After Beijing imposed the draconian National Security Law for Hong Kong in 2020, the UK, Canada and Australia responded by opening “lifeboat schemes,” or special immigration pathways, for Hong Kongers. Article 23, the latest tightening of the screws on Hong Kong freedoms, requires a similar response from the European Union.
The UK provided an escape valve by allowing Hong Kongers with British National (Overseas) (BNO) status to apply for a visa with a permanent residence pathway in Britain. More than 160,000 Hong Kongers have resettled in the UK alone since the imposition of the law, and London has taken further steps to welcome them in anticipation of the passage of Article 23. Canada launched programs to provide permanent residency to Hong Kong residents who have graduated from a selected post-secondary institutions in Canada, and to Hong Kongers who have completed post-secondary education and have worked in Canada for a minimum of one year. Australia enabled Hong Kongers completing eligible tertiary studies to apply for a temporary graduate visa after their studies, with a pathway to permanent residency. This week, the Hong Kong government enacted the Safeguarding National Security Bill, colloquially known as “Article 23 legislation,” in the territory. Article 23 is a domestic, albeit more severe, version of the National Security Law, and was first proposed in 2003. Under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, the city’s constitution, the Hong Kong government is required to introduce legislation to safeguard national security. In recent days Hong Kong officials have said that it is their constitutional “duty” to introduce Article 23 legislation, but I am not sure that broad and unclear language is what the writers of the Basic Law had in mind. When the Hong Kong authorities attempted to introduce Article 23 in 2003, more than 500,000 Hong Kongers protested, and the plans were abandoned. But today, the Hong Kong people do not have a choice nor the right to protest without facing serious repercussions. Vague terms Under directives from Beijing to pass Article 23 “as soon as possible,” the Hong Kong government left a few days to consider a public consultation process which received over 13,000 submissions and for the Hong Kong Legislative Council to review and make amendments to the 212-page bill. Article 23 prohibits seven types of activities: treason, secession, sedition, subversion, theft of state secrets, foreign political organizations or bodies conducting political activities in Hong Kong, and political organizations or bodies in Hong Kong establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies. The language surrounding what constitutes these activities is vague to intentionally allow the government to criminalize whatsoever and whosoever it wishes. For example, starting with the definition of ‘national security’, the bill reads “specific measures to be taken to safeguard national security will depend on the actual situation in the HKSAR.” Under which circumstances, and in what situations, will certain individuals and organizations be criminalized? This language not only mirrors the definition of national security on mainland China, but potentially contravenes the “principle of legal certainty” protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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Chinese sporting authorities have cancelled next month's friendly international between Argentina and Nigeria amid a growing backlash against Lionel Messi's failure to play in an Inter Miami match in Hong Kong last week.
Argentina were scheduled to play Nigeria in the Chinese city of Hangzhou next month before facing the Ivory Coast in Beijing, but Messi's failure to take the field for Inter Miami in Hong Kong on Sunday caused widespread anger among fans. The organiser of the Hong Kong match said they would give fans a 50 percent refund for tickets after the Argentine did not take the field due to injury, but played in Japan days later. The backlash grew on Friday, with Hangzhou sports authorities saying that Argentina's friendly against Nigeria would no longer take place. "As a commercial event, a company and the Argentinean soccer team negotiated that the team would play a friendly match in March this year in the city of Hangzhou," the Hangzhou authorities said in a statement. "In view of the current well-known reasons, according to the competent authorities, conditions to hold the friendly match are not mature, therefore (we) have decided to cancel it." It was not immediately clear if Argentina's other friendly against Ivory Coast in Beijing would also be cancelled. The Chinese FA did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment sent outside normal business hours. The Argentine FA also did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. Tatler Asian, a privately owned publishing and lifestyle company, said in a statement on its Instagram page that it was "deeply sorry" and "heartbroken" that fans were let down after Messi stayed on the bench during Sunday's match. The match in Hong Kong drew 40,000 fans, with some spectators paying up to $1000 per ticket. The cost of all match tickets bought from official channels can be 50 percent refunded, Tatler said, adding that it had been in discussions with the Hong Kong government to resolve the issue. Inter Miami head coach Gerardo "Tata" Martino said Messi was deemed unfit to play in the friendly in Hong Kong, but he came on as a 60th minute substitute against Vissel Kobe on Wednesday. "When we learned that Messi would not be playing, we pleaded with Inter Miami CF ownership and management to urge him to stand up, engage with the spectators and explain why he couldn't play," Tatler said. "He didn't. The fact that Messi and (team mate Luis) Suarez played in Japan on Feb. 7 feels like another slap in the face." In the match in Tokyo, entire blocks of seats at the Japan National Stadium were unoccupied, with just 28,614 tickets sold. Chinese state media, Hong Kong politicians and some fans swiftly condemned Messi's participation in the Japan match, with state-controlled Global Times writing that his absence posed many questions on the differential treatment for Hong Kong. In a statement, Hong Kong's government said Tatler Asia had made its best effort to arrange a refund, adding that many people had questions about the incident. "The government hopes that the Inter Miami team will eventually provide a reasonable explanation to Hong Kong citizens and fans who came to Hong Kong to watch the game." Tatler Asia said Inter Miami had committed to ensuring that their top players, including Messi and Uruguay's Suarez, would play for 45 minutes unless injured. It said it had hoped to create an iconic moment in support of the government's efforts to remind the world how relevant and exciting Hong Kong is. "That dream is broken today for us and all those who bought tickets to see Messi on the pitch." Hundreds of Hongkongers gathered at Victoria Harbour to see one of the new passenger jets made in mainland China fly over the city on Saturday morning, with enthusiasts hailing the aircraft as a fresh start for the country’s aviation industry.
