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The Persuader
My personal blog, started in 2006. No paid or guest posts, no link sales.
Posts tagged ‘Chinese Communist Party’
08.10.2022
If you think some of us were being uppity about New Zealand Chinese Language Week, howās this for a real-life report?
Speak Cantonese, get banned from a social media platform.
Thatās whatās happening in China right now. And I had already mentioned schoolchildren being told off for using their reo.
The Google Translate translation is actually pretty good for a change, if you canāt read Chinese.
And here we are in New Zealand, kowtowing (derived from a Cantonese word, incidentally) to the Chinese Communist Party with its policy.

Tags: 2022, Aotearoa, China, Chinese, Chinese Communist Party, culture, Douyin, Facebook, language, New Zealand, social media, Tiktok Posted in China, culture, internet, New Zealand, technology | No Comments »
04.06.2020
Usually I find it easier to express myself in written form. For once, Black Lives Matter and the protests in the US prompted me to record another podcast entry. Iām not sure where the flat as and the mid-Atlantic vowels come from when I listened to this againāmaybe I was channelling some of the passion I was seeing in the US, and I had watched the news prior to recording this.
My Anchor summary is: ‘Personal thoughts in solidarity with my black friends in the US. Yes, I posted a blackout image on my Instagram but it didnāt seem to be enough. This is my small contribution, inspired by a Facebook post written by my white American friend Eddie Uken where he reflects on his perspective and privilege.’ Eddie’s Facebook post, which is public, is here.
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, black American, Black Lives Matter, China, Chinese Communist Party, culture, family, New Zealand, podcast, police, politics, prejudice, privilege, racism, Taishan, USA, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, politics, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
03.05.2020
Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.
Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999ā2000, will tell you that I love doing impressions. They say Rory Bremner’s are shit hot and that mine are halfway there. It’s a regret that I haven’t been able to spring any of these on you. Don’t worry, I haven’t done any here. But one of these days ā¦
Perhaps the funniest Tweet about the safe delivery of the British PM and his fiancĆ©e’s son, for those of us who are Clint Eastwood fans:
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, Bauer, Boris Johnson, China, Chinese Communist Party, COVID-19, Facebook, family, film, globalization, health, Hong Kong, humour, innovation, neoliberalism, New Zealand, podcast, politics, racism, social media, Sweden, Twitter, UK, USA, Wellington, Whanganui-a-Tara Posted in China, culture, France, globalization, Hong Kong, humour, New Zealand, politics, publishing, Sweden, UK, USA, Wellington | No Comments »
02.04.2020

I had to see how we were tracking on total COVID-19 infections alongside other countries on a per capita basis, and here’s the latest update (source also linked above). I knew Switzerland was doing badly, but not this badly. I know I haven’t been consistent with my previous postās country selection, but I don’t want this becoming an obsession.
Spain 2,227Ā·1
Switzerland 2,057Ā·5
Italy 1,828
Germany 931Ā·6
France 873Ā·6
Netherlands 795
USA 651Ā·7
Sweden 490Ā·7
UK 434Ā·8
Australia 202Ā·2
South Korea 194Ā·6
Singapore 171Ā·3
New Zealand 165Ā·7
Hong Kong 102Ā·4
Mainland China 56Ā·7
Saudi Arabia 49Ā·6
Japan 18Ā·8
Taiwan 14Ā·2
India 1Ā·5
I said in a recent post that a lot of the Asian territories have done well because of a community response. Another thing Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have in common: a lot of people descended from Chinese who fled the mainland in 1949, and have a mistrust of anything the Communist Party says. If the CCP said Dr Li Wenliang was a stirrer, then that would automatically have these places thinking: shit, there might be a pandemic coming. That could account for their numbers being on the lower half, and for their general decrease in new infection numbers. (I realize Singapore just had a big jump. Anomalous? Or were things not tracking downwards?)
Tags: 2020, Aotearoa, China, Chinese Communist Party, COVID-19, health, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Republic of China, Singapore, statistics, Taiwan, WHO Posted in China, culture, Hong Kong, New Zealand, politics | No Comments »
11.10.2017

Matt Clark
Above: Driving a silver Aston Martin. I’m citing the Official Secrets Act when I say I may or may not be on the tail of Auric Goldfinger.
Oh dear, Iāve been outed. Iām a spy. Actually, Walter Matthau and I prefer āagentā.
You can read between the lines in this New York Times piece about Dr Jian Yang, MP.
Iāve already gone into what I think of the Yang situation on Twitter but if you scroll down, youāll see Raymond Huo, MP is tarred with the same brush.
Itās the sort of reporting that makes me wonder, especially since people like me contribute to Duncan Garnerās ānightmarish glimpseā of Aotearoa.
[Prof Anne-Marie Brady of the University of Canterbury] said the Chinese-language media in New Zealand was subject to extreme censorship, and accused both Mr. Yang and Raymond Huo, an ethnic Chinese lawmaker from the center-left Labour Party, of being subject to influence by the Chinese Embassy and community organizations it used as front groups to push the countryās agenda.
