Archive for the ‘South-east Asia’ Category
How Africa Works, first of the podcasts
February 10, 2026
There are lots of podcasts done and coming following the publication of How Africa Works and I will endeavour to provide links to more. To kick off, here is half an hour with an old friend — former IMF staffer, investment bank economist and independent emerging markets analyst Jon Anderson.
This link should take you there. There are a few graphs that will help you understand what this book is banging on about.
How Africa Works is out in the UK, FT review
February 10, 2026
My new book, How Africa Works, is out in the UK and will be out in the US on February 17 (and dates around this in other parts of the world). The first review that I have seen was published in the Financial Times. Here it is:
‘A dazzling reassessment of the continent’s historic handicaps, and its potential for economic development. … One of the most original and important books on Africa in years.’
How Africa Works by Joe Studwell — how to change the economic trajectory A dazzling reassessment of the continent’s historic handicaps, and its potential for economic development
In 2013, writer and academic Joe Studwell produced a brilliant, intellectually daring account of the factors underlying Asia’s economic miracle. Called How Asia Works, the book flew in the face of the pro-market prescriptions of the Washington consensus, concluding that Asia’s most successful economies had thrived through unorthodox policies: a combination of agricultural reform based on intensively farmed small plots, financial repression and industrial policy turbocharged by a ruthless drive to export.
Impressed, government officials in Ethiopia and Rwanda, both serious about development, suggested that Studwell write about their continent. “In Ethiopia, in particular, I was struck by my hosts’ depth of knowledge and their appetite for more,” Studwell writes, before concluding in typically terse style: “The invitations were flattering but pointless.” He knew nothing about Africa.
Studwell subsequently set about putting that right. He devoted seven years to intense reading and field research, collecting empirical evidence rather than received wisdom. The result is one of the most original and important books on Africa in years. Especially in the dazzling first section, almost every page bristles with ideas and challenges to lazy (often prejudiced) thinking.
How Africa Works is arranged in three parts. The first, contrary to the title, is an analysis of why Africa doesn’t work. More accurately, it catalogues the factors, sometimes surprising, that help explain why most of the 54 states into which Africa was corralled by colonialism have failed to emulate Asia’s economic take-off.
The second section is a study of four states — Botswana, Mauritius, Ethiopia and Rwanda — that have managed to generate long periods of sustained growth. The third is an assessment of what it would take for other African economies to emulate that record, with particular emphasis on the agricultural and manufacturing revolutions that were essential to Asian growth. Throughout, Studwell steers carefully between the Scylla of fatalism and the Charybdis of frothy optimism.
Africa’s two big development handicaps, he argues, are a sparse population and what he calls “low budget” colonialism. The first factor, in particular, challenges conventional thinking, but Studwell makes his case powerfully. At the start of the 20th century, Africa’s population density — at under five people per square kilometre — was similar to England’s in 1066
Before the 20th century, because of factors including a high disease burden, slavery and the preponderance of crop-destroying elephants, Africa was thinly populated. Between 1700 and 1850, the population barely budged and, even by 1950, there were fewer Africans than there had been Asians in 1500. At the start of the 20th century, Africa’s population density — at under five people per square kilometre — was similar to England’s in 1066.
Studwell argues that this retarded development. In pre-colonial times, it slowed state formation. Unlike in crowded Europe, where nations were formed through war, in Africa, when one set of people didn’t like their leaders, they simply picked up and started someplace else. At the onset of colonialism, there were 10,000 African polities, some of them proto-states but many “loose groupings” of between 5,000 and 10,000 people “constituted as micro-monarchies”.
Since independence, a sparse population has made it harder to deliver services, such as electricity and education, to rural populations. From Studwell’s perspective, the explosive population growth of recent decades, viewed with alarm by many Africa-watchers, is nothing more than “an extremely belated process of demographic normalisation”. Since 1960, around the time many African nations gained independence, the continent’s population has more than quintupled to 1.5bn and is forecast to add a further billion people in the next 25 years.
