Chinese fighter intercepts Navy Poseidon

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2021/12/08/2003769210

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202112/1240954.shtml

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/9/hong-kong-democracy-activists-found-guilty-over-tiananmen-vigil

Hong Kong democracy activists found guilty over Tiananmen vigil

Three prominent figures in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement have been found guilty for their involvement in the territory’s annual vigil to mark the Tiananmen square crackdown that left thousands of people dead.

Media tycoon Jimmy Lai and activist Chow Hang-tung, were convicted of inciting others to take part in the city’s annual Tiananmen vigil on June 4, 2020, while Gwyneth Ho was convicted of taking part in an “unauthorised” assembly. Chow was also convicted of taking part in an “unauthorised” assembly....

[Tacachale]

This is the end. Democratic countries should open up asylum to Hong Kong on a big scale.

[BridgeTroll]

This is the end. Democratic countries should open up asylum to Hong Kong on a big scale.

It is... Hong Kong... once my favorite city in the world... has been absorbed by communist China.  Taiwan is squarely in the crosshairs and most ordinary citizens of America are blissfully unaware... or don't give a rip...

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202112/1241413.shtml

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/11/19/why-i-left-hong-kong

Why I left Hong Kong

The national security law and its chilling effect on our civil liberties compelled me to leave my home.
Yupina Ng
Freelance journalist with a focus on Asia-Pacific based in London
Published On 19 Nov 2021

It was in the early 1970s, on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, when my father, without telling his family and friends, fled his birthplace in China by sneaking onto an overnight cargo train transporting crates of pears to the then-British colony of Hong Kong.

When he heard the songs of Taiwanese singer Teresa Teng, whose music was at the time banned in China, being played on board the train, he realised he had arrived in Hong Kong.

He jumped off the moving train somewhere in the countryside, made his way to the city centre, and took advantage of the touch-base policy rolled out by the colonial government that allowed undocumented immigrants from China to remain in Hong Kong if they managed to dodge security measures in the countryside to reach urban areas. He thought he had finally escaped the clutches of the repressive Chinese Communist Party for good and was free to build a new life for himself in one of the most thriving economies in Asia.

Earlier this year, however, my father and I had to leave post-colonial Hong Kong to flee the very same regime whose repressive policies led my father to sneak onto that cargo train half a century ago.

In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened its grip on what was supposed to be an autonomous finance centre and launched a series of crackdowns on dissidents in the Special Administrative Region.

As a Hong Kong-born journalist, I experienced first-hand the gradual erosion of our civil liberties and autonomy in blatant violation of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration – the treaty which supposedly set the conditions for Hong Kong’s transfer from British to Chinese control.

The situation became especially bad after Beijing imposed a new, draconian national security law on Hong Kong in June 2020. Under the law, designed to restrict freedom of expression and repress political opposition, broadly defined offences of “secession”, “subversion”, “terrorism” and “collusion with foreign forces” incur maximum penalties of life imprisonment.

The law had a chilling effect on the most basic civil liberties of Hong Kong residents and made it almost impossible for journalists like me to do their jobs.

Earlier this month, almost half (46 percent) of 99 Hong Kong-based journalists polled anonymously by the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club said they were considering or had plans to leave the city due to the decline in press freedom under the national security law. Meanwhile, 84 percent of respondents said working conditions in the city have deteriorated, and 56 percent admitted to self-censoring since the passage of the law.

But the law’s effect was not limited to stifling press freedom. Countless activists and pro-democracy lawmakers, some of whom I talked to regularly during my five-year stint in journalism in Hong Kong, are either in jail or self-exile. In October, human rights NGO Amnesty International announced its decision to close its two offices in Hong Kong by the end of 2021, citing concerns for the safety of its staff due to the same law.

