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What's wrong with Hong Kong (and how to fix it)

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  • This is the best article I've seen on the suppression of freedom in Hong Kong, and how Taiwan is negotiating the dangerous path of its relations with China. The depth of understanding of both Hong Kong and Taiwan is astonishing, particularly for an author who casually mentions having to use an interpreter.

    Is Taiwan next?, by Sarah A. Topol,
    The New York Times Magazine, August 8, 2021


    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/m...wan-china.html



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    • Unfortunately can't access. Nonetheless, I can't see how anyone would think those 23 million in Taiwan would be happy to give up their freedoms in exchange for a version of slavery which is what Xi is all about.

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      • China Hands Hong Kong 500-Point To-Do List, SCMP Says

        by Jenni Marsh, Oct 12, 2021: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...list-scmp-says

        China’s top agency in Hong Kong handed the city’s leaders a to-do list with 500 policy demands, according to local media, evidence of Beijing’s growing footprint in the Asian financial hub.

        The Liaison Office assembled the list after consulting with local residents over the past few weeks, the South China Morning Post newspaper said Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. The body planned to handle those tasks that relate to the functions of mainland authorities, such as cooperation with neighboring cities in southern China, as well as the reopening of the border.

        A spokesperson for Lam’s office declined to comment, saying they weren’t aware of the report.

        Staff for the Chinese agency, including Director Luo Huining, met with almost 4,000 local residents between Sept. 30 and Oct. 10, according to a statement posted on the office’s website Tuesday. Their mission was to convey “the central government’s care and love for Hong Kong, and in-depth understanding of the policy of benefiting Hong Kong and the people,” the office said.

        The outreach drive coincided with Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s delivery last week of an annual policy address, suggesting that the once low-profile body was becoming more active in governing the former British colony. Beijing has tightened its grip on Hong Kong, imposing a national security law in June 2020 that supersedes the city’s charter.

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        • Originally posted by DOR View Post


          Staff for the Chinese agency, including Director Luo Huining, met with almost 4,000 local residents between Sept. 30 and Oct. 10, according to a statement posted on the office’s website Tuesday. Their mission was to convey “the central government’s care and love for Hong Kong, and in-depth understanding of the policy of benefiting Hong Kong and the people,” the office said.
          Oh, how touching. Now I wonder just who these 4,000 local residents were? The average Joe or those with status? Pretty impressive meeting with 363 people each day.

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          • Originally posted by tbm3fan View Post

            Oh, how touching. Now I wonder just who these 4,000 local residents were? The average Joe or those with status? Pretty impressive meeting with 363 people each day.
            The Liaison Office does not suffer from a manpower shortage, and regularly holds "meet and greet" with housing estate residents. A single housing estate can easily have 4,000 residents.
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            • Opinion: There are two Hong Kongs. China is betting one can survive without the other.

              Keith B. Richburg, The Washington Post, September 5, 2021

              Keith B. Richburg is the director of the University of Hong Kong Journalism and Media Studies Centre and a former Washington Post correspondent.

              Hong Kong now is increasingly a story of two cities occupying the same compact space, but existing in parallel realities.

              One Hong Kong is populated by bankers and financial services professionals, real estate developers and property owners, and businesspersons whose primary pursuit is trade with mainland China. In this universe, times are good and getting better.

              The stock exchange this year reported its best quarter on record, fueled by nearly $30 billion worth of new IPO listings. Profits are up 26 percent in the first half of the year. Property sales are up, interest rates are low and new developments are being launched. Big banks are all on a hiring spree and offering new products to take advantage of China’s rapid post-pandemic economic recovery.

              And the national security law, which came into effect in July 2020? It has restored calm and stability after a year of often-violent anti-government protests.

              The other Hong Kong is populated by people in the public space — politicians, journalists, teachers, labor leaders, artists, filmmakers, those active in civil society groups as well as many students and young people. To them, Hong Kong has become unrecognizable, a place where dissent is crushed and debate stifled. They see no future here and no hope.

              More than 100 people have been arrested under the national security law, and thousands more still languish in jail or are on bail for various offenses related to the 2019 protest movement. The city’s most popular newspaper, Apple Daily, has had its assets frozen and its owner and top editors sent to jail. Political parties, student and teachers unions, human rights groups and civic organizations have all been targeted and some forced to disband. Even a popular Cantopop singer had a venue cancel her bookings for an upcoming concert series.

              Many from this universe are voting with their feet. Nearly 90,000 people have left Hong Kong in the past year, the biggest net outflow in more than half a century since records were kept, leading to a steep 1.2 percent drop in the population. The exodus has led to warnings about a pending shortage of teachers and medical professionals. Soon, there might not be enough children to fill the vacancies in schools.