The previously sparse population, overlaid by “low budget colonialism” — shallow, brief and extractive — made Africa less ready for take-off than many Asian states. Tanzania, by no means an outlier, gained independence with two engineers, 12 doctors, 120 ethnic groups and 85 per cent illiteracy.
African leaders made a collective decision not to contest colonial borders. Since 1960, Studwell counts five interstate wars and 38 civil wars. “Most of Africa was frozen as an atomised, pre-modern ‘ethnic’ jigsaw,” he writes. “The violent process by which state formation took place in Europe was interrupted.”
Studwell is too astute to blame everything on colonialism, or even on pre-colonial factors. The book’s second section examines how four countries set about overcoming their inheritance, albeit imperfectly. The chapters on Mauritius and Ethiopia are particularly enlightening.
Mauritius, dismissed as “an overcrowded barracoon” (slave enclosure) by the writer VS Naipaul, is now on the cusp of becoming a high-income country. The key, argues Studwell, was to forge a political coalition across ethnic lines, one whose overriding goal was development. In lieu of the radical land reform that took place in Asia’s most successful economies, Franco-Mauritian sugar barons were forced to finance development through taxes. These were recycled into special economic zones and a textile industry that became the basis for a push into higher-end manufacturing, finance and luxury tourism.
Mauritius has not done everything right. Studwell blames it for not pushing manufacturing beyond jewellery, watches and small-scale electronics. But the key to its significant success, he writes, has been a lack of ideology. Whether former Marxists or rampant capitalists, leaders emulated China’s cautious attitude described as “crossing the river by feeling the stones”. They experimented and then did more of what worked.
Ethiopia has been even more important as a potential development template. With 137mn people, it is the continent’s most populous nation after Nigeria. Once a byword for famine and misrule, under Meles Zenawi, who came to power after the overthrow in 1991 of a disastrous Soviet-backed regime, Ethiopia modelled itself on South Korea and Taiwan.
For Meles, everything was about instilling a sense of national mission. He liked the story of Taiwanese customs officers who extracted bribes on imported consumer items but never on the capital equipment needed for national improvement. Ethiopia prioritised agriculture — a Studwell essential — building rural roads and providing farmers with advice and fertiliser. Agricultural output quadrupled. Farmers’ savings were trapped by capital controls (Studwell’s financial repression), lifting investment to 41 per cent of GDP, on a par with Asia.
Meles, who died in 2012, thought growth would trump ethnic conflict. After 1991, the economy expanded by 6-10 per cent annually, but conflict came anyway amid resentment over the political control exerted by officials from the northern Tigray region from where Meles came. Studwell calls the resulting 2020-22 war in Tigray, in which 600,000 people died, “the biggest development tragedy in a generation”. Still, growth continued and Studwell too hopes that economic gains can eventually smother ethnic divisions.
The final section strikes a note of measured optimism. Some countries will fail, Studwell writes. But others have hit a stage at which development becomes possible. In 2030, Africa will finally reach the population density of Asia in 1960, its point of take-off. African urbanisation rates are the fastest in history. Ninety African cities have populations above 1mn against two in 1960. Scarcer land and more urban demand has forced an improvement in yields and created a landless peasantry fit for the factory. Relative wages have fallen, while education levels have soared.
With the right policies, Studwell argues, the conditions are in place for Asian-style manufacturing-led development. He dismisses those who say technology means Africa has missed the boat. A textile machine costs $100,000 upfront, he says. A Madagascan worker costs $65, paid monthly.
Studwell’s conclusion is that, while most African countries are not going to become development states, many can move the policy needle. If by 2060 they reach the African Development Bank’s target of $4,500 GDP per capita — a stretch for some admittedly — the continent would have an economy not much smaller than today’s China. Africa he concludes is not “a miracle waiting to happen”, nor is it “a monolithic failure”. The truth lies somewhere in between.
