Tag Archive for 'Chinese government'

Roll On, New Decade

Published
by
cecilie
on December 31, 2009
in China, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Media, communism and corruption
. 9 Comments

So that was the end of 2009 - The Donald berated by Wen Jiabao for Hong Kong’s “deep rooted conflicts.” Being a cretin, or maybe because he’s catholic, the optimistic Chief Executive takes this to mean: Hong Kong must sort out its economic problems.

What is he ON? Has he never been in, or near, China before? Did he notice that just the week before, one of China’s most high profile and outspoken pro-democracy activists was sentenced to 11 years in prison for mildly suggesting that perhaps rampant corruption and gagging of anyone critical of the government isn’t the best way forward for China, and in fact that a higher degree of democracy …THUMP!

Upon which he was immediately gagged by a government which prides itself of being pro-democratic, having a high if not 100% degree of free speech, and being anti corruption.

This again came two weeks after all private internet sites and blogs were banned, amid talk of registering all mobile phone owners.

So yeah Donald, the Chinese government, all they care about is the economy, right?

Everybody else can see the noose tightening yet again in China around the neck of media freedom. If he doesn’t read into this stern warning what it really means: Keep the garrulous, relatively independently thinking population of Hong Kong under control, or else! he is even less with it than I thought. Then the talk of “harmony” started, which the D, not surprisingly, interpreted as: Hong Kong needs to make more money! And wash its hands after coughing and sneezing!

Ha. When these sinister, black-laquered helmet-haired geezers start talking about “harmony,” it’s time to start putting your head down and falling in line, for what they mean is China China uber alles, and everybody who doesn’t agree can go hoover themselves up.
Or some nice, if basic, accommodation will be provided for them, courtesy of the Chinese government, for 11 years for example.

If Donald still prefers to dig himself further down into La-la Hole in the Ground, he may well find himself in Tung Chee-wha’s position in a few months. This would be a great thing for Hong Kong … but that’s what we said last time, so maybe we should be careful what we wish for. My guess is he’ll get the sack within a year and a cadre from the Central government will be brought in to bring us some real harmony mainland style, as HK people clearly aren’t fit to rule themselves.

So happy new year, yoo-hoo, new decade, people! Isn’t it exciting? I’ve only just come to terms with it not being 19 - something anymore, so 2010 will be a cinch!

This Week’s Weirdest Bribe?

Published
by
cecilie
on November 7, 2009
in China, communism and corruption
. 2 Comments

Obama, Obama, Obama day and night. Apart from getting a totally undeserved Nobel’s peace prize; I’m really ashamed of my fellow countrymen the Norwegians there (guess how many people on the committee are of “middle eastern descent” though) it seems all he’s done so far is not being George W. Bush.
As much as that will always be a good thing for which we should all be thankful, so many others aren’t, so not really a huge achievement.

When he was first elected I wrote in this forum that he was certainly not a Messiah, so we’d have to wait and see, and that when you put someone on the very top of the sky-high expectations pinnacle, there’s only one direction to go. Down. For this I was roundly criticised for being an idiot who “got up on my soap box and spouted about things I didn’t know anything about.”
I lost all respect for him when he didn’t refuse the Nobel prize, but I suppose a few weeks in the top dog chair will do a lot of things to a man’s dignity.

Now it seems that he might, if not be the Messiah, so at least have a thing in common with the geezer after all. For how does this strike you: China is offering to commit to military transparency and to co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament - if the ‘Bamster  would only find it in his heart to say publicly that Tibet is, has always been and will always be Chinese, and that the US opposes Tibetan independence. Where have we heard this one before? Oh yeah, in the Bible! “All this will be yours if you will fall on your knees and worship me.”

Open letter to Obama: Don’t do it, Barrie! Don’t do it! Jesus didn’t, so you can afford to let this one slide.

(Was it Julian Barnes who said: ” Who knows what would have happened if the devil had said: All this will be yours if you let me fall down on my knees and worship you?”)

Okay, I suppose I didn’t lose absolutely all respect for him over the Nobel rigmarole (it’s difficult for me to respect someone who wants to be president of the US in the first place) but I certainly will if he caves on this one.
And the Chinese - what are they ON? If they’re so bloody sure that Tibet is, has always, etc. and they certainly seem to be as they can speak of little else, why do they need arch enemy capitalist imperialist running dog whatever the US to say so? Who do they need to convince - the Tibetans? Themselves? Countries which seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people by having the Dalai Lama over for tea and a chat?

This is right up there with writing self criticism I reckon. Nobody cares if you really mean what you write, in fact everybody knows you don’t; it’s the old “I know that you know that I know that you know and so it goes round,” but as long as you’ve said it or written it, everything is fine. It becomes the truth. But then again with the Chinese government it was always thus.

But really, to drag Mister Wishy-washy Appeasement-monger Obbie into their sordid little games expecting to get some kind of result, knowing full well that if he says Yes! Tibetans should shut up and know their rightful place as ardently admiring subjects of the superior Chinese! he won’t mean it anyway - well that’s just too much even for them.