The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (LegCo), the power centre of Hong Kong’s deeply flawed representative democracy, is now free to do China’s bidding without any meaningful opposition. According to LegCo President Andrew Leung, the legislature had passed 46 government bills over the past year, more than double the number from the year before. “The clouds are finally cleared and we can now see the blue sky,” Leung said of the efficiency of the legislature following the enactment of the national security law and the consequent exodus of opposition lawmakers.

The Chinese government has also started to use Hong Kong’s schools to subdue what it calls the city’s “rebellious youth”. Children as young as six are required to learn about the national security law and teachers are asked to report any behaviour “supportive of pro-democracy movements”. All schools are required to fly the Chinese flag at all times and conduct weekly flag-raising ceremonies starting from 2022 “to promote national education and help students develop a sense of belonging to the country, an affection for the Chinese people and enhance their sense of national identity”.

The independent judiciary should have been Hong Kong’s last line of defence, but judges are finding it increasingly difficult to uphold judicial independence and protect the rights of the city’s residents. The judges who return verdicts not favourable to Chinese interests are regularly targeted by Chinese state media and pro-Beijing loyalists. District Judge Sham Siu-man, who acquitted 14 pro-democracy protesters in two separate cases in 2019, for example, quickly became the target of an intimidation campaign by Chinese nationalists. “Don’t let Siu-man get away with this,” they commented online. Sham, 59, has since applied for early retirement and is reportedly planning to migrate to the United Kingdom with his family.

In my last few years living in Hong Kong, I couldn’t help but feel as if I was in a police state. Since the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests, the police presence on Hong Kong streets has been heavier than ever before. Even though mass protests have now come to an end, groups of police officers are often seen patrolling train stations, outside government buildings and areas that were central to past protests. Especially for young people, being stopped and searched by the police is a common occurrence.

The yellow economic circle – a system of classifying businesses based on their support or opposition to the 2019 protests, with pro-democracy shops labelled as “yellow” and pro-police ones as “blue” – is still active. But many only use cash when they shop within the yellow circle to avoid leaving a record of their purchase and potentially being targeted by the security forces. Moreover, after the passage of the national security law, some pro-democracy businesses started to distance themselves from the circle due to concerns over persecution. As a result, just like the future of Hong Kong, the future of the yellow economic circle is highly uncertain.

In light of all this, like many others, I took the difficult decision to leave Hong Kong and start a new chapter of my life in the UK.

“We will miss you,” my friends said to me as I hugged them goodbye at the Hong Kong airport. Next to me was a girl crying on the shoulder of her father and waving goodbye to her cousin. Meanwhile, a grandmother was handing out red packets symbolising good luck to her grandchildren who were due to get on a flight to the UK. The parents looked as if they were struggling to hold back tears.

These heart-breaking scenes were not an anomaly – almost every day people are saying goodbye to their loved ones at the Hong Kong airport to escape the clutches of the Chinese Communist Party.

Hong Kong leader, Carrie Lam, however, seems undisturbed by the fact that the city’s residents are escaping in their thousands. She claims that similar “emigration trends” have been seen in Hong Kong’s history many times before, and insists the semi-autonomous region has a prosperous future ahead.

But if Lam really looked at the history of Hong Kong, she would realise the city she is governing has never seen such a large population decline since records began in 1961. The population of Hong Kong dropped to 7.39 million in mid-2021 from 7.48 million a year before. The net outflow of Hong Kong residents was a whopping 89,200 in mid-2021.

“I thought I escaped from it 50 years ago, but now it caught up with me,” my father said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, as our plane left Hong Kong soil.

Today, we are once again free. But it is impossible to say when – if ever – those we left behind in Hong Kong will be able to enjoy freedom and democracy.

[BridgeTroll]

https://hongkongfp.com/2021/12/23/breaking-fears-for-condemned-tiananmen-massacre-monument-as-university-of-hong-kong-erects-barricades-around-statue-overnight/

[BridgeTroll]

Another paper raided and forced to close...

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/29/hong-kong-police-arrest-6-current-or-former-staff-of-online-media-outlet

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Stand News online media outlet says it is ceasing operations following a police raid and arrests of current and former editors and board members.

