Big Lychee, Various Sectors

Traumatized-Kids-Gate continues to unfold (background here; Standard editorial reflects typical reaction). As the first NatSec horror to be inflicted specifically on small children, this has been the most embarrassing for the authorities. Or it would be if they had any shame or awareness. The Guardian notes…

Hong Kong’s education authorities sought to distance themselves from the incident.

…and indeed shift the blame onto teachers for not using their ‘judgement’. Most schools would no doubt love to distance themselves from patriotic brainwashing, but dare not in the NatSec-era climate. If a teacher deviates from the Education Bureau’s guidance notes for new political indoctrination classes, someone might call a secret police snitch line and report them. The education bureaucrats who wrote the materials also have Beijing’s NatSec officials breathing down their necks. Everyone is trying desperately to conform to the new order for fear of getting the Ta Kung Pao treatment. Not exposing the little kiddies to beheadings would have been a risk.

That NatSec ethos of people being too afraid to think for themselves extends well beyond teaching. Which brings us to Lai and other activists getting prison terms for ‘organising, taking part in, or inciting others to participate in’ the Tiananmen Massacre vigil last year. The prosecution and court maintain that it’s all about Covid and public health – nothing political, OK? For a different view, don’t miss the different but equally powerful statements in Jimmy Lai’s letter to the court and Chow Hang-tung’s mitigation.

Hong Kong’s Security Secretary warns that a nightmarish horde of evils – anti-China disruptors, destructive forces and lurking foreigners – are deliberately obstructing the holding of a successful election. Putting previous winning candidates in jail has nothing to do with it.

Even lurking foreigners who are lurking overseas are not safe. Hong Kong trade bureaucrats based in London, who used to focus on deepening economic ties with the UK, now threaten the Sunday Times with legal penalties for incitement to boycott the election.

Back in Hong Kong, officials remind schools to traumatize six-year-olds with care when making them patriotic. 

Lawyer Samuel Bickett critiques the guilty verdict against Jimmy Lai for June 4 vigil  ‘incitement’…

It is often the case that seasoned activists commit offenses to highlight the injustice of the law they are breaking. That may have been the case with Chow and Ho, two long-time activists who I admire deeply. But with Lai, there is no evidence whatsoever that he incited anyone to attend the assembly. Instead, Judge Woodcock appears to have convicted him simply for being a famous political opponent of the government. And in her written Reasons for Verdict, she did little to hide it…

…The ruling is plainly, insidiously wrong as a matter of law.

Maybe at least the Court of Final Appeal will help protect citizens from abuses of power, right? Or maybe not. The Court refuses to overturn a refusal of bail for five speech therapists accused of sedition – ‘bringing into hatred or contempt or to exciting disaffection’ against the government – by publishing kids’ picture books about sheep.

Some apologists for the NatSec regime imply that the dismantling of Hong Kong’s freedoms and rule of law are worth it because we will get better governance. Which brings us to a nasty accident in Central’s Staunton Street that leaves one dead. As with many parts of Hong Kong, if you go through this crowded area with its lack of sidewalk space, you might wonder why cars are allowed in it at all – let alone to go up and park in steep cul-de-sacs. Anyway, the key thing: the government has apparently disappeared a proposal to pedestrianize parts of Soho.

(Prediction: the Anti-Pedestrian Dept will erect signage throughout the area saying ‘Engage handbrake when parking illegally’.)

Some links to get us through to mid-week…

HKFP op-ed on the Hong Kong government’s fear that overseas domestic workers might get paid half-decently.

‘How the West invited China to eat its lunch’ – the BBC’s economics editor looks at the (with hindsight) naive decision 20 years ago to let China into the WTO.

The Economist (paywalled) columnist Chaguan on the CCP’s claims to have a more perfect and effective democracy than the West’s version… 

If controlling covid gives Mr Xi a mandate, were his predecessors illegitimate when officials spent months mishandling an earlier deadly disease, sars? If the economy slows will the party, by its own logic, still deserve to rule?

Glossy magazines for adolescent girls aren’t what they used to be:Teen Vogue looks at the women around the world urging a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

History Today on the creation of a national language for China…

To imagine the process of creating a Chinese national language as a close vote and a regional power struggle is to ignore how these men actually conceived of a ‘Chinese language’: not as one language among many, but a linguistic representative of the nation’s soul. The question these reformers were asking was not ‘which fangyan do we choose?’ but ‘how do we encapsulate what it means to be Chinese in a spoken language?’ 