How Africa Works: Success and Failure on the World’s Last Developmental Frontier by Joe Studwell Profile £25/Grove $32, 448 pages
David Pilling is the FT’s Africa editor
Official: I will no longer travel to China
February 7, 2021Well, here’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Tibet, Xinjiang, South China Sea, Taiwan, Hong Kong. And a ridiculous number of individual cases of persons taken hostage by a state.
In the words of the late, great Gill Scott Heron: ‘It follows a pattern, if you know what I mean…’
The straw is the case of an Irish businessman, recounted below in the Irish Independent.
I am less diplomatic than the thoroughly decent Winston Lord, who is quoted. What I say is: ‘Fuck Xi Jinping and his miserable, proto-fascist government.’
I should also say that I hope you will believe me that it is pure coincidence that it is the case of a white male that has brought me this point. He just happened to be that straw.
…..
In February 2019, Richard O’Halloran flew to Shanghai for a series of meetings and has been ‘held hostage’ by the authorities ever since. The Irish Government is facing growing calls to step up its response
Close knit: The O’Halloran family in happier times with Isabella, Tara, Ben, Scarlett, Richard and Amber all together
Peter Goff
February 06 2021 02:30 AM
As Dublin prepares to light up buildings red to celebrate Chinese New Year, an Irish businessman detained in Shanghai for “corporate ransom” has now missed two Christmases with his wife and four young children.
Richard O’Halloran, a 45-year-old Dublin businessman, has been told he must pay $36m to the Chinese authorities before he can leave the country. His plight has put the potential hazards of doing business with China under the spotlight.
Critics say this is the latest example of Beijing’s lack of respect for the rule of law, international norms and human rights, while there have also been calls for the Irish Government to be more assertive.
Winston Lord, a former US ambassador to China, says O’Halloran’s situation was “a very sad and frustrating and indeed cruel case”. “This is a slippery slope and unless countries push back firmly on this kind of unfair detention, it can lead to greater and greater outrages,” he says.
The businessman’s wife, Tara O’Halloran, said last week on RTÉ radio that “we are crying out to the Government to step in and take control and demand he is released because he is innocent and he is not getting enough help”.
She said he had a serious lung condition, has suffered seizures in China, has had to be resuscitated twice, has regular panic attacks and that his mental health was at a low ebb.
“We are pleading for him to come home on humanitarian grounds, his health is deteriorating, he is very ill,” she said. “It can’t go on much longer; he won’t survive much longer over there on his own.”
President Michael D Higgins wrote to Chinese President Xi Jinping on December 23 and received a reply on January 29 suggesting the authorities on both sides “maintain communication and co-ordination to create conditions for an early and proper solution to the case”.
Lord says he was encouraged by the correspondence, “but it never should have got to this point”.
“I’m reluctant to criticise a friendly government, but I have to say in all candour that until this recent move by the Irish President, which I warmly welcome, the Irish Government’s performance in this has been disappointing, to put it is as diplomatically as I can,” he says.
“It has an interest, both in terms of protecting its own citizens but also just in pure humanitarian terms, and also for its reputation, to move aggressively to try to resolve this situation. And I think they’ve been very slow and tepid in their efforts until recently.”The Department of Foreign Affairs said that while it could not comment on the details of an individual case, it “continues to provide all possible consular support and assistance to Mr O’Halloran and attaches the utmost importance to his welfare”. It said the case has been raised regularly at “senior political and diplomatic level” with the Chinese authorities.
The statement added that Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney “remains actively and personally engaged, and senior officials in Dublin, Beijing and Shanghai continue to do everything possible to ensure that Mr O’Halloran can return home”.
‘We can’t see any progress’
In response, Tara O’Halloran told RTÉ: “That is not enough. A couple of phone calls and a couple of emails to the authorities is not enough. They need to take a stance and stand up and say that he is being illegally detained; they have no basis for holding him. We can’t see any progress and I am literally begging for help. I’m begging them and begging them and begging them. For two years I’ve been begging them.”