              Communist Party authorities in Beijing, and their appointed leaders in Hong Kong, are taking a gamble that the first universe, the one of bankers and financial professionals, can help the city thrive and prosper without the other. They believe Hong Kong can become like Singapore or Shanghai — prosperous cities largely devoid of distracting political debates.

              From this view, Hong Kong’s future lies in integrating more closely into the southern China region known as the Greater Bay Area linking Hong Kong and Macao with nine cities in Guangdong province and encompassing more than 70 million people. The global travel market might be hammered by the pandemic, but Hong Kong plans to launch Greater Bay Airlines, with its inaugural flight to Beijing scheduled for Oct. 1, the 72nd anniversary of the Communist Party’s takeover of China.

              At a recent high-level meeting in Hong Kong, mainland officials from Beijing chided the local government for not moving more quickly to integrate Hong Kong’s economy and population with the mainland.

              And Hong Kong officials seem eager to comply. Asked about Hong Kong’s shrinking population plus the added burden of an aging demographic, Chief Executive Carrie Lam was sanguine. Hong Kong could attract mainland talent to fill the void, she said. And the elderly? They could simply retire in mainland China to ease this city’s burden.

              With China’s own looming challenges of finding jobs for university graduates, Hong Kong could indeed be its safety valve. Many of those new banking and finance jobs are being taken by mainland professionals. As one longtime expatriate businessman here wryly told me, “China wants to keep Hong Kong. They just want to get rid of the Hongkongers.”

              Hong Kong’s role as a premier global financial center has always been underpinned by its respected legal system. The new security law has created a parallel judiciary, where handpicked judges have largely deferred to prosecutors and police. But in normal cases not involving national security, judges continue to rule impartially. Even in such cases relating to the 2019 protests, judges have often acquitted suspects and criticized police for offering flimsy evidence or making contradictory statements.

              Finance and business professionals see a judicial system still functioning independently and cite the continued presence of foreign judges from common law countries. Those in the opposite universe warn of a gradual erosion of judicial autonomy.

              Can China get away with remaking Hong Kong into a financial center devoid of politics? In truth, it already has. “Hong Kong is in the final stages of becoming another Shanghai or perhaps Singapore,” an American business executive here said, speaking, like most, anonymously.

              The old Hong Kong of raucous debate and protest, of independent-minded activists and politicians and filmmakers, is gone. The new Hong Kong is being built. Whether it can continue to thrive without the old one is the only question that remains.

              (I served on the board of governors of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong with Keith; he has lived in the city a long time, and knows his stuff.)

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              • HONG KONG -- Hong Kong residents shunned the city's district council election on Sunday, with voter turnout sharply dropping despite relentless efforts by the government to boost the numbers. With all candidates screened, leaving a lineup of only Beijing loyalists, the turnout ended up at 27.54%, the city's Electoral Affairs Commission said on Monday. A total of 1.19 million voters took part, out of the 4.3 million who were eligible.

                The figures are significantly lower than the previous district council election held in November 2019, when the turnout rate was 71.23% as 2.94 million people voted.

                — Nikkei Asia
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                • PRC Law And The Demise of Hong Kong In 2024

                  Publication: China Brief Volume: 24 Issue: 3
                  By: Arran Hope, Feb 2, 2024

                  Executive Summary
                  • New National Security legislation, which emulates recent PRC laws, and the potential torture of a witness in the ongoing trial of Jimmy Lai, is characteristic of the erosion of legal norms in Hong Kong as it moves towards full unification with the CCP regime.
                  • Attempts at regularization and institutionalization of the PRC law in the last two decades are undercut by irresolvable tensions at the heart of the system, leading to instability. “Socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics” is a paradox, where “rule by law” is intended to enhance the regime’s capacity for stability but cannot be reconciled with the “rule by man” personalization of the system under Xi Jinping.
                  • Hong Kong illustrates the instrumentalization of PRC law, whereby the aim of national unification allows the law to be overcome. The CCP, which frequently operates in an extralegal capacity within its own borders, supervenes in the city to assert its ultimate authority.
                  • How recent developments unfold, including the liquidation of Evergrande–—especially in light of recent legal attempts at “harmonization” of the two distinct legal regimes through reciprocal decisions—-will expose the political prerogatives that outweigh actual progress in legal system development.

                  https://jamestown.org/program/prc-law-and-the-demise-of-hong-kong-in-2024/
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