Benson K. Wong

I'm a Kong Man 頑香港. Independent scholar on HKG, TWN, CHN & New Age Practitioner: Astrology, Numerology, Face & Palm Reading, Fung Shui

[Benson K. Wong @bensonwk]

This X will be relaunched on 1 August 2024😘

[Benson K. Wong @bensonwk]

@frances_hui As for Trump, the situation is absolutely hopeless. What he has actually done proves that much of what he has said is complete bullshit.

[Frances Hui 許穎婷 @frances_hui]

"One olive branch China could extend in return is the release of #JimmyLai ... The 7.5 million people who live in Hong Kong knew freedom and hunger for its return. The U.S. need not accept their fate." https://t.co/BEIziDIJXE

[Lord (David) Alton @DavidAltonHL]

Tom Rogan in The Washington Examiner:
“Reading is now a crime in Hong Kong”…. “All of the city’s pro-democracy leaders have been imprisoned or forced into exile. Hundreds of activists have been imprisoned for saying, writing, or thinking things that Xi does not approve of. China has also threatened those living abroad that it will act unilaterally to forcibly repatriate them. Independent newspapers have been shuttered and their publishers and staff thrown into prison (most notably, Jimmy Lai). Authorities have even banned an annual candlelight vigil for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. But Xi’s strategy doesn’t begin and end with repression…. The Chinese Communist Party believes that allowing individuals to read certain histories, fictions, and philosophies of their own volition is prima facie poisonous. Therefore, human freedom is inherently dangerous and must be resisted. These latest arrests are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to China’s steady annihilation of freedom in Hong Kong. But they underline the central concern vis-à-vis China’s pursuit of global hegemony: that freedom will evaporate in tandem with China’s rise. Hong Kong’s recent history tells a tragic tale.”https://t.co/i8AnpNKUaC @ipacglobal @hk_watch @Stand_with_HK @thecfhk @CECCgov @Ed_Miliband @pritipatel @MPIainDS @aliciakearns @TomTugendhat @amcarmichaelMP @iguangcheng

[Luke de Pulford @lukedepulford]

We cannot and will not allow this to happen.

[Hong Kong Watch @hk_watch]

🇬🇧 Hong Kong Watch remains deeply concerned about the treatment of #HongKong political prisoners by @UKBorder and urges @ukhomeoffice to ensure that no other prisoner of conscience will face threats of deportation when seeking refuge in the UK.

https://t.co/MOAi4yoG3G

[Luke de Pulford @lukedepulford]

No spy hub. Defend UK security.

Huge shout out to Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other communities persecuted by the CCP who have backed this legal challenge since the beginning.

[Luke de Pulford @lukedepulford]

❗️🇨🇳 Mega-embassy judicial review hearings tomorrow and Wednesday.

Here's what to expect:

1⃣ It would be fairly normal to lose at this stage (administrative court), and then to appeal. A case of this significance naturally points towards to the higher courts. However:
2⃣ The case for the claimants (Royal Mint Court Residents Association @StopTheEmbassy) is strong, and the judge, Lady Justice Lieven, has a reputation for robustly defending the rule of law.
3⃣ Everything is arguable in the law, and nobody should be over-confident in litigation. We don't know which way this is going to go, but we are hopeful.
4⃣ We also don't know when to expect the judgment. Could be a while. The judiciary recess may delay it.
5⃣ The grounds have been set out in some detail in the press, but our ground 1, which addresses enforceability, is a real problem for the government. See the 📸 below, which is a transcription of the letter Boris Johnson sent to Wang Yi in 2018, which, by the way, the UK government refused to release (got a copy anyway). This clearly indicates that diplomatic consent was given in 2018, at which point, under UK law, inviolability attached to the land. To be clear: Royal Mint Court has been inviolable Chinese government land since 2018, which creates major headaches for the enforceability of conditions agreed in the subsequent planning application.
6⃣ If we lose, we will appeal. If the Government loses, I don't know what they will do. A part of me suspects that they hope we will win, so they can blame us in discussions with the Chinese side. This won't work, however, because the CCP does not understand why Ministers simply couldn't make the mega embassy happen for them, and were totally flummoxed by our processes, especially the humiliation of being rejected unanimously by Tower Hamlets Council the first time they applied. Beijing will blame the Government, and you can confidently predict that they will try to punish the UK in the event that their geopolitical ambition is frustrated by a merry band of Tower Hamlets residents and @ipacglobal
7⃣I won't set out all the other grounds here, but will underline that this case will be decided on planning merits alone. That means that geopolitical issues will barely feature. We are trying to establish that the Government acted unlawfully in approving the mega embassy. We had to excise our grounds which alleged that other matters had been taken into account in determining this application (clearly proven by Boris' letter below, IMO, but proving that in court would have entailed costly disclosure hearings). The Government has endless money to deploy, we don't.
8⃣ That said, with the help of superb dissident organisations and ordinary Brits, we managed to raise 215k, and I personally raised more to ensure we have enough to fight this case with the best counsel available. It's incredible to think of the thousands of hours of effort we and the residents have had to put in to defend the UK from this monstrous idea, which would be a disaster for UK national security, and project CCP power to the whole of Europe.

