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Archive for March, 2025

A man, a plan, Panama!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 27, 2025| 2 Comments »

I generally hesitate to say anything about what appears in the Chinese-language press, because it reaches me only second-hand, and in translation. But recent commentaries in Ta Kung Pao have me puzzled.

I do not participate in controversies about China, for or against. Such matters are not very interesting and in any case, as a marooned Brit, none of my business. But I thought I understood how the game was played.

Take the row about Huawei and its exclusion from the business of providing telecom networks in Western countries. What we might call the Trumpeters’ tune is that there is no such thing in China as a private company. Whether or not Huawei wished to tweak its software to facilitate spying, it would have no choice.

But this is a smear peddled only by China haters and stirrers-up of trouble who wish to start a new Cold War. Actually Huawei is free to make its own decisions and would not dream of tricking its customers in this way.

A similar division of views hovers over the Belt and Road scheme. Critics say this is a cunning ruse through which China can extend its ownership and control over vital links in the world trade network.

Not at all, explain the scheme’s defenders. Belt and Road projects are win-win affairs which benefit everyone concerned: both the trading countries at each end of the road and the country which actually contains the port, railway, canal, or whatever. They are a benevolent donation to the common good by the PRC, and the eventual ownership of the items constructed will normally be vested in the country in which they sit.

Then there is the matter of the national security law. When this first appeared many critics (I rather think I may have been one of them) complained that there was a shortage of precise definitions of the new offences created. Not at all, we were assured. The descriptions of the offences were perfectly adequate and nobody who had read them carefully would be in any doubt as to what was intended.

All three of these comfortable thoughts have been thrown into doubt by the Ta Kung Pao leader-writers, who are generally assumed to be privy to the truth as senior Hong Kong government people see it.

The news which stirred all this up was that Hutchisons, generally regarded as a Hong Kong firm though most of its business is elsewhere and its registration is in the Cayman Islands, was selling 40 ports to an American consortium led by BlackRock. Among the ports in question are two next to the Panama Canal, about which President Trump has been complaining bitterly.

Hutchison’s explanation was that this was a purely business decision, basically to get out of the overseas ports business; the group will still own ports in Hong Kong and mainland China. In view of the danger of tariff wars shredding the international trading network this is not an ostentatiously surprising decision.

It did not, though, go down well with Ta Kung Pao. Hutchisons’ move was denounced as a “betrayal of all Chinese people”, an act of “spineless grovelling”. Former Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying asked “Do merchants have no motherland?”

Well no doubt the whole thing would have looked more attractive if President Trump had not so rudely called for changes in the Panama Canal Zone in the first place. On the other hand if Hong Kong companies (we’ll leave the Cayman Islands out of it) are expected to tailor their activities to PRC foreign policy objectives, how can we be expected to believe that mainland firms do not?

As the row rumbled on the deal was stigmatised as sabotaging the Belt and Road initiative. This is not what we used to be told about the Belt and Road at all. Is Ta Kung Pao now of the view that the purpose of the Belt and Road scheme was to ensure that no container could be unloaded anywhere in the world without China’s approval and participation?

And as the writers warmed to their task we came to the inevitable ingredient in any political storm these days, national security. Was the sale of the ports a national security crime?

Well one rather hopes not. The crimes created by the national security law are secession, subversion, terrorist activities and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. Clearly the first three are not relevant, and it is difficult to see how the fourth could be applied to selling a business asset for a realistic price to a foreign buyer. It may be a source of pride and pleasure for Chinese people to know that one of their number is a global presence, but it can hardly be a national security necessity for someone with a Chinese name to own a port on the other side of the Pacific.

A couple of thoughts might soothe. The first is that ownership of two Panama ports does not confer any power at all over the canal, which remains the property of Panama and under the control of the Panama government. The ports are actually outside the canal proper and their main function is to deal with Panama’s own imports and exports. President Trump does not seem to know this, among many things.