The narrowbody C919 plane took off just before 10.30am from Hong Kong International Airport and made two passes over the harbour for excited onlookers, despite the cloudy weather. Crowds gathered at the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade, with teenagers and retirees alike eagerly snapping pictures, cameras and long lenses in hand, as the aircraft soared in the sky above. Among the plane spotters was 13-year-old secondary school student Carson Chan, who left his home in Tin Shui Wai at 7am with his camera and tripod. “It’s a very rare chance to see the C919 fly here in Hong Kong, so I came here to take advantage of the opportunity,” he said. “I get to see it with my own eyes and use my own camera to take photos. I feel very honoured and happy.” Something remarkable happened in Hong Kong’s decadeslong LGBTQ rights movement in recent months, though it is unclear what it means for the future. Hong Kong’s courts issued several rulings in favor of granting LGBTQ rights — including no longer requiring conversion surgery to change their gender on ID cards, allowing same-sex couples to apply for subsidized public housing together, and perhaps the most important by the city’s highest court — ordering the government to come up with a framework within two years to recognize same-sex partnerships. Additionally, the government last month allowed the Gay Games, an international sports event for LGBTQ athletes, to be held in Hong Kong — a first for the city and Asia. "In general, [LGBTQ rights] are progressing. ... It’s pointing in the right direction," said Jerome Yau, co-founder of Hong Kong Marriage Equality, a group dedicated to eliminating discrimination against same-sex couples. "The government is now legally obliged to come up with a framework to legally recognize same-sex marriage by October 2025. … So, something has to happen in two years. That’s a very significant decision." While that ruling and other recent developments are seen as achievements, there are worries that government hesitation, possible intervention by Beijing, and Christian opposition – could prevent the city from becoming the next place in Asia, after Taiwan and Nepal, to grant equal rights to same-sex couples, including the right to get married. "We’re in a rather complicated situation," Yau said. "We have to tread very carefully." The government, considered conservative in advancing LGBTQ legislation even before Hong Kong’s handover to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, has given no indication of how it would carry out the top court’s ruling. The Housing Authority, meanwhile, has appealed to overturn the housing rulings issued by lower courts. At the same time, anti-gay religious opponents, including a lawmaker, have protested the games and the legalization of same-sex marriage, alleging they could threaten national security. The controversial national security law passed in 2020 has been used to jail people on charges of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. Additionally, the annual Hong Kong Pride Parade, which used to attract thousands of participants to march on the city’s streets, was not held again this year, despite the end of COVID restrictions. Instead, an indoor exhibition was held. "With all these developments, sometimes you see the government take one step forward and walk two steps backwards. We feel disappointed," said Paul Choi, an LGBTQ rights advocate. Hong Kong’s courts and public opinion may be moving at a faster pace than the government seems willing to. A survey conducted by three universities earlier this year found that 60% of Hong Kongers said they supported same-sex marriage, up from 50% in 2017 and 38% in 2013. At the same time, the percentage of Hong Kong residents who said they were unaccepting of gay men and lesbians dropped significantly — from 32% in 2013, to 13% this year, according to the survey. The study’s researchers attributed the change in attitude to favorable court rulings, more jurisdictions around the world legalizing same-sex marriage and increasing representation of lesbians and gay men in the media. This includes the recently held Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, the longest running of its kind in Asia. Now, many are waiting to see if the government will keep pace. There are concerns it will drag its feet or allow only separate and partial rights. Same-sex couples who got married abroad, including simply on Zoom calls with U.S. states that allow remote marriage registration, already qualify for dependent visas, civil-servant spousal benefits, and joint tax filing. But LGBTQ community members said they want equal rights, arguing the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, promises all Hong Kong residents "shall be equal before the law." They said creating a separate status for them will not grant them the same rights heterosexual couples enjoy. "Think about it, as a citizen, I’m born and grew up here and want to get married. Why do I have to travel somewhere else to get married?" asked Choi, who recently married his partner in Melbourne, Australia. They have had to create a will and prepare power of attorney documents, although they still don’t know if they can visit each other in a hospital as family members or make medical decisions for each other if needed. There are also fears that a tightening of restrictions on LGBTQ groups in mainland China in recent years could spread to Hong Kong, especially given lingering government worries about a return of the widespread and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests seen here in 2019. "There's no one threatening us, but the biggest problem we’re facing right now is that when we want to hold events [like the pride parade], we have people telling us maybe it’s not a great idea," said Alan Hau, deacon of the LGBTQ-inclusive Blessed Ministry Community Church. Yau sounded hopeful, though, pointing out that another gay pride event, Pink Dot, has received permission to be held in a popular gathering spot. "We still have space to do things, which unfortunately is a whole different situation across the border. We should treasure this space," Yau said. "Things are happening. … It’s just that things are not moving at a faster pace. Let’s see how things will go in the next two years."