I'll try to keep you posted from the courtroom, with the usual caveats surrounding restrictions.

[Benson K. Wong @bensonwk]

@PolitlcsUK @reformexposed @Ipsos_in_the_UK but the point is how the voters in this constituency will actually vote for / not to vote

[Sophie Richardson @SophieDRich]

#HongKong Joshua Wong is guilty of nothing other than defending his and others’ #humanrights and democratic aspirations. These are not crimes.

[Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) @ipacglobal]

China’s missile test marks a dangerous escalation in the Pacific, underscoring Beijing's strategy to project power beyond the first island chain and weaponise dependencies for geopolitical coercion.

IPAC members across 24 countries stand united in condemnation:

[Benson K. Wong @bensonwk]

@Chloe_chc_25 So unprofessional, unserious, looking like clowns in the circus 🤣

[Benson K. Wong @bensonwk]

I unlocked an achievement on @globalvoices: Popular Post! https://t.co/4Qznr50Lg9

[Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish]

Job vacancies for university graduates in Hong Kong have fallen by 60 percent over the past three years. For young graduates, many are questioning where they fit in, and how they can get to that first step in their career.

Al Jazeera's Laura Westbrook reports from Hong Kong.

[Frances Hui 許穎婷 @frances_hui]

Incredible to hear that #PastorEzraJin is free, has just arrived in LA, and is finally reunited with his family.🥹

It has been a privilege to stand beside @GraceJDrexel & witness her strength with @bill_drexel's support as they fought for her father’s freedom. (1/3)

[Kevin Yam 任建峰 @kevinkfyam]

Thank you @LisaVisentin for writing about the Hong Kong Museum of History’s National Security Law exhibition (and quoting me on it) which feature @tedhuichifung and me. If the consequences weren’t so serious, one can almost laugh at this exhibition - it’s as if they are saying “you’re history!” to us in a childish, schoolyard bully tone.

Weblink to article: https://t.co/oyHhE1eEUn

[Luke de Pulford @lukedepulford]

The @SCMPNews, once respected, perfectly charting the descent of #HongKong. I even wrote for them once. Look at it now! This guy is the Alan Partridge of tankies, presiding over an unintended parody. Moronic. Feel sorry for the good hacks who stuck it out.

[Desmond Shum @DesmondShum]

The Party, the Firewall, and the Fake Voice of China

I recently came across a report about China setting up new internet access centers across the country, allowing authorized entities to connect to the global internet. One stated purpose is to help selected bloggers and institutions “讲好中国故事” — to tell China’s story well.

https://t.co/JdjmMF2myO

Xi Jinping has stressed since 2013 the need to “tell China’s story well” and “spread China’s voice.” In 2021, he went further, calling for China to present itself as “credible, lovable, and respectable.”

But here lies the institutional contradiction: to tell China’s story on YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, China’s own propaganda system first needs access to platforms that ordinary Chinese citizens are blocked from accessing.