Close knit: The O’Halloran family in happier times with Isabella, Tara, Ben, Scarlett, Richard and Amber all together
Richard O’Halloran, a relative of the late Fine Gael taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, is a director of China International Aviation Leasing Service Co Limited (CALS Ireland). The complex case that he has found himself embroiled in centres on an Airbus A330 airplane that CALS has leased to Finnair, according to David Maughan, partner with law firm William Fry, which acts for CALS.
The chairman of CALS, Min Jiedong, was arrested in China on charges of running an illegal crowdfunding scheme and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. There is no evidence that he used the money to buy the Airbus but the authorities are targeting it because it is a major asset connected to him. In February 2019, O’Halloran flew to China to hold meetings with colleagues after Min was arrested. When he attempted to board his return flight after a week of meetings, he was detained and told he would not be able to leave China. The charges against Min predate O’Halloran’s time with the company, and Min had agreed to buy the plane 10 months before he had joined CALS, Maughan says.
During the trial, both the prosecutor and Min told the court that O’Halloran had no involvement in Min’s crowdfunding in China and should be allowed to return to Ireland.“He is not guilty of any crime, nor has he been charged with any crime. He is being illegally detained… I would call this corporate ransom,” Maughan says.
O’Halloran testified as a witness four times in Min’s prosecution, and following Min’s sentencing he was subpoenaed to an enforcement court to give a financial account of CALS Ireland. On each of these five occasions, the Chinese authorities denied requests from the Irish Embassy to have representatives attend as observers. The court appointed an interpreter but O’Halloran was not allowed any legal representation in court, nor was he given any documentation relating to the appearances, Maughan says.
As part of a proposal to secure O’Halloran’s release, CALS sent the Chinese court $200,000 some weeks ago as a “good-faith payment”, Maughan says, but when the money arrived in China, police interrogated O’Halloran for six hours about the source of the funds. “During that interrogation the police said that the sum of $6m should be paid to resolve the case, and they also told him that his exit ban had been lifted,” he says.
O’Halloran booked the next flight home, “but when he got to the airport, he was denied access to board the aircraft,” Maughan says, “and he was escorted out of the airport by seven police officers wearing bodycams”.
At the latest hearing on February 2, in front of three judges, “they said that he was very healthy, despite all his many health issues, and is personally responsible to pay back the figure of $36m,” Maughan says.
“We were flabbergasted. The Chinese side picked this number of $36m, which no one knows where it came from. We haven’t been party to any of the proceedings.”
Response: Simon Coveney “remains actively and personally engaged” in the Richard O’Halloran case, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs
He says they had made several proposals to the Chinese ambassador in Dublin and to Coveney to try to resolve the issue, including resigning his position, handing over control of the bank accounts to the courts, or allowing the Chinese court to take over Min’s shares in related companies — including one in the Cayman Islands that owns the plane — so they could then control the assets.
In 2019, CALS agreed with a third party after a public tender process to sell the aircraft. “But the Chinese courts turned down Richard’s request that the aircraft be sold. Unfortunately, due to the global pandemic, the aircraft is worth half of what CALS had agreed to sell the aircraft for,” Maughan says.
Another proposal involved O’Halloran returning to Dublin and continuing to work for CALS to manage the five remaining years of the lease on the plane to Finnair, at which point the plane could be sold or flown to China. None of the proposals were accepted, Maughan says.
“If the Chinese side took the shares off Min, Richard O’Halloran would be home next week — if someone would take a big picture approach,” he adds. “There are plenty of solutions here if the Chinese wished to engage. I welcome Xi’s comments but it will take engagement. And I would not be optimistic, based on what the three judges said; that Richard and the board come up with $36m.”
Barring visitors from leaving is a tactic used widely in China, and the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs now advises travellers to China that “Chinese authorities may place an exit ban on an individual to prevent them from leaving the country”. It adds that an exit ban “may be placed on an individual, their family or an employer; or in a criminal or civil matter, including a business dispute”.
The travel advisory says “such bans, which are distinct from detention or imprisonment, are part of the Chinese legal process and may endure for months, or longer”.