Typhoon Koinu was headed toward southern China and Hong Kong Friday after bringing record-breaking winds and leaving one dead in Taiwan. Typhoon Koinu, after initially weakening, regained strength as it headed west across the South China Sea toward China's Guangdong province, the China Meteorological Administration said. The slow-moving storm was forecast to remain at sea, bringing rain to China's southern coast through the weekend as it passes south of Guangdong and Hong Kong. The storm was about 240 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of Hong Kong and moving at about 12 kilometers (7 miles) per hour Friday evening, the city government's Hong Kong Observatory said. It issued a strong wind warning and forecast squally showers, heavy at times, in the coming days. Hong Kong was hit by heavy rains about one month ago that killed at least two people and caused widespread flooding. Ferry service was suspended in parts of Guangdong province, and the city of Guangzhou canceled some flights and trains. Koinu, which means "puppy" in Japanese, brought pounding rain and wind gusts Thursday to southern and central Taiwan, downing trees and damaging buildings. An 84-year-old woman was killed by flying glass in Taichung city and about 400 others were injured around the island, Taiwan's fire department said.
A weather monitoring station on Taiwan's outlying Orchid Island measured a gust of 342.7 kph (212.9 mph) at 9:53 p.m. Wednesday, as well as sustained winds that reached 198.7 kph (123.5 kph) at 9:40 p.m. The device measuring the wind speeds broke shortly afterward, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported. Mr. Big have announced a farewell tour, taking place in 2023 and 2024. As of now the veteran rock band has unveiled dates for a run of Asia this summer, with US, European, and South American shows slated to be revealed for 2024. The tour, dubbed “The Big Finish,” will find Mr. Big playing its 1991 album Lean Into It in its entirety. The LP yielded the band’s smash ballad “To Be With You,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In a press release, Mr. Big said that it’s the right to time to end their touring career following the passing of drummer Pat Torpey, who died in 2018 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. The band also revealed that Nick D’Virgilio (Spock’s Beard, Big Big Train) will fill Torpey’s slot behind the drum kit. “We wanted to do a proper farewell, and this seems like the right way to do it,” stated bassist Billy Sheehan. Guitarist Paul Gilbert added, “We’re in the process of making sure we come up with a suitably big entertainment extravaganza to go along with our music. And since our music has resonated so wonderfully in places all over the world, we’re going to play in as many of those places as we can.” And lead singer Eric Martin concluded, “If we were in the movie business, we’d just put it all up in lights and say, ‘Welcome to The BIG Finish!’ Seriously, I’m glad we’re getting a chance to do it all onstage together as MR. BIG again and raise a flag to everything we’ve done as a band over the years.”As for welcoming D’Virgilio to the band, Sheehan noted, “We found a wonderful drummer in Nick, and he’s got a great voice too.
This is the story of the rise and fall of a slum. It was born out of a quirk of history, it exploited its unsavory reputation, and, as is the fate of all slums, it became an embarrassment before being leveled by the authorities. Is there any greater significance to its story than that? Many would argue not. But while locals and tourists now enjoy the park, some still crave the claustrophobic darkness. Theorists from the wilder shores of architecture keep returning to the idea of Kowloon. On this tiny rectangle of ground, a single community created something that had only existed before in the avant garde imagination: the “organic megastructure.” The concept of the megastructure emerged in the late 1960s, as a radical departure from the conventional idea of the city. Instead of buildings being arranged around public spaces, streets, and squares, the megastructuralists envisioned one continuous city binding citizens together in a set of modular units, capable of unlimited expansion. It was a city designed to live, evolve, and adapt, fulfilling all the needs of its people, and with the capacity to endlessly “plug in” more units to meet changing desires. Architects pushed this idea to extremes, most sensationally in the work of Alan Boutwell and Michael Mitchell, who in 1969 proposed a “continuous city for 1,000,000 human beings.” They envisaged a single, linear city, sitting on 100-meter-high pillars, running in a straight line between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North America. Kowloon, in effect, was proof of concept. Within its anarchist society, argued the megastructuralists, was the kernel of an architectural utopia. Others, however, saw Kowloon not as a petri dish for urban theory, but as a model or diorama for a new kind of construction—one that did not exist in the ordinary physical plane, yet was as real as anything that could be seen or touched. The renowned American science fiction writer, William Gibson, described Kowloon, not long before its demolition, as a “hive of dream.” What Gibson saw in the unregulated, organic chaos of the City of Darkness was an embodiment of his famous concept of “cyberspace”—or, as we would call it today, the internet.