The outlet issued a statement on Wednesday saying its website and social media are no longer being updated and will be taken down. It said acting Editor-in-Chief Patrick Lam had resigned and all employees had been dismissed.

The statement came after hundreds of Hong Kong national security police raided the office of Stand News and arrested six people, including senior staff, for suspected “seditious publications” offences...

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/hongkong-media-12292021085536.html

Police in Hong Kong on Wednesday arrested seven people linked to a major pro-democracy news website for "sedition" under a national security crackdown ordered by Beijing, and froze its assets, prompting it to shut down on the same day.

Police arrested a former chief editor of Stand News, Chung Pui-kuen, and acting chief editor Patrick Lam, as well as former pro-democracy lawmaker Margaret Ng, Cantopop star Denise Ho, Chow Tat-chi and Christine Fang, all of whom have served on the board of directors.

In an operation involving more than 200 plainclothes and uniformed police, officers also searched the home of Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) president Ronson Chan, who also worked as a senior editor at Stand News, although he wasn't arrested.

"Police arrested a number of senior and former senior officers of the company this morning, took a number of people in to help with enquiries, and seized a number of computers and some documents from the newsroom," Stand News said in a statement on Wednesday....

[BridgeTroll]

Another one bites the dust...

Hong Kong's online news outlet, Citizen News, is scheduled to stop operations on Tuesday, a decision that was made following the shutdown of Stand News. While the chief writer and editor of Citizen News claimed on Monday that the decision was made over concerns on whether future coverage would violate the law, observers said the ambiguous stance cannot disguise the fact that Citizen News has played a notorious role in instigating social divergence and defying the constitutional order of Hong Kong. 

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1243915.shtml

https://hongkongfp.com/2022/01/03/no-other-choice-hong-kong-citizen-news-says-decision-to-close-was-prompted-by-stand-news-arrests-staff-safety/

[BridgeTroll]

Very interesting article...

Taiwan accounts for 92 percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity, a report from Boston Consulting and the Semiconductor Industry Association said in April. South Korea holds the remaining 8 percent.

https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2022/01/01/2003770517

[BridgeTroll]

This is the end. Democratic countries should open up asylum to Hong Kong on a big scale.

https://hongkongfp.com/2022/01/16/explainer-how-to-measure-hong-kongs-mass-exodus/

[BridgeTroll]

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1246812.shtml

PLA warplanes tie noose around neck of ‘Taiwan secessionists’: Global Times editorial

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) sent warplanes near the island of Taiwan on Sunday and Monday. On Sunday, 39 aircraft flew, the largest daily number this year. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority appeared very nervous and upset. They should be. It has become normal for PLA warplanes to fly around Taiwan and approach the island for patrols. A sword of Damocles is hung over the head of "Taiwan secessionists," and at the same time, it concretizes and materializes the warning and deterrence of the Chinese mainland.

It should be emphasized that there is no essential difference between the PLA warplanes flying over Taiwan and US military warplanes over Hawaii. Taiwan is a part of China's territory. There has never been the concept of "Taiwan airspace" in the world, but only "China airspace." The DPP authority has no right to designate the so-called air defense identification zone. The "Taiwan secessionists" and the forces supporting them have fabricated the rhetoric of "Taiwan airspace" and "intrusion," which is nothing more than an attempt to hide their desire to undermine peace......
 

[BridgeTroll]

Now the gay crackdown...

https://hongkongfp.com/2022/01/31/gay-dating-app-grindr-disappears-from-china-app-stores-as-content-purge-continues-ahead-of-olympics/

[jaxlongtimer]

^ They must be mimicking the Florida legislature and Gov. DeSantis who are purging conversations in our schools that discuss LGBTQ issues.  Add banning teaching anything in our country's history that makes folks "uncomfortable."  And, selectively arresting people if they happen to be in the vicinity of a protest in which even one person breaks the law.  Florida and China - more and more alike.