The US State Department uses stronger language, saying China “arbitrarily enforces local laws, including by carrying out arbitrary and wrongful detentions and through the use of exit bans on US citizens and citizens of other countries without due process of law”.
Charles Parton, a fellow of the Royal United Services Institute and a former British diplomat who spent more than two decades working in or on China, says that the taking of “hostages” was not unusual in commercial disputes in China.
“It’s quite a common tactic at a local level, provincial or below, where they’ve got contacts in the local government and in order to get their way in an argument with a foreign company, they deliberately take a hostage in this way,” he says.
Tara O’Halloran said in the recent interview that for a long time she had not spoken out about her husband’s plight because she had been advised that quiet diplomacy would be the best approach.
“We had faith in the Irish Government that they were going to help us, that they were going to intervene, help us, and we were advised not to go public because it might upset the Chinese, that they might retaliate, they might decide to keep him longer. But I can’t sit back and let him be there for another two years,” she said.
Observers say that, in most cases, exit bans never come to light because the parties involved do not publicise them in the hopes of finding a quiet resolution.
Parton says while each situation was different, he felt that, in general, people should speak out about these bans. “I think this business of keeping a low profile is not always wise,” he says. “That plays along with their game. I think you should make as much noise about it as one can. This is an example of local rather than central abuse and it should be called out in my view.”
Alexander Dukalskis, an associate professor at University College Dublin’s School of Politics and International Relations, says that, in general terms, the human rights situation has regressed “from an already low level” since Xi Jinping took the reins of the Communist Party of China (CCP) in 2012.
“Human rights lawyers have been systematically repressed under Xi, which further compounds the problem because it eliminates a source of protection. The previous leadership of Hu Jintao was more liberal — by CCP standards — than the current party leadership. More criticism was tolerated in the political sphere and activists were able to operate within certain boundaries,” says Dukalskis, who is author of the forthcoming book Making the World Safe for Dictatorship.
“Things have tightened under Xi, in some areas drastically so,” he adds. “China’s policies of repression in Xinjiang, for example, were already harsh before 2014, but since then they have become draconian, possibly even genocidal.”
On the international stage, China has been accused recently of adopting an aggressive form of “Wolf Warrior diplomacy”, and generally taking a more combative approach to its multilateral relations.
Lord, the former ambassador, says that things were getting worse “both domestically in terms of oppression and internationally in terms of adventurism, and in terms of interfering in other countries and pressuring other citizens”.
As China plays an increasingly important role on the world stage, Parton says countries have to stand up against human rights abuses or the situation will only get worse.
“Bullies are bullies whether they are at the international level or the playground level. And if you give way to bullies, what do you get? You just get more bullying,” says Parton, who worked with the EU delegation in Beijing for his final China posting.
More, later:
This guy is still going to Hong Kong. I guess the Hongkies need him, given what is going on there:
AN Oxford City councillor has announced he will be stepping down from his role with immediate effect as his work requires him to spend an increasing amount of time overseas.
Councillor Paul Harris will no longer represent the ward of St Margaret’s on Oxford City Council.
He was elected in 2018 and is a member of the Liberal Democrat Group on the council and has served as the opposition spokesperson for cleaner, greener Oxford, cycling, tourism and the city centre.
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He has combined his work in Oxford with a career as a human rights barrister, often working in Hong Kong. Recent developments there, and restrictions on travel, have meant he has spent increasing amounts of time in Hong Kong and can no longer represent his ward as he would wish.
His seat will remain vacant until a by-election is held and St Margaret’s ward continues to be represented by Councillor Tom Landell Mills.
Councillor Landell Mills will cover the portfolio areas Mr Harris has held for the opposition in the run up to the elections.
Mr Harris said: “I have immensely enjoyed my almost three years as a councillor and will very much miss both colleagues and staff, as well as local residents in St Margaret’s Ward. I am pleased in particular I managed to get the towpath through St Margaret’s re-surfaced at last which was my main promise when I stood for election in 2018.
“The reason for my resignation is that I am relocating to Hong Kong with which I have work and family connections. I am a barrister specialising in human rights and I have been asked to be chairman of the Hong Kong Bar for the year 2021.”