In its formative years, the internet provided the perfect environment for the establishment of multiple, self-regulating communities. Just like the Walled City, it operated outside of law or external oversight. It was post-design and post-government. Thousands, even millions of Kowloons could spring up at will in cyberspace: digital enclaves thriving on creative and political freedom, possessing an autonomous, dynamic structure that allowed them to grow at a frightening, near-exponential rate. It was also, just like the Walled City, living on borrowed time. “I’d always maintained that much of the anarchy and craziness of the early internet had a lot to do with the fact that governments just hadn’t realized it was there,” commented Gibson. “It was like this territory came into being, and there were no railroads, there were no lawmen, and people were doing whatever they wanted, but I always took it for granted that the railroads would come and there would be law west of Dodge.” Yet to Gibson’s mind, the people of Kowloon—and the megastructuralists—were groping toward the next stage in human evolution. He saw the Walled City, that accident of urban birth, as a crude, subconscious schematic of the future, a blueprint for coders and hackers, the architects of the web, to follow. In his 1996 novel Idoru, Gibson imagined a virtual Kowloon, a Walled City 2.0 recreated as an ultra-libertarian web sanctuary: “These people, the ones they say made a hole in the net, they found the data, the history of it. Maps, pictures … They built it again.” So the wrecking ball may not only have been destroying a notorious slum. Perhaps Kowloon was also the first, true, physical monument to the internet. A city that offered a glimpse into the infinite horizons, structural possibilities—and inherent amorality—of the digital realm. At 9:20 am on January 14, 1987, 400 officials from the Hong Kong Housing Department erected cordons around the 83 streets and alleys leading into and out of the Walled City. Then they entered the city on a mission to contact and survey every single resident. Earlier that morning, it had been announced that the city was to be cleared and redeveloped as a public park—just as the Hong Kong Government had intended over half a century before. Except this time, there was to be no Chinese resistance. Two years earlier, on December 19, 1984, the governments of China and Great Britain had signed a joint declaration to transfer sovereignty of Hong Kong back to China on July 1, 1997. The Chinese Foreign Ministry had always used Kowloon as a political pawn to remind the British and the world of their claim over the land granted to Britain in 1898. The 99 years were almost up. The plans for clearance and demolition were kept secret. Compensation was a key element of the eviction process, so there was the danger of a sudden influx of people looking to take a slice of government money. For six months, the Housing Department kept Kowloon under surveillance to gather evidence of population numbers. The compensation package for residents and business owners totaled $2.76 billion. On average, residents received around $380,000 for their individual flats. Negotiations progressed over several years, and by November 1991, only 457 households were still to agree terms. By that time, most of the 33,000 residents had moved out. Some, however, clung on to the end, and on July 2, 1992, riot police entered the city and forced out the last remaining residents. A tall wire fence was erected to encircle the whole site—following almost exactly the line once marked out by the city’s original granite wall. On March 23, 1993, a wrecker’s ball smashed into the side of an eight-story tower block on the edge of the Walled City. This was a solitary, ceremonial swing. The real work of demolishing Kowloon, piece by piece, would begin several weeks later. The moment was applauded by a crowd of invited guests and dignitaries. It was also greeted with shouts of anger from former residents who had gathered for one last, futile protest. It took almost exactly a year to reduce the rest of the city to dust and rubble.Remarkably, from within the modern wreckage, fragments of the original city emerged. There were two granite plaques, each marked with Chinese characters: One read “South Gate,” and the other “Kowloon Walled City.” Once the ruins of the tower blocks had been cleared away, developers uncovered segments of the foundations of the original wall, along with three of the iron cannons that had once bristled from the city’s ramparts. A solitary building still stood at the center of Kowloon, the one structure to have survived throughout its whole turbulent history—the office of the Mandarin. Over the course of the next year, the ruins began their rapid conversion into a landscaped park, modeled on the famous 17th-century Jiangnan gardens built by the Qing Dynasty. The paths running through these new gardens were named after the streets and buildings of the demolished slum. The Kowloon Walled City Park was officially opened on December 22, 1995, by the British Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten. It had taken some six decades, but at last Kowloon was transformed into the “place of popular resort” envisaged by Sir William Peel, the Governor of Hong Kong in 1934: six-and-a half acres of ornate bamboo pavilions, pretty water features, and vibrant greenery.