So the state does not allow its own people to freely see the world, yet it encourages selected and approved voices to claim representation of China to the world.

I find this deeply disturbing, because the purpose is not genuine exchange. It is to shape, guide, and usually mislead audiences outside China.

Today I came across one such account on X: @ChinaAcademyORG.

It describes itself as “an intellectual content network dedicated to helping global audiences understand the key dynamics of how China sees the world.” It also says it is based in Hong Kong and claims to be “trusted by 150 million subscribers from 86 countries.”

So I went to its website. The “About Us” section offers no serious explanation of who is behind it. For an organization supposedly trusted by 150 million subscribers, there is not a single proper introduction, no visible leadership team, and not even photos of the people running it.

Then I found that one of its original productions is “China Now”. I dig further and found it’s connected to the ecosystem around “This Is China” — a program produced by Shanghai Media Group (a state owned media), with support from Fudan University’s China Institute, and https://t.co/C7e5YN0sB1 (a nationalistic Chinese media owned by Eric Li, an American VC guy operating in China https://t.co/GhKZkwkJH3). The key person is Zhang Weiwei, dean of Fudan University’s China Institute. That program presents itself as using “Chinese discourse” to explain the “China miracle” and to break the West’s “discourse monopoly.”

In reality, its function is to turn official narratives into something that looks intellectual, international, youthful, and consumable, or one would say United Front works.

Zhang Weiwei himself is well known on the Chinese internet for a number of controversial remarks, including: “Chinese migrant workers’ box meals are better than what the American middle class eats,” “China’s pandemic control was a public lesson in institutional confidence,” and “the more a place claims to have press freedom, the more ignorant and foolish it is.”

I have no objection to Chinese state media appearing on international platforms. But, state media should be clearly labeled and judged for what it is - not misrepresenting itself as some sort of independent entity based out of Hong Kong, while it’s a state entity out of Shanghai.

It is dishonest to present state-aligned messaging as if it were independent intellectual commentary. It is also a classic CCP technique to conflate the Party with China itself. “How China sees the world” really means “how the CCP wants the world to see China.”

The Communist Party is China’s ruling political party. It is not China. It is not the Chinese people. And it certainly has no right to claim that its worldview represents how all Chinese people see the world.

No one in the free world would seriously say that the worldview of the ruling party automatically represents how the entire country sees the world. Yet this is precisely the trick the CCP repeatedly tries to perform overseas.

[Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) @ipacglobal]

#BREAKING under pressure from a @DavidAltonHL amendment, @GOVUK says from the Despatch Box that interference **motivated by a party policy** (like 🇨🇳 United Front Work) meets the "foreign power" condition in the Nat Sec Act 2023 and therefore CAN BE PROSECUTED.

👏

[Hong Kong Watch @hk_watch]

🇹🇼 has warned that the proposed Chinese super embassy in London could be used as a prison to hold dissidents.

With a hearing scheduled for 14 July aimed at overturning the planning decision, @GOVUK must be resolute in standing against transnational repression and protecting diaspora communities in 🇬🇧, including those from #HongKong and Taiwan.

https://t.co/i2ICQkvyxg

[Fortify Rights @FortifyRights]

🚨 NEW: #China’s new "Ethnic Unity and Progress" law, which takes effect on July 1, will serve as a tool for its “sinicization of religion” campaign and threatens freedom of religion and other human rights for Tibetan Buddhists, Uyghur Muslims, Christians, Falun Gong practitioners, and other communities.

The law mandates the use of Mandarin in schools, restricts indigenous languages, promotes Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, and forces religious institutions to adapt CCP teachings.

"This new law is not … about achieving ethnic unity or progress, but about tightening the Chinese Communist Party's ideological and political grip on ethnic and religious communities,” said @BenedictRogers, Senior Director at @FortifyRights.

“As we mark the 29th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong ... it is clear how the Chinese Communist Party has broken promises ... to uphold Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy, and instead imposed repressive laws which violate the basic human rights of Hong Kongers."

https://t.co/R2djrBe4D7