It’s failed-states’ Wednesday
February 3, 2021The article below by Max Fisher in the New York Times is very interesting on the disaster that is Myanmar. Far better than anything in the British press.
What Fisher writes chimes with what I saw in Myanmar and why I declined offers to go back there in the time of Ms Aung (she’s really called Ms Suu).
Meanwhile, breaking news in a failed state closer to home is that Mario Draghi is trying to form an Italian government. Ho, ho, ho.
Having gone to Frankfurt to run the European Central Bank and stave off the bankruptcy of his miserable but attractive country, Mario is now going to try to actually change Italy.
Good luck with that!
I guess we’ll soon find out if he really is Super Mario.
More, later:
Could I just mention, while we are on the subject of Italy, that the bung-taking architect of Putin’s insane Black Sea palace, described in Navalny’s wonderful documentary, is none other than Lanfranco Cirillo, who is, of course, Italian. They certainly invented fascism. Did they also invent corruption?
Cirillo is from Brescia, about 50 kilometres east of Milan (remember Berlusconi, or Bettino Craxi, or Poalo Pilliteri, who I interviewed when young?) All from the same neck of the woods. Northern Italians like to blame the south for the country’s problems. But my observation has long been that this is a crock of shit. It is the north of Italy that is the spawn-pool of selfishness and corruption. The south, after all, gave us Gramsci, possibly the last principled Italian. He died in 1937.
The sun also sets: Hong Kong version
January 31, 2021I’m not going to start writing about the illegal misery that the Communist Party of China is raining down on Hong Kong. My only thought is that Xi Jinping may one day have to go into exile and I wonder where would take him? DPRK, I guess, if he brings enough cash. Or Saudi Arabia. Or DRC. It’s not a good choice-set.
If you are interested in Hong Kong and don’t know it, I would highly recommend in this period a lunatic friend’s Big Lychee blog. I suppose I’ll go and visit him when they lock him up. Take him a baguette.
Another day in Hong Kong
August 27, 2020Further confirmation — if indeed it is needed — that press freedom is a thing of the past in Hong Kong. The city’s lickspittle government has denied a visa to the incoming editor of the excellent Hong Kong Free Press. This type of behaviour is standard practice in autocracies like China when governments want to censor without being seen to explicitly do so. However, it is a relatively new phenomenon in Hong Kong.
The piece pasted below explains the context. If you can spare any money, I would encourage you to donate to HKFP to support their free-to-reader coverage while raising a middle finger to the Hong Kong government. The donation process is very quick.
After Jimmy Lai was arrested and his Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily‘s offices raided, Hong Kong people variously bought the company’s stock and purchased record volumes of the newspaper as a means to support Mr Lai and his paper and to show the government what they thought. The English-language HKFP doesn’t have the same audience-reach in Hong Kong and relies on donations from around the world.
The Hong Kong government will doubtless thank you for supporting quality journalism because it says the media are absolutely hopeless at their job. Only yesterday government and police spokespeople were pointing out that journalists completely misinterpreted photographs and video footage of police officers hanging out with suspected triad members.
The police were not consorting with triad members in attacks on pro-democracy protesters and random members of the public. Instead they were forcing the naughty triad types to go home. Anyone who cannot see the police actively pushing those ‘white shirts’ away hasn’t watched the video footage closely enough. The police didn’t take their names — despite the men being armed — because… err, well, that bit we haven’t come up with a cunning answer to yet. The main thing is that everyone agrees that there should not be an independent enquiry because we all trust the Hong Kong police and Carrie Lam.
Here is some ridiculous mis-reporting of the issue by more of those terrible journalists, in this instance ones who work for the Hong Kong equivalent of the BBC.
…
Visas ‘weaponised’: Gov’t denies Hong Kong Free Press editor a work visa, without explanation, after 6-month wait
Hong Kong Free Press has been denied a work visa for an established journalist following an almost 6-month wait. The Immigration Department’s rejection for HKFP’s incoming editor Aaron Mc Nicholas was handed down without any official reason on Tuesday, raising further concerns for the business community and the city’s press freedom in light of the new security law.