In the aftermath of the war, refugees flooded south to the Kowloon Peninsula. The only trace of the old city was the derelict shell of the Mandarin’s house. Yet people gravitated almost instinctively to this rough rectangle of ground. Perhaps it was the feng shui. The Walled City had originally been laid out according to the ancient principles of Chinese philosophy: facing south and overlooking water, with hills and mountains to the north. This ideal alignment, it was said, brought harmony to all citizens. In their desperate plight some refugees may have believed that Kowloon would be a much-needed source of luck and prosperity. Others, however, recalled that this had once been a Chinese enclave in British colonial territory. The stone walls of the “Walled City” had gone, but the refugees were convinced the diplomatic ones remained.By 1947 there were more than 2,000 squatters camped in Kowloon, their ramshackle huts arranged in almost the exact footprint of the original city. No one wanted to find themselves outside the borders—those on the wrong side of the line risked losing the protection of the Chinese government. The people kept coming, and the camp grew ever more squalid and overcrowded. Appalled by the conditions, the Hong Kong authorities made plans to clear the refugees. On January 5, 1948, the Public Works Department, supported by a large police presence, removed the squatters and demolished all the slum housing. Within a week, however, the occupiers had returned to rebuild their shacks. When the police attempted to intervene, a riot broke out. News of the disturbances spread across China, and the plight of the “residents” of Kowloon became a cause célèbre. The British consulate in Canton was set on fire, and a group of students in Shanghai staged a protest strike. Officials from the Chinese government traveled to the Walled City—and officially encouraged the refugees to continue the struggle against their British oppressors. The provincial Canton government sent a delegation on a “comfort mission” to the region, supplementing the distribution of food and medical aid with messages advocating militant action. The Chinese Foreign Ministry continued to argue that they retained jurisdiction over the city and its people. Amid mounting tension, the Hong Kong government relented. The eviction program was halted, and the police withdrew. From a temporary refugee camp, Kowloon now began to evolve into something more permanent. A new city was being founded on the ruins of the old. What kind of city? Naturally, the judgment of Sir Alexander Grantham, Governor of Hong Kong from 1947 to 1957, was damning. Kowloon, he wrote, had become “a cesspool of iniquity, with heroin divans, brothels and everything unsavoury.” The Chinese claims to sovereignty over Kowloon did not extend to any day-to-day administration; they merely used its uncertain status as a convenient tool for political point-scoring. After the disturbances in 1948, the Hong Kong government had settled on a similar policy of non-intervention. The result was a city outside the law: There was no tax, no regulation of businesses, no health or planning systems, no police presence. People could come to Kowloon, and, in official terms, disappear. It was little surprise that criminal activity flourished. Five Triad gangs—the King Yee, Sun Yee On, 14K, Wo Shing Wo, and Tai Ho Choi—took up residence. Kowloon’s extralegal status made it the perfect place for the manufacture, sale and use of drugs such as opium and heroin. The city that had been founded to police the traffic of opium became the epicenter of Hong Kong’s narcotics trade.
Organized crime may have dominated much of Kowloon, but it did not define the city. Entrepreneurs, attracted by low rents offered by private landlords, saw a unique opportunity. Hundreds of factories were established, with entire families manning the production lines. Conditions were often appalling, yet productivity—and profit—remarkable. Goods made in Kowloon were exported throughout Hong Kong, China, and even, in some cases, the world. Plastics and textile manufacturing were a specialty, as was food production. To the blissful ignorance of Hong Kong’s well-heeled residents, the dumplings and fish balls served in their restaurants were frequently sourced from Kowloon. The citizens of the Walled City demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for change and adaptation. The boundaries of their world were tightly constrained, yet, as more people continued to enter the city, their architecture met the demand. As modern high-rises grew up in Hong Kong, the builders of Kowloon copied what they saw, erecting tower blocks of their own. Thin columns, established on foundations often consisting of thin layers of concrete poured into shallow trenches, started to extend skywards. With no requirement for planning permission, structures were thrown up with amazing speed. Subsidence and settlement were common. Because the high-rises would often lean against each other, residents called them “lovers’ buildings.”As the blocks began to merge together, the city became less a collection of buildings and more a single structure, a solid block filled with thousands of individual units designed to meet every requirement of a city: living, working, learning, production, commerce, trade, and leisure. Increasingly, residents were physically sealed off from the outside world. Light did not penetrate down to the narrow lanes leading between the high-rises. It was the beginning of the City of Darkness. A system of self-government gradually emerged. In 1963, for the first time in over a decade, the Hong Kong authorities attempted to intervene in Kowloon, issuing a demolition order for one corner of the city, and proposing to relocate the displaced residents to a new estate development nearby. When the plans were made public, the community instantly formed a “Kowloon City anti-demolition committee.” Following the first Opium War of 1839 to 1842—sparked, in essence, by the Chinese government’s attempts to prevent the East India Company from importing narcotics—China signed a treaty ceding a portion of its territory to Great Britain: a near-deserted, mountainous island with a sheltered, deep-water harbor at the entrance to the Canton River, opposite the Kowloon Peninsula. Hong Kong.In 1843, the Chinese began to build a fort at the very tip of the Kowloon Peninsula, with an office for the Mandarin (the government official) and a barracks for 150 soldiers, surrounded by a wall that was 700 feet long and 400 feet wide. Known as Kowloon Walled City, it was intended as a visible Chinese military presence near the new British colony. In 1860, disputes over trade sparked a second Opium War. British and French forces devastated the Chinese, and a new treaty granted the whole of the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain, with a solitary exception—the Walled City. Over the next 30 years, British authorities attempted to negotiate control of the city, but the Chinese remained firm. Even a new treaty in 1898, which granted Hong Kong, Kowloon, and further territories in Canton to Britain for 99 years, kept the Walled City under Chinese control. A year later, in May 1899, rumors circulated that Chinese soldiers were massing again in the Walled City, so the British sent troops across the water. They expected battle—perhaps another war—but found only the Mandarin. The irate official left too, and the British took the city, though the Chinese never renounced their claim. Missionaries moved in and built churches and schools, pig farmers from the surrounding hills took plots of land within the walls. There was almost no administrative control, and the city became a slum. Yet whenever the Hong Kong government tried to clear it to turn it into a park—evicting the residents in the process—the Chinese government always stepped in. After all, this tiny rectangle of land was still officially their territory. The situation remained unresolved until the outbreak of World War II. Japanese forces occupied the Kowloon Peninsula and tore down the walls of the city to build a new runway for nearby Kai Tak Airport. In the aftermath of the war, refugees flooded south to the Kowloon Peninsula. The only trace of the old city was the derelict shell of the Mandarin’s house. Yet people gravitated almost instinctively to this rough rectangle of ground. Perhaps it was the feng shui. The Walled City had originally been laid out according to the ancient principles of Chinese philosophy: facing south and overlooking water, with hills and mountains to the north. This ideal alignment, it was said, brought harmony to all citizens. In their desperate plight some refugees may have believed that Kowloon would be a much-needed source of luck and prosperity. Others, however, recalled that this had once been a Chinese enclave in British colonial territory. The stone walls of the “Walled City” had gone, but the refugees were convinced the diplomatic ones remained.By 1947 there were more than 2,000 squatters camped in Kowloon, their ramshackle huts arranged in almost the exact footprint of the original city. No one wanted to find themselves outside the borders—those on the wrong side of the line risked losing the protection of the Chinese government. The people kept coming, and the camp grew ever more squalid and overcrowded.