At first the authorities seemed to fear a low turnout at Hong Kong’s December 19 quasi-election as a sign that the exercise lacks legitimacy. Then Carrie Lam suggested that she might welcome a mere trickle of voters as an indication of near-universal contentment with her administration. And now it’s Friday, and we’re back to denouncing the prospect of a poor showing at the polling stations… 

“Foreign forces using whatever means and excuses trying to interfere in Hong Kong’s Legco elections will be fought back by the Chinese government,” warned Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong Liu Guangyuan on Thursday.

And the ICAC is arresting more people who share a Facebook post containing forbidden ideas – ‘inciting’ voters to boycott or spoil their ballots (both legal actions). 

On the subject of ‘incitement’, Jimmy Lai, Gwyneth Ho and Chow Hang-tung are found guilty after pleading innocent to unauthorized assembly charges (aimed not only at pro-democrats but at the annual June 4 Tiananmen massacre vigil). 

Samuel Bickett on the verdict against Jimmy Lai…

“Incitement requires that there be actual communication.” See [this 1994 Law Reform Commission report] (citing R v. Banks, (1873) 12 Cox CC). This is a pretty fundamental black letter legal point that any first year law student can state. It is exceedingly unlikely the judge didn’t know this.

Which brings us to former lawmaker Dennis Kwok – on the end of ‘One Country, Two Systems’…

Hong Kong’s experience has taught us that freedom without democratic governance is ultimately unsustainable, and trusting those in power to act with restraint is futile. 

The Spectator looks at how China is turning in on itself.

A couple of out-of-area pieces for the weekend…

It’s not your ears – film-makers really are making movies with harder-to-hear dialogue. Why? Because, basically, they can.

And for fans of scathing reviews of restaurants – the ‘worst Michelin place we ever went to’…

Maybe the staff just ran out of food that night. Maybe they confused our table with that of their ex-lover’s. Maybe they were drunk. But we got twelve kinds of foam, something that I can only describe as “an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport”, and a teaspoon of savory ice cream that was olive flavored.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam takes the election-boycott agony onto a new level of mind games: if you don’t vote it means you love me and also have a very tiny penis, so there. (If her mysterious ancient-wisdom ‘saying’ about satisfied citizens not voting is correct, DAB/FTU/Regina-followers who turn out are challenging the CCP. Discuss.) 

Slightly Weird Report of the Week Award goes to the SCMP story that mentions in passing that the Hong Kong Police plan to ‘publish a book on the Greater Bay Area for kindergartens’. Hipper than writing parking tickets, I guess.

Courtesy of the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, an Apple Daily special edition with contributions from Kevin Carrico and others – for Jimmy Lai’s 74th birthday.

Reporters Without Borders issue a report on plummeting press freedom in Hong Kong.

CMP on why China’s patriotic blockbuster Battle at Lake Changjin is a hit at home and a flop overseas (includes brutal extracts from movie reviews)…

…while The Battle at Lake Changjin may have been a domestic success, earning more than 895 million dollars by the end of November, it has seriously misfired internationally, and the self-congratulatory tone of much coverage inside China points to the continued myopia of the country’s media system when it comes to crafting stories the rest of the world can relate to.

CNN offers a plain and effective guide to Beijing’s insistence that it is a democracy.

And as a reminder of what Chinese-style democracy is missing, check out this presidential campaign ad from Chile. Been replaying this all morning.

My kindergarten was at a convent school, and I eventually studied at a Jesuit university; in between, I was an altar boy and became (or realized I was) an atheist. But even if you weren’t blessed with a Catholic upbringing, do read British human rights advocate and devout RC Benedict Rogers on Carrie Lam’s betrayal of her faith…

A Catholic should be ready to genuflect, bow, kneel or prost[r]ate oneself before God alone, but a Catholic should never kowtow or kneel before a dictator, a tyrant, a criminal or before evil.

…At Saturday’s Mass to consecrate and install Hong Kong’s Bishop Stephen Chow Sau-yan, SJ, it was noticeable that the administration’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, who has presided over the dismantling of the city’s freedoms and autonomy over the past four years, sat in the front row*. It was also very noticeable that she left just before Holy Communion.

…She needs to decide where her primary loyalties lie — to God, her Church and the people of Hong Kong or to the brutal Chinese Communist Party regime whose dirty work she has so eagerly done for her masters in Beijing. Ultimately, no person can serve two masters.

