opening up cross-border travel must still come before all else.

The local leadership seems to be trapped between Chinese government ideologues insisting that the CCP be seen to vanquish the virus and Mainland experts urging a de-facto abandonment of the hopeless ‘zero-Covid’ goal. But when we look back at this one day, the tragedy of Hong Kong’s post-2019 patriots-only Nat-Sec regime will be very stark. The further the city moves away from open(-ish) government exposed to opposition voices and a critical press and towards a top-down Leninist system of control, the worse the quality of administration gets.

Instead, we get non-stop struggles against mysterious hostile forces. US lawyer Samuel Bickett is unceremoniously kicked out of Hong Kong to join the ranks of foreigners colluding with each other (his statement). And the Nat-Sec Police valiantly/earnestly/without a shred of self-effacing irony uncover a plot by a 60-ish couple to found a ‘Darth Vadar’ army of ‘black knights’ (‘radicalized by fake news’) to launch a revolution to overthrow the CCP with crossbows, a stockpile of foreign currency, and seditious chatter on social media. A Nat-Sec judge refuses the pair bail.

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Financial Secretary Paul Chan plans to invite international businessmen to the Rugby Sevens to witness Hong Kong’s vibrancy. Wonderfully fawning Standard editorial here.

The Hong Kong government announces a gradual but nonetheless unmistakable retreat from zero-Covid. Flight suspensions are…

…“no longer timely,” as the pandemic situation in the listed countries [is] often “no worse than Hong Kong.”

Social distancing will be relaxed, schools will go back to normal, and the mass-testing idea looks deader than ever. The authorities are also (separately) putting more effort into getting the elderly vaccinated.

The introduction of common sense will be dragged out in phases over months so it looks like an orderly plan enabled by the astounding success of existing policy, rather than an embarrassing admission that the latter was a disaster. Of course, in theory officials could always do another U-turn. But it looks serious this time (spin-doctors even had the gumption to manage expectations over the last few days). And it is surely not a coincidence that there are more signs of a cautious, tentative, maybe-sort of rethink about zero-Covid in the Mainland.

Every silver lining has a cloud. The parasite lobby looks forward to cramming Hong Kong with millions of tourists by year-end. After the last face-mask has been dumped in the trash, the last children’s playground reopened and the coffin supply restored, Hong Kong will still be left with fumbling government-by-patriots and a NatSec regime obsessed with sedition, fake news and terrorism. 

If Beijing can extricate itself from zero-Covid – a trap created by the leadership’s need to craft a narrative of CCP infallibility – could it also back away from siding with Vladimir Putin? Some mid-week links (I’m ironing the cat tomorrow)…

George Magnus on how Ukraine, Covid and reliance on the private sector could undermine Xi Jinping’s ‘common prosperity’ vision. 

From GMF, the consequences for Beijing of backing Putin…

Walking away from Putin now is unlikely to gain China much credit and would only leave it more exposed. It has stuck by far less useful partners in the past. 

The Daily Beast on the possibility of a Putin assassination…

…poisoning Putin wouldn’t be an easy task. According to a source who works in the upper echelons of a Russian ministry, Putin in February allegedly sacked the some 1,000 people—from cooks to launderers to secretaries to bodyguards—who catered to his daily personal and professional needs, and replaced them with a new group of attendants.

A lengthy Octavian Report interview on what goes on in Putin’s mind.

An LRB review of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War by Nicholas Mulder.

Everyone is waiting to know how much Chief Executive Carrie Lam intends to relax Hong Kong’s Covid restrictions on travel and social gathering. She announces the plans today – though they still won’t take effect for another four weeks.

Realistically, the best we can expect is a reduction in quarantine periods for inbound passengers as a sop to the increasingly angry international business community – and little more. The government seems systematically incapable of not dashing public hopes at every turn. And, after all, there are still some public spaces that haven’t been wrapped up in miles of barrier tape, and isolation camps to build. Better news would be other-worldly. 

At best, it seems the government might abandon U-turns and flip-flopping, and instead embrace determined stopping-and-starting, moving slightly forward and then lurching into reverse. Maybe it will make the populace furious in a different way. Worth a try.

Carrie tells state media that Hong Kong’s experience fighting Covid is an example of the success of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. Who are we to disagree?