Appalled by the conditions, the Hong Kong authorities made plans to clear the refugees. On January 5, 1948, the Public Works Department, supported by a large police presence, removed the squatters and demolished all the slum housing. Within a week, however, the occupiers had returned to rebuild their shacks. When the police attempted to intervene, a riot broke out. News of the disturbances spread across China, and the plight of the “residents” of Kowloon became a cause célèbre. The British consulate in Canton was set on fire, and a group of students in Shanghai staged a protest strike. Officials from the Chinese government traveled to the Walled City—and officially encouraged the refugees to continue the struggle against their British oppressors. The provincial Canton government sent a delegation on a “comfort mission” to the region, supplementing the distribution of food and medical aid with messages advocating militant action. The Chinese Foreign Ministry continued to argue that they retained jurisdiction over the city and its people. Amid mounting tension, the Hong Kong government relented. The eviction program was halted, and the police withdrew. From a temporary refugee camp, Kowloon now began to evolve into something more permanent. A new city was being founded on the ruins of the old. Jumbo floating restaurant, a once famed but financially struggling Hong Kong tourist attraction, sank in the South China Sea after being towed away from the city, its parent company said Monday. It capsized on Sunday near the Paracel Islands after it “encountered adverse conditions” and began to take on water, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises announced in a statement.
“The water depth at the scene is over 1,000 meters, making it extremely difficult to carry out salvage works,” it added. The company said it was “very saddened by the incident” but that no crew members were injured. It said marine engineers had been hired to inspect the floating restaurant and install hoardings on the vessel before the trip, and that “all relevant approvals” had been obtained. The restaurant closed in March 2020, citing the Covid-19 pandemic as the final straw after almost a decade of financial woes. Operator Melco International Development said last month the business had not been profitable since 2013 and cumulative losses had exceeded HK$100 million ($12.7 million). It was still costing millions in maintenance fees every year and around a dozen businesses and organizations had declined an invitation to take it over at no charge, Melco added. It announced last month that ahead of its license expiration in June, Jumbo would leave Hong Kong and await a new operator at an undisclosed location. The restaurant set off shortly before noon last Tuesday from the southern Hong Kong Island typhoon shelter where it had sat for nearly half a century. Opened in 1976 by the late casino tycoon Stanley Ho, in its glory days, it embodied the height of luxury, reportedly costing more than HK$30 million to build. Designed like a Chinese imperial palace and once considered a must-see landmark, the restaurant drew visitors from Queen Elizabeth II to Tom Cruise. It also featured in several films — including Steven Soderbergh’s “Contagion”, about a deadly global pandemic. The most densely populated city on Earth had only one postman. His round was confined to an area barely a hundredth of a square mile in size. Yet within that space was a staggering number of addresses: 350 buildings, almost all between 10 and 14 stories high, occupied by 8,500 premises, 10,700 households, and more than 33,000 residents.The city’s many tall, narrow tower blocks were packed tight against each other—so tight as to make the whole place seem like one massive structure: part architecture, part organism. There was little uniformity of shape, height, or building material. Cast-iron balconies lurched against brick annexes and concrete walls. Wiring and cables covered every surface: running vertically from ground level up to forests of rooftop television aerials, or stretching horizontally like innumerable rolls of dark twine that seemed almost to bind the buildings together. Entering the city meant leaving daylight behind. There were hundreds of alleyways, most just a few feet wide. Some routes cut below buildings, while other tunnels were formed by the accumulation of refuse tossed out of windows and onto wire netting strung between tower blocks. Thousands of metal and plastic water pipes ran along walls and ceilings, most of them leaking and corroded. As protection against the relentless drips that fell in the alleyways, a hat was standard issue for the city’s postman. Many residents chose to use umbrellas.There were only two elevators in the entire city. At the foot of some of the high-rises, communal and individual mailboxes were nailed to the walls. But often the only option for the postman was to climb. Even several stories up, the maze of pathways continued: knotted arteries that burrowed into the heart of the city along interconnecting bridges and stairwells. Sometimes the postman would reach a top floor and climb out onto the roof. Gangways and rusting metal ladders let him move quickly from building to building, before he dropped back down into the darkness. While some alleys were empty and quiet, others overflowed with life. Hundreds of factories produced everything from fish balls to golf balls. Entire corridors were coated with the fine flour dust used for making noodles. Acrid, chemical smells filled the streets that lay alongside metal and plastic manufacturers. Unlicensed doctors and dentists clustered together, electric signs hanging over their premises to advertise their services. Many patients came from outside the city, happy to pay bargain fees in return for asking no questions. Shops and food stalls were strung along “Big Well” Street, “Bright” Street and “Dragon City” Road. For the adventurous, dog