Carrie is also now rejecting ‘Western-style’ democracy, blaming the pursuit of it for Hong Kong’s economic imbalance and ineffective governance – both of which must surely be due to Beijing’s choice of local leaders since 1997. 

Security Secretary PK Tang is denouncing exiled activist Nathan Law as ‘despicable’ for speaking at Joe Biden’s democracy summit (and don’t forget ‘coward’ and ‘traitor’). And Hong Kong and Macau Affairs boss Xia Baolong urges Hongkongers to cast their ‘sacred’ ballots to show their confidence in ‘One Country, Two Systems’. But they don’t claim to follow the teachings of Christ (unless Tang does – not sure). Perhaps the answer to the question ‘what does Carrie believe?’ is simply ‘whatever she is told to’.

On when not to accept Holy Communion, a word from the experts…

If we are in the state of mortal sin, it is better to abstain from receiving Our Lord. 

* I remember hearing that when new Governor David Wilson first attended Sunday service at the Anglican cathedral, the colony’s aristocrats were horrified that he took a pew at the back with the amahs.

Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang writes a wrathful letter to the Wall Street Journal insisting that Hong Kong still has freedom – and then, in a nice touch, threatening the paper with legal action for ‘incitement’. This for publishing an editorial mentioning that election boycotts/blank ballots are a way for voters to express their political views. 

The WSJ being an English-language paper with a fairly impenetrable paywall, few people in Hong Kong would have noticed the editorial – but thanks to Erick’s missive, now everyone knows about it (even if, like me, they still haven’t actually read it).

If you enjoy the Hong Kong government’s whines to the media, immerse yourself in the glorious treasure trove that is the ‘clarifications archive’.

And do you remember when a Chief Executive announced that he would boycott a LegCo election?

In case you are still undecided – Hong Kong and Macau Affairs boss Xia Baolong wants Hongkongers to vote. 

David Webb analyzes HKFP poll results and finds (or confirms) a major correlation between age/education and political leanings in Hong Kong.

DW on the gradual suppression of press and speech freedom in Hong Kong. 

A rolling tally of traffic accidents in Hong Kong per day (by ‘accidents’ we mostly mean ‘morons not driving properly’)…

…every day in HK there’s over a hundred road crashes reported and dozens of injuries.

Don’t often link to the UK’s Daily Mail, but here’s an interesting piece on a Conservative MP blasting leftist Labourites as useful idiots for backing the CCP…

[A] coalition of left-wing campaigners and Chinese activists blame ‘aggressive Government statements against China’ for driving a spike in anti-Asian racism, claiming it is leading to a ‘new cold war’.

If I were a hardened cynic, I might suspect that the UK leadership opened the door to Hong Kong immigrants on the assumption that the newcomers would likely vote Tory.

Wired joins in the Peng Shuai analysis…

When civic spaces are closed and groups deleted, individuals with few or no connections outside of social media have backlogs of resources and connections taken away. In the case of WeChat specifically—which users in China utilize for chats, payments, blog publishing, travel, and other digital record keeping—a suspension or ban cuts a user off from many everyday communication and life tools.

This is not about topics. This censorship is fundamentally about the dismantling of social resources.

And I join in the https://app.wombo.art/ trendy fad…

ICAC boss Simon Peh feels a need again to give the impression that any public mention of boycotting the December 19 quasi-election might be illegal…

“I’m not saying that offering such an option in the survey [is] definitely against the law, but I don’t know how they would ask the question, how they would collate the data or how they would release the result,” Peh said.

“If there is any element which amounts to inciting other people not to vote or to cast an invalid vote openly, publicly, that could be liable under the ordinance.”

Peh however noted that it isn’t illegal for people to cast blank or invalid ballots.

When Peh declares ‘I’m not saying’ to be safe, he highlights a key difference between Western and Mainland political rhetorical style. In Western intercourse, speakers often drop in phrases like ‘in my opinion’, ‘in our view’, ‘we feel’, ‘I think’ and so on, to at least appear reasonable. None of that from Chinese spokesmen, who just rigidly recite the official line as incontrovertible, and come across as doctrinaire, hectoring and constantly angry.

Another rule of corporate or political communication is to be consistent and not fall into the trap of sending different messages to different audiences. CNN on China’s weird Peng Shuai dilemma – having a state-run newspaper rant internationally on Mainland-banned social media while maintaining total silence on the issue domestically.