Mr. Huo strongly denied any āinsinuations against his character,ā saying his connections with Chinese groups and appearances at their events were just part of being an effective lawmaker.
And:
Despite the criticism, Mr. Yang has continued to appear alongside Wang Lutong, Chinaās ambassador to New Zealand, at public events, including for Chinaās National Day celebrations this week, when he posed for photos with the ambassador and a Chinese military attachĆ©.
I wound up at three events where the Chinese ambassador, HE Wang Lutong, was also invited. This makes me a spy, I mean, agent.
I even shook hands with him. This means my loyalty to New Zealand should be questioned.
I ran for mayor twice, which must be a sure sign that Beijing is making a power-play at the local level.
You all should have seen it coming.
My Omega watch, the ease with which I can test-drive Aston Martins, and the fact I know how to tie a bow tie to match my dinner suit.
The faux Edinburgh accent that I can bring out at any time with the words, āThere can be only one,ā and āWe shail into hishtory!ā
Helming a fashion magazine and printing on Matt paper, thatās another clue. We had a stylist whose name was Illya K. I donāt always work Solo. Sometimes I call on Ms Gale or Ms Purdy.
Jian Yang and I have the same initials, which should really ring alarm bells.
Clearly this all makes me a spy. I mean, agent.
Never mind I grew up in a household where my paternal grandfather served under General Chiang Kai-shek and he and my Dad were Kuomintang members. Dad was ready to åå·„ and fight back the communists if called up.
Never mind that I was extremely critical when New Zealanders were roughed up by our cops when a Chinese bigwig came out from Beijing in the 1990s.
Never mind that I have been schooled here, contributed to New Zealand society, and flown our flag high in the industries Iāve worked in.
All Chinese New Zealanders, it seems, are still subject to suspicion and fears of the yellow peril in 2017, no matter how much you put in to the country you love.
We might think, āThatās not as bad as the White Australia policy,ā and it isnāt. We donāt risk deportation. But we do read these stories where thereās plenty of nudge-nudge wink-wink going on and you wonder if thereās the same underlying motive.
All you need to do is have a particular skin colour and support your community, risking that the host has invited Communist Party bigwigs.
Those of us who are here now donāt really bear grudges against what happened in the 1940s. We have our views, but that doesnāt stop us from getting on with life. And that means we will be seen with people whose political opinions differ from ours.
Sound familiar? Thatās no different to anyone else here. Itās not exactly difficult to be in the same room as a German New Zealander or a Japanese New Zealander in 2017. A leftie won’t find it hard to be in the same room as a rightie.
So Iāll keep turning up to community events, thank you, without that casting any shadow over my character or my loyalty.
A person in this country is innocent till proved guilty. We should hold all New Zealanders to the same standard, regardless of ethnicity. This is part of what being a Kiwi is about, and this is ideal is one of the many reasons I love this country. If the outcry in the wake of Garnerās Fairfax Press opinion is any indication, most of us adhere to this, and exhibit it.
Therefore, I don’t have a problem with Prof Brady or anyone interviewed for the pieceāit’s the way their quotes were used to make me question where race relations in our neck of the woods is heading.
But until heās proved guilty, Iām going to reserve making any judgement of Dr Yang. The New York Times and any foreign media reporting on or operating here should know better, too.
Tags: 2010s, 2017, Aotearoa, Aston Martin, bias, China, Chinese Communist Party, film, humour, James Bond, journalism, Kuomintang, Lucire, media, media bias, New Zealand, NY, politics, racism, The New York Times, USA Posted in China, culture, humour, media, New Zealand, politics, publishing | 2 Comments »
29.09.2014
Equal access: an audio recording of this blog post can be found here.
I know Iām not alone among expats watching the Occupy Central movements in Hong Kong. More than the handover in 1997, itās been making very compelling live television, because this isnāt about politicians and royalty, but about everyday Hong Kong people.
I Tweeted tonight that if I were a student there, Iād be joining in. While the idea of direct elections is a recent developmentāthey started in 1985 for the Legislative Council, itās important to remember that all UN member nations should permit its subjects the right of self-determination. It doesnāt matter when they started, the fact is they did. The latest protests arenāt about Legco, but the election of the Chief Executiveāthe successor to the role of Governorāwhich Beijing says can only be for candidates it approves.
Legal arguments aside, protesters are probably wondering why they could enjoy free and fair elections under colonial rule from London, and not by their own country from their own people.
I cannot speak for Beijing, but their perspective is probably more long-term: in the colonial days, the Legislative Council was appointed by London, not voted by Hong Kong subjects, for most of its existence. The Governor was always appointed by London. Surely what it is proposing for 2017 is far better?
And given that the Chief Executive currently is selected by an election committee of Beijing loyalists, then 2017 presents something far more open and akin to universal suffrage.
Those are the issues on the surface as I understand them, but they ignore some of the history of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was a backwater until 1949, when the Communists revolted, and refugees poured in. My father was one of them, having made the trek from Taishan with his mother and sister. Other members of the family had got there on other journeys. The stories can happily fill chapters in a novel.