The news comes weeks after New York Times journalist Chris Buckley was forced to leave the city after being denied a visa without reason amid a tit-for-tat dispute between Washington and Beijing. The US newspaper subsequently shifted a third of their local workforce to South Korea.
Editor-in-chief Tom Grundy said that many other news outlets remain in limbo amid unprecedented visa delays, and a pattern had now emerged: “We are a local news outlet and our prospective editor was a journalist originally from Ireland, so this is not another tit-for-tat measure under the US-China trade dispute. It appears we have been targeted under the climate of the new security law and because of our impartial, fact-based coverage.”
He said that neither the applicant, nor HKFP, had been denied a visa before: “Other sectors can expect to be subjected to a similar bureaucratic rigmarole in light of the security law. Companies are already leaving or avoiding the city for this very reason,” Grundy said. “Businesses can be assured that visa issues are now a feature, not a bug. They may decide that Hong Kong is no longer a suitable place to set up a regional headquarters or base.”
He added that HKFP would press the government to offer reasons for the denial and will consider an appeal and legal challenge.
Work visas ‘weaponised’
A senior lawyer – who has represented a number of media organisations and journalists but did not wish to be named – said the denial of visas for two respected journalists in such a short time was “unprecedented and deeply concerning.”
“This strongly indicates that the Hong Kong authorities, like those in the PRC [People’s Republic of China], have now weaponised work visas as a tool to control the reporting of Hong Kong affairs by international and local media, as well as silence free speech for all those needing a visa,” he said.
“Press freedom in Hong Kong has been under attack since the Victor Mallet case in late 2018. These actual and de-facto denial of visas for journalists since the national security law indicates how far and how fast the authorities are prepared to degrade press freedom in Hong Kong,” he added, referring to visa delays.
In an emailed response to HKFP on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Immigration did not state why the visa was denied: “Hong Kong has always adopted a pragmatic and open policy on the employment of professionals in Hong Kong, allowing those possessing special skills, knowledge or experience of value to and not readily available in Hong Kong to apply to come to work, including journalistic work,” they said. They added that each case was processed in accordance with the law.
‘Against press freedom’
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Asia Programme Coordinator Steven Butler told HKFP that the incident undermined the city’s free status: “Denial of a work visa to a thriving local news operation bashes the most basic promise of press freedom given repeatedly by the Hong Kong government. It also severely undermines Hong Kong’s status as an international city and financial centre, which cannot flourish unless journalists are free to do their work.”
Meanwhile, in a statement, Reporters Without Borders’ East Asia chief Cédric Alviani told HKFP that months-long delays were highly unusual: “The Hong Kong government must revert this decision that clearly goes against press freedom, a principle enshrined in the Basic Law.”
The Hong Kong government must revert this decision that clearly goes against press freedom, a principle enshrined in the Basic Law”, Alviani said adding the the rejection is another sign of the decline in press freedom following the implementation of the security law whereby “the Beijing regime allows themselves to directly intervene on the territory.” He also cited the arrest of pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai this month, and the raid on the Apple Daily offices.
6-month delay
News outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and South China Morning Post have also reportedly suffered months-long delays in a process that normally takes a few weeks. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, HKFP knows of visas for professionals in other industries that have been processed within reasonable time-frames.
Local media reported earlier this month that visas for journalists are now being vetting by a new national security unit within the Immigration Department. When asked about the unit last week, Immigration did not answer directly or deny its existence, but a spokesperson said that visas were processed by the Visa and Policies Branch.
Earlier this month, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club said that highly unusual processing delays have “affected journalists of multiple nationalities and in some cases have prevented journalists from working.” It has yet to receive a response to its latest letter demanding an explanation.
Jodi Schneider, president of the press club, told HKFP on Wednesday that they were closely following the issue: “This is obviously a key concern for the media working in Hong Kong. It is a press freedom issue.”