“We could talk here about a two-pronged strategy, about how China has enforced complete silence at home while pushing a narrative externally about meddling journalists and the politicizing of sport. But to call it a strategy at all suggests a sophistication that is not really there,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project.

“What we actually see is desperation … It’s an extremely sensitive issue for the leadership. I think probably one of the most sensitive news stories that’s happened in the last decade.”

Politico on Joe Biden’s ‘democracy summit’, which is guaranteed to annoy all the right people – ‘China is furious’. Beijing misses a golden opportunity to keep quiet and ignore the contrived-sounding event and issues a desperate white paper on its own ‘democracy’…

China’s political system today is as different from Western democracy as Chinese characters from Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. But it does not make this system inferior or less attractive, Yury Tavrovsky, head of the “Russian Dream-Chinese Dream” analytic center of the Izborsk Club, told the Global Times. 

Global Times offers a similarly laughable comparison between the Chinese and US election systems. Tankies will no doubt take it at face value. Bear in mind that the purely ceremonial exercises in the Mainland are even less pluralistic and up-for-grabs than Hong Kong’s quasi-election, which has vestigial features from freer times, like campaigning on the street and candidates masquerading as opposition.

The ‘we are democratic too’ claims are even richer given that Beijing has long dismissed the core ingredients of representative government – like a free press and independent judiciary – as evil foreign ideas unsuited to the motherland and indeed threats to one-party rule. More mixed messaging.

As with the WHO, the Olympics mafia are struggling after succumbing to Beijing’s ‘elite capture’ and discourse management tactics. For anyone following #MeToo or Peng Shuai – or who has worked for an emperor-tycoon – try YouTube vid I was a bodyguard for a Chinese serial rapist.

Another poll the government won’t like – schools report a doubling in the numbers of students and teachers leaving.

Some reading for the weekend…

9-Dash Line on the rewriting of history in Hong Kong…

The notion of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ has already been hollowed out politically and legally, and by further policing history within Hong Kong, the hope is to culturally integrate the city with the mainland.

Science.org on the departure of senior management and gradual Mainlandization of Hong Kong universities.

Reporters Without Borders mark the first year of Jimmy Lai’s detention.

Propublica on Beijing’s pressure and intimidation against Mainland students on US campuses…

“This is an overall extension of the police state,” said Anna Puglisi, a senior fellow at Georgetown University who served until last year as the U.S. intelligence community’s national counterintelligence officer for East Asia. “It is brazen. But when you talk about it, people act as if you’re nuts. There has been no cost to China for this.”

Atlantic adds to the commentary on Peng Shuai…

She’s not advocating for democracy, or calling for reform, or even directly standing up for women’s rights. Yet she is being treated as if she is. For a political party that presents itself as infallible, anything that suggests otherwise is perceived as dangerous. The corollary to this rule is that the party’s most senior leaders, especially those with the right connections and relationships, can act as they wish, without fear of public scrutiny or reproach.

Another thread (in fact, a review) on the leaked Xinjiang documents (background here).

More policymaking-by-state-media: Ta Kung Pao accuses Hong Kong’s PORI pollsters of breaking the law by surveying the public’s voting intentions – and the (apparently, vaguely) relevant official at the ICAC suddenly ‘can’t rule out the possibility’ that asking such questions breaks the law. The problem, of course, was not the pollsters’ question, but the respondents’ answers suggesting a low voter turnout. 

Another survey shows that young people are not interested in careers in the Greater Bay Opportunities!!! Area. Was that question also illegal, for not prompting the correct replies?

The ICAC boss’s need to awkwardly echo a CCP newspaper’s baseless claim reminds us who’s really in charge. It also confirms how frustrated Beijing’s officials are at the prospect of a low turnout in the forthcoming election. And we can conclude that PORI is toast now. 

In other NatSec horrors, the government prevents a lawyer with human-rights expertise from taking a political case. And primary schools must make kids love the motherland…

The framework also lists over 20 examples for teachers to follow, including one suggesting teachers play the song The East Is Red when teaching primary students about the achievements of Chinese aeronautical science. 

If you’re scratching your head over that, the SCMP mercifully explains…

The revolutionary ballad, which was popular during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and praises Mao Zedong as “people’s great saviour”, was the first song that China’s earliest satellite beamed back to earth after it was launched in 1970.