He recalls in his first days in Hong Kong, police officers had three digits on their shoulder. āI donāt know how many policemen there were,ā he recalls, ābut there couldnāt have been more than 999.ā
Hong Kongās population swelled, and the colonial authorities found a way to accommodate the new arrivals.
I donāt have the exact figures but at the dawn of the 1940s, the population of Hong Kong was 1Ā·6 million, and it was close to 2½ million in the mid-1950s. When I left in 1976, it was 3 million.
The reason most people went there and risked their lives to escape the Communists: freedom. Most were skilled workers and farmers fearing prosecution.
Dad recalls that in the lead-up to the family home and farm being seized things were getting tough at school, with false accusations made against him by teachers and students. The vilification of land-owning families had begun.
The day he left, he saw a notice on the front door and the family departed for Hong Kong, where my paternal grandfather already had contacts from his military days.
Assuming a million people came across from the Peopleās Republic of China, then itās not hard to imagine a sizeable part of the modern population of Hong Kong to have grown up with negative impressions of Beijing.
Those same impressions saw to the mass exodus of Hong Kongers in the lead-up to the handover, with most expecting doom and gloom despite assurances under the Basic Lawāthough of course many have since returned to Hong Kong since things hadnāt changed as badly as they feared.
They were the reasons my parents left in 1976. My mother simply thought a generation ahead and figured that by the 1990s, it would be hard to leave Hong Kong since some western countries would start going on about yellow peril again. (She was right, incidentally.)
While in the post-colonial days, there is more contact between Hong Kong and the rest of China, it will take a while for those impressions to subside.
It would be fair to say that culturally, we are predisposed to taking a long view of history, and the Cultural Revolution and the mismanagement of the economy in the earlier days of the Peopleās Republic stick in our minds.
Even if the PRC proved to be a benevolent nation and made no wrong moves since 1997, the suspicion would remain.
It hasnāt been helped by June 4, 1989 and its aftermath, continued censorship within China, and, more recently, some Hong Kongers feeling that theyāre a second class in their own city when mainland tourists pop over for a holiday.
Then you get people like me who cannot understand a word of Mandarin, which these days tends to be the second language many people learn. When the language of the colonials is easier to grasp, then that doesnāt bode well for our northern friends. Thereās a sense of separation.
This may explain a natural resistance to Beijing, because the way of life that the Chinese Communist Party envisages is so very different to what Hong Kongers believe they should enjoy.
Scholarism, meanwhile, from which Occupy Central has spawned, has come from this culture: a group protesting the introduction of āmoral and national educationā as a compulsory subject in Hong Kong. The subject was seen by opponents to be pro-communist, with the teaching manual calling the Communist Party an āadvanced, selfless and united ruling groupā.
Itās hard, therefore, for Hong Kongers who grew up in this environment not to be suspicious of Beijing.
That explains the solidarity, the sort of thing that would have inspired me if I was a young uni student today in Hong Kong.
Now we are looking at two sides, neither of which is famous for backing down.
One possible resolution would be for Beijing to accede yet bankroll a pro-Beijing candidate come 2017, which could, in the long term, save face, but provide the protesters with a short-term victory. Itās not what they are fighting forāthey want everyone to be able to stand for the post of CEābut it may be one way events will play out.
Hong Kong isnāt prepared to risk its economic freedom and progress, and it remains proud of its stance against corruption which has helped the city prosper. Citizens also place faith in the rule of law there, and the right to a fair trial.
Beijing, meanwhile, isnāt prepared to risk the danger of an anti-communist CE being elected and having that trip up the development of the rest of the nation.
I have to say that such a fear is very remote, given the overriding desire of Hong Kongers to get ahead. If Hong Kongers are anything, they are pragmatic and ambitious, and a Chief Executive who is imbalanced to such a degree would never get elected. With the rise of the orient and the sputtering of the occident, the ācompetingā ideas arenāt so competing anyway. The United States and Australia have laws either enacted or at the bill stage in the name of national security that they can hardly serve as an ideal model for democracy. After all, Edward Snowden went to Hong Kong first.
The Cold War is over, and what is emerging, and what has been emerging, in Hong Kong and the rest of China since the 1990s has been a distinct, unique, Chinese model, one that has its roots in Confucianism and which takes pride in the progress of the city.
The ideal Chief Executive would more likely be a uniter, not a divider, balancing all sides, and ensuring those they represent a fair go. They would be a connecter who can work with both citizens and with Beijing.
Under my reading, there shouldnāt be any concerns in Beijing, because pragmatic Hong Kongers would never elect someone who would risk their livelihoods or their freedoms.
And when Beijing sees that such a development can work in Hong Kong, it could be a model to the rest of China.
Taiwan, too, will be watching.
Tags: 2010s, 2017, Beijing, China, Chinese Communist Party, Confucianism, democracy, economy, freedom, freedom of speech, Hong Kong, law, Occupy, politics, press freedoms, Republic of China, Taiwan Posted in business, China, culture, Hong Kong, politics | 1 Comment »
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