More:
I just ordered a new board game about Hong Kong police corruption via Kickstarter. It was inspired by the legendary Hong Kong police corruption of the 1960s and early 1970s. But maybe the game is relevant today? Let’s hope it arrives! Billionaire Seargeant is sold here.
Predicted by Orwell, Designed in China, Running Hong Kong
August 16, 2020The link below will take you to an excellent review of the activities of China’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) in Hong Kong. It is the UFWD that orchestrated the political, administrative and civil society takeover of Hong Kong in the past 23 years, contrary to China’s ‘binding’ legal agreement with Britain that the place would run itself (with a few understandable exceptions) for at least 50 years. The author is the former New York Times correspondent and long-time China watcher Didi Kirsten Tatlow.
The piece explains the role of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which does a great job of co-opting persons who are (usually) not Communist Party members and getting them to act as Communist Party running dogs. Among highlighted Hong Kong CPPCC stars are late tycoons Henry Fok and Tung Chee-hwa, who readers of my 2007 Asian Godfathers will be familiar with.
There is also a nice presentation of evidence about how China has infiltrated and increasingly directed the Hong Kong police force and made use of local triads as ‘patriotic’ allies in its war against ‘Western’ influence and all things liberal. In the interests of historical fairness, it should be noted that the British also made use of patriotic triads when re-taking control of Hong Kong from the Japanese at the end of the Second World War, as beautifully related in Philip Snow’s The Fall of Hong Kong. The mafia in Hong Kong has batted for both sides, although it probably enjoys batting people over the head for Beijing more.
The document is here.
The end of Hong Kong
August 10, 2020What could be more symbolic of the end of freedom in Hong Kong than a huge police raid on the offices of the leading Chinese-language tabloid newspaper and the arrest of executives including its owner, Jimmy Lai? The raid took place today and was conducted by a police unit created under the new Beijing-imposed national security law. One of the alleged crimes is reported to be ‘foreign collusion’, a new mainland-style catch-all offence that can lead to years in prison.
The national security law is only a few weeks old and we don’t know exactly how it will be applied. However, it makes bail unlikely. Whether court sessions will even be open to the public is unclear. Police already barred several media organisations from a press conference following the arrests.
What amazes me is how the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong police force have entirely come on side for the new security law and seemingly flipped into an authoritarian police state without even a murmur.
The Communist Party of China hates Jimmy Lai. He escaped from the mainland as a child by sneaking across the Hong Kong border. His tabloid publications are the absolute antithesis of what the Party thinks the press should be. And he doesn’t give a fuck. He has been the victim of numerous attacks, including fire bombings, that are almost certainly Party-sanctioned or Party-condoned. But now the Party doesn’t need to use thugs to deal with Jimmy Lai because it has its national security law and a pliant, Vichy-style administration.
Here is the Washington Post coverage.
Here is a CBC interview with Jimmy Lai a few days ago.
Here is some coverage in long-form Chinese.
Here is the Twitter feed of Mark Simon, an American media executive who has worked for Jimmy Lai for decades.
Here is the Twitter feed of my old Hong Kong friend and rabid misanthrope Hemlock. I wonder which prison they’ll put him in? That said, he does know more Chinese history than the average paid-up Party member. Maybe they will create a prison library for him.
More, later:
Jimmy Lai was given police bail. That doesn’t mean he will get bail when he is charged which, as I wrote, the National Security Law (NSL) presumes against. What this means is that the police — or rather the people who are telling the police what to do — haven’t yet decided what to charge Lai with. However, the game looks distinctly mainland China in the way it is being played. In addition to NSL charges the police have also mentioned a fraud inquiry. This leaves the classic Chinese fallback of doing him for some trumped-up ‘economic crime’ if the powers that be decide that international (and local Hong Kong) reaction to a national security conviction will be unacceptably strong at this time. Whatever happens, what people from less brutal societies understand by rule of law is out of the window in Hong Kong.
Here is a short new piece about Jimmy Lai from the New Yorker.