and snake meat were specialties of the city. Moving deeper, long corridors offered glimpses into smoke-filled rooms. The incessant click of mahjong tiles echoed along the walls. Gambling parlors lined up alongside strip clubs and pornographic cinemas. Prostitutes—including children—solicited in the darkness, leading clients away to backroom brothels. And everywhere there were bodies lying in the gloom. At Kwong Ming Street—known as “Electric Station”—wooden stalls sold cheap drugs. Addicts crouched down to inhale heroin smoke through tubes held over heated tinfoil. Bare rooms, enticingly referred to as “divans” were filled with prone men and women, all sunk in opium stupors. Many of the city’s rats were addicts too, and could be seen writhing in torment in dark corners, desperate for a hit. There was no law to speak of. This was an anarchist society, self-regulating and self-determining. It was a colony within a colony, a city within a city, a tiny block of territory at once contested and neglected. It was known as Kowloon Walled City. But locals called it something else. Hak Nam—the City of Darkness.
Huddled under blankets and thermal shields, dozens of elderly patients shivered on gurneys outside a hospital serving one of Hong Kong's poorest communities -- a grim tableau for the city as its health system buckles under an Omicron-fuelled coronavirus wave. "We call this the fever zone," a nurse in full-body protective gear told AFP, declining to be named. "Don't get too close." Hong Kong is in the throes of its worst coronavirus outbreak, and record new daily infections have pushed hospitals in the finance hub to the breaking point. On Monday, Caritas Medical Centre in Sham Shui Po district started setting up isolation tents outside its facilities -- initially limiting one Covid patient per tent. But by nightfall Wednesday, entire families were crammed into the tents, while about 50 others languished in the February chill on hospital beds wheeled outside. "Some of my colleagues say we are now in battlefield mode," said David Chan, an emergency room nurse at Caritas who is also the acting president of Hong Kong's Hospital Authority Employees Alliance. "We are worried that the patients' conditions will worsen later this week," he told AFP, calling the situation "very undesirable". One of Chan's big concerns was the forecast for wet weather. Later that evening, rain began to fall.
Unvaccinated elderly Like mainland China, Hong Kong has adhered to a zero-Covid strategy, which has largely kept the virus out but left the business hub cut off from the world. Until the most recent outbreak, all patients were treated in dedicated Covid isolation wards, and close contacts were sent to a quarantine camp. But the extremely contagious Omicron virus variant has left authorities scrambling and exposed shortcomings in plans to deal with a major outbreak. On Wednesday, the daily caseload hit a record 4,285 confirmed infections with a further 7,000 preliminary positives in the densely packed city of 7.5 million. Before the latest wave, Hong Kong had recorded just over 12,000 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. Health experts say the daily case numbers could rise to 28,000 by March. Especially vulnerable are Hong Kong's vaccine-hesitant elderly. Despite ample supplies, only 43% of those aged 70-79 and 26% of over-80s opted to get jabbed. Last week, the government said people with mild cases could isolate at home but by Wednesday, there were still 12,000 people waiting to be hospitalised. 'No plan' At Caritas, the wave of patients has left staff "exhausted, stressed out and helpless", Chan said. "It's so painful that we have been working non-stop but we still cannot take care of every patient properly," he told AFP, adding that the current crisis outpaced what they faced at the beginning of the pandemic. "Back then, we did not know the virus well and we were short of equipment," he said. "Two years on, we expected the Hospital Authority to have better plans -- but there turned out to be none." City leader Carrie Lam ruled out a hard, China-style lockdown on Tuesday. But the following day, Beijing-controlled newspapers carried an order from President Xi Jinping telling Hong Kong authorities to take "all necessary measures" to control the outbreak. Yet it remains unclear whether Hong Kong could ever make it back to zero Covid cases, given the rapidly increasing number of infections in the territory. 'Sandcastles in a tsunami' The government has opened temporary Covid clinics and plans to build a makeshift mega-hospital. It also plans to requisition 3,000 unoccupied public housing apartments and is looking into whether hotels can house some cases. But whether those measures will come in time remains to be seen. In the Caritas parking area past the "fever zone", a worried mother cradled her two-year-old -- trying to keep the toddler comfortable as they waited in the 15 degree Celsius chill. "I kept calling the (government Covid) hotlines but none of them connected," the woman, who provided just her surname Chau, told AFP, adding that her daughter was running a high fever. When they arrived two hours prior, nurses instructed her to get tested -- which could take hours as she joined some 120 people waiting outside Caritas. "They have no wards for you, so you have no choice but to go home," Chau said. Healthcare professionals have long warned that Hong Kong's public hospitals were underfunded and unprepared for a coronavirus surge. Even during previous flu outbreaks, hospitals had "buckled", said Siddharth Sridhar -- a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong -- in a tweet Wednesday. "Now, with a disease that is more transmissible/severe than flu, and requires exposed staff to quarantine, HK's hospitals are sandcastles in a tsunami." From human rights to coronavirus and now tennis star Peng Shuai, preparations for February's Beijing Olympics have been overshadowed by several controversies. China's ruling Communist Party is however determined to frame the Winter Games as a chance for the country to showcase its prowess and help the world unite in the face of the pandemic. The International Olympic Committee has lauded Beijing for making history in becoming the first host of a Summer Games, in 2008, and now a Winter one. With just over 70 days to go, what are these issues hanging over the Olympics:
Tibet, Hong Kong
Human rights campaigners and exiles have accused Beijing of religious repression and massively curtailing rights in Tibet. Activists unfurled a Tibetan flag at the Olympic flame-lighting ceremony in Greece. Tibet has alternated over the centuries between independence and control by China, which says it "peacefully liberated" the rugged plateau in 1951 and brought infrastructure and education to the previously underdeveloped region. But many exiled Tibetans accuse the Beijing government of religious repression, torture and eroding their culture ― part of broader fears for human rights in China. There has also been international concern about a clampdown in Hong Kong, which China is remoulding in its own authoritarian image after huge and often violent democracy protests in the city two years ago. Coronavirus The coronavirus has loomed large over the build-up to the Beijing Olympics, which take place just six months after the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Summer Games. China has managed to restrict domestic infections to small clusters through aggressive lockdowns and mass testing, but Beijing organizers have admitted that protecting the Games from the coronavirus is their "biggest challenge". The Winter Olympics will be held in a "closed loop" ― a strict bubble insulating athletes from the outside world for the whole Games. Only people living in China will be allowed to attend as spectators. The estimated 2,900 athletes must be fully vaccinated or face 21 days in quarantine upon arrival. They, along with media and others in the bubble, will also be tested daily. It has been teetering on the brink of collapse for weeks but China Evergrande, the country's second biggest property developer, could be facing up to doomsday as it admitted it may not be able to meet its financial obligations. With more than US$300 billion in debts, the property developer is dealing with several looming deadlines to pay up, as attempts to save it fall through. An offshore bond payment that China Evergrande initially missed on September 23, but got a 30-day grace period on, is set to expire on Saturday with US$100 million owing. There's another US$60m interest payment too, which wasn't paid when due on September 29, and the grace period is also set to run out. Discussions for a US$5b deal for Hong Kong-listed Chinese developer Hopson to take a majority stake has also fallen through. Credit rating service Moody's has basically given the property developer a junk rating, warning that there are "weak recovery prospects for Evergrande's creditors if there is a default". Experts believe that China Evergrande's collapse is all but inevitable. The Chinese government has been reluctant to bail out the ailing property developer and the People's Bank of China governor Yi Gang has claimed the risk to the economy could be contained. Yet there are 70,000 investors in Evergrande, which has also paused construction on homes for more than 1 million home buyers.
Alarming drop in house prices Clifford Bennett, chief economist at ACY Securities, warned that China has moved further along the US style global financial crisis (GFC) pathway. China uses the property market to prop up the economy with nearly a third of gross domestic product coming from the industry. Recently, two other Chinese developers, Sinic and Fantasia, have also defaulted on payments. In further bad news, home prices in China dropped in September for the first time in six years, while real estate investment has also tanked for the first time since last year. Evergrande said real estate sales plunged about 97 per cent during peak home-buying season, with the developer selling just US$571m ($791m) since September, a tiny fraction of the US$22b it recorded in the same period last year, reported Bloomberg. If Evergrande's properties flood the market, due to its collapse, it would further drive prices down across the market causing more problems. While the Evergrande situation was already a crisis, Bennett predicted things would get much worse if property prices were to experience even greater drops. "There are the very first signs of that actually happening with prices in the 70 largest cities just reported to have fallen 0.8 per cent. Not a big deal, except they used to rise steadily and impressively. Something is happening that is more profound than a short term situation of one or two large developers being in trouble," he explained. "They are the canary in the mine. They are faltering because the easy win path of the incredible China boom of past decades, is beginning to settle back into a more typical pattern of a mature capitalist economy." Situation continues to unravel Bennett added that China, the world's second largest economy, could well be having a US-style property speculation bubble burst experience. "In the original GFC, high lending to all kinds of construction and property investment (in the US) led to a global financial crisis. China was actually the backstay then to the global economy," he noted. He added that China's continued strong growth during the GFC and the impact that had on all of Asia and Australia, certainly supported the region during the severe US and European downturn. So China's potential downturn could spell bad news for Australia considering it makes billions from the relationship, despite the trade relationships being frosty at times. So wait for doomsday October 23, 2021. |
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