The second is that the new American owners will not be under the same pressure or expectations which local patriots would like to exert on Hutchisons. Much has been made of the fact that the chief executive of the buyers, BlackRock, is an old friend of Donald Trump.

Well all these plutocrats go to the same parties, no doubt. But American business is not inhibited by concerns about the national interests of the USA, or indeed anywhere else. Ethical standards have gone down the tubes over the last 50 years. Money trumps morals every time. Ports controlled by American companies will be ruled by pure greed, unsullied by politics. Doesn’t that feel better?

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Commenting on, or criticising, court cases is both legal and helpful

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 10, 2025| 1 Comment »

It is nice to know that the Secretary for Security reads Ming Pao. Think of the alternatives. Sadly however the secretary, Chris Tang, often does not appear to enjoy his reading.

The last item to arouse Mr Tang’s ire was an op ed on the latest legal instalment of the Yuen Long incident, by law professor Johannes Chan. “The author, who is a law professor, has once again published a biased article,” Mr Tang complained, “deliberately ignoring the fact that some white-clad people have already been brought to justice, misleading readers with a warped perspective that the court has made an unfair judgment regarding either party, shaking the public’s confidence in the court system, and undermining the rule of law in Hong Kong, which must be condemned.”

Mr Tang went on to say that the afterword, commonly added to opinion pieces these days, saying there was no intention to incite hatred of the government, did not discharge the obligation on the editor to ensure that his publication was “fair, objective and unbiased.”

He concluded “It is hoped that Ming Pao will not continue to be exploited by people with ulterior motives to use this platform to spread confusing remarks, to poison the community, and to create conflicts.”

Now I propose to ignore some of this. Opinion pieces are not supposed to be fair, objective and unbiased. They are expressions of opinion. Moreover if Mr Tang wishes to campaign with any credibility for unbiased media he needs to avoid the impression that he has some unique problem with Ming Pao.

I shall also pass by the bit about white-clad people being brought to justice, which strictly speaking is entirely irrelevant. Injustice to one defendant cannot be balanced by justice to another.

More interesting is Mr Tang’s claim that the offending piece misled readers into the “warped perspective” that the court had made an unfair judgment, and that this had “shaken the public’s confidence in the court system”, thereby undermining the rule of law.

This is, alas, nonsense. The rule of law has never required the public to believe that judges are infallible. In 1793 the then Chief Justice, Lord Kenyon, said that “In the hurry of business, the most able Judges are liable to err.”

More recently we can consider the view of Lord Denning:”We do not fear criticism, nor do we resent it. For there is something far more important at stake. It is no less than freedom of speech itself…Those who comment can deal faithfully with all that is done in a court of justice. They can say that we are mistaken, and our decisions erroneous, whether they are subject to appeal or not.”

Or there is the rather more literary, oft-quoted, opinion of Lord Atkin (more famous as an innovator in business law), which goes in part “The path of criticism is a public way. The wrong-headed are permitted to err therein… Justice is not a cloistered virtue; she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even if outspoken, comments of ordinary men.”

I infer that Mr Tang is offering the courts a protection which they have never sought and do not need. If a judge makes a statement about the law it is open to criticism and comment. Similarly if the judge is sitting alone and has to make findings of fact, they may also be scrutinised. The rule of law is fortified, not weakened, if the activities of the courts can be discussed and debated.

He may also care to consider that freedom of the press is not furthered by threatening words from officials in the law and order industry, and if the government wishes to offer a running commentary on media output this might be better left to the information specialists.

Mr Tang’s repeated insistence that appending “this piece is not intended to inspire hatred of the government,” or words to that effect, is not an effective bar to prosecution, is unnecessary. We all know that. It’s like starting a novel with the usual stuff about “no resemblance to real persons, living or dead”. This will not keep you out of the libel courts if your lead villain is an erratic politician called Ronald Frump.

Mr Tang may be a happier reader if he bears in mind the wise words of the American judge Robert Jackson: “The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.”

And if tempted to rush to the defence of some official masterpiece he might also bear in mind another observation from the same judge: “Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame — a good public name — is, as Milton said, the “last infirmity of a noble mind”, it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.”

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The rule of law and the rule of lies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 3, 2025| 3 Comments »

People who have been complaining about how slowly the legal system works in Hong Kong can draw some comfort from its latest success: an outstandingly swift performance in the gentle art of rewriting history.

This goes on all the time, of course. Mediaeval baronial brawls are recycled as wars of national liberation starring Mel Gibson. Revered founding fathers turn out to have had a sideline impregnating their own slaves because mixed race babies were more valuable. Historians reluctantly admit that much-admired monarchs were secretly gay.

But this usually takes centuries. Not, however, in the courtroom of national security specialist District Court Judge Stanley Chan – a generous provider of material for critical judge-watchers over the years – who was passing sentence last week on seven men accused of rioting during the Yuen Long incident on July 21, 2019.

That was six years ago, a long time for a criminal process but a mere blink in the evolution of history.

Those of us who were here at the time will remember the Yuen Long incident. It was extensively videoed by mobile phone owners. One reporter live-streamed an attack on her. The BBC reported:

Dozens of masked men armed with batons stormed a train station in the Hong Kong district of Yuen Long on Sunday. Footage posted on social media showed the masked men, all in white T-shirts, violently attacking people on platforms and inside train carriages. Forty-five people were injured, with one person in a critical condition.

The Guardian’s correspondent had:

Men dressed in white T-shirts, some armed with sticks, entered the Yuen Long MTR station and stormed a train, attacking passengers, according to footage taken by commuters, journalists and Democratic Party politician Lam Cheuk-ting. Witnesses said the attackers appeared to target black-shirted passengers who had been at an anti-government march earlier in the day.

And it was not just the capitalist press. A few days later the China Daily referred to:

…savage indiscriminate attacks on protesters and passengers in the train cars and the platform at Yuen Long station last Sunday. The attack, causing injury to 45 people, was widely denounced …

Oddly enough the government at the time refused to classify the incident as a riot. And indeed it was not what the lay person usually means by a riot – vandalism, protest, confrontation with the forces of order – and more an exercise in assault and battery on an industrial scale by an armed and uniformed mob.

A curious feature was the absence of police people. Men in white tee-shirts armed with sticks had been marauding in the streets of Yuen Long all day, threatening anyone who looked as if they might be a protester. When they appeared inside the station the MTR staff promptly called the police, who did not show up for half an hour. As the station is only a short walk from the local police station this was embarrassing.

A few days later the then Chief Secretary apologised to the public for the fact that the police response had not met expectations. The apology was bitterly denounced by both the police staff unions.

When Chris Tang became police commissioner (yes, that one: now the Secretary for Security) he unveiled the new police line, initially suggested by Junius Ho, which was that the conflict was due to Lam Cheuk-ting, who had intensified the tense atmosphere and so provoked the fight.

On the day of Lam’s arrest this had developed further, and the whole incident was described as a clash between “two evenly matched rivals”. The video and photographic evidence was “one-sided” and the reporting was “biased”. It could be considered a bit strange that the police have developed a narrative which they offer with such confidence, because the one fact about the incident that everyone agrees with is that no police people were present.

It appears as a result that Judge Chan was heavily reliant on video evidence, a worrying thought because – as police spokesmen used to remind us whenever footage surfaced of their colleagues kicking the crap out of someone – such films are subject to a variety of interpretations.

Anyway in Judge Chan’s reasons for passing sentence the police story finally achieved escape velocity and freed itself from the gravitational pull of reality. There were, in Judge Chan’s view, not one but two riots, one for each side. The men in tee-shirts would have engaged in nothing more than Ghandian non-violence if they had not been provoked by the first riot.

The provocation seems to have consisted in calling them gangsters. Judge Chan did not believe Mr Lam, whose “chief provocateur” status earned him a three-year sentence, was there to “monitor police actions”. Well that was just as well. The police actions came later. We do not enjoy the rule of law. We enjoy the rule of lies.

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