And that nasty little bribe bargaining chip of theirs, “military transparency” - hello! That’s what they should be doing anyway, voluntarily, if they want to be up there with the civilised nations to whose club they so dearly want to belong by doing absolutely zero in return.

What the article didn’t mention, of course, was the implied “or else.”

Don’t do it, Obbie! I so want to know what the “or else” is. And I so want to keep that tiny little smidgeon of respect I still have left for you - and yes, it is based on your not being George W. Bush.

Political Correctness … or Something, Hits China

Published
by
cecilie
on September 24, 2009
in China
. 0 Comments

It had to happen sooner or later. The strange notion taking root in Europe and the US over the years of perpetrator as victim, has now arrived in China. (Can a notion arrive? You know what I mean.)

A Jiangsu man finds a burglar in his house and chases him off with the result that the burglar jumps into a river and drowns. Tough, a normal person would remark, but a county committee orders the burglaree to pay the burglar’s family 10 000 yuan! It didn’t say who the burglar’s family were, but it wouldn’t surprise me if at least one of them had a tiny little connection with the local government.

What next, one wonders. Somebody tears down your house, you complain to the police and don’t get beaten up? Big conglomeration poisons every child in small town by contaminating the drinking water. You write a letter of complaint and don’t end up in prison? A child abduction gang led by a government official steal your son and kill your wife when she tries to save him. You start an internet group with other such victims and don’t lose your job and the use of your left arm after being beaten by thugs hired by the local police chief? 

Yes! I think that’s next. Give it another 2 or 300 years and I think something like that might definitely be on the cards. 

If That’s Diplomacy I’m All For It

Published
by
cecilie
on March 24, 2009
in Government and politics
. 0 Comments

I noticed that our charming new part-time resident, Grace Mugabe, wife of revered elder statesman Robert, has diplomatic immunity while in Hong Kong. I like it! And I want it too. I’m so sick of these people who always want to “discuss” things and “talk things over in a rational manner.” 

No, the new, diplomatic approach is punching people repeatedly while scratching them with diamond rings until they bleed. I rather think that photographer got the message: Here is a woman who clearly takes a dim view of being photographed and isn’t afraid to express it in a direct but diplomatic way. 

Now that the central government has (for a change) clearly expressed what one can and cannot do in Hong Kong, I hope this can be the beginning of a trend. But why mess around with lowly, not very famous photographers? 

I’d like to see Michelle Obama come over and headbutt Li Ka-shing, and then perhaps Sarah Brown can swing around and push Donald Tsang down a flight of stairs. I suppose Carla Bruni kneeing the leader of URA in the goolies would be too much to hope for, but whatever they did and whoever did it: Diplomatic immunity is guaranteed for people who are prepared to act in a truly diplomatic manner.

Poo

Published
by
cecilie
on July 25, 2008
in China, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice and Uncategorized
. 5 Comments

I poo on the Chinese Olympics! Really, I do. Here’s the country where I’ve spent all my hard-earned cash during almost 20 years. I have promoted it, I have loved it and I have done my utmost to understand it and laugh with, not at it.

Hong Kong is supposed to be a city in China, and yet the Chinese government treats us law-abiding, upstanding citizens of this fine, or would be fine if it wasn’t for The Donald and his merry bunch of insane henchmen, city, like the worst enemies, splittists and hegemonists. And revisionists.

And not only us; no, any whitey or brownie or blackie wanting to, perhaps, enter the sacred entity of China for the purpose of doing business, throwing money around him left right and center, thus greatly benefitting the Chinese economy, is now to be seen as a threat to the motherland and to the sacred o-limp-pecs.

So okay, it’s a well known fact that the greatest threat to Chinese unity and security is a geezer from Belgium or Sweden trying to enter the sacred hallows of for example Guangzhou to set up a deal involving stationery. But really, with the security the Chinese have going on, wouldn’t they be able to spot an ink or cake-thrower from 200 yards?

As a human being, I suffer from the well-known affliction “needing to be right.” But seldom have I felt less good about having been right as now. Well, maybe when I predicted that The Donald would be worse than Tung Chee-hwa. But no, I feel worse now. When China was gunning for the 2000 Olympics, I prayed: Let Sydney get it! If it goes to Beijing there’ll be no fun, no street life, no outside-event parties, nothing except The Sport, every category of which won by China.

But I could never have predicted that there would also be: No Foreigners, or if foreigners, only those who would Not Wear Identical T-Shirts and Wave Flags, No Banners and, presumably (we still have two weeks to go) No Cheering On People Other Than Chinese. After all, when the Chinese go to other sports events, they boo the people who aren’t members of the sacred Chinese family.

I really, really wish the leaders of the country which I’ve called my home for 20 years wouldn’t act like such total plonkers. I would have cheered them on despite their intrasigence over Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Inner Mongolia (among other things) and supported them in this, supposedly “great coming-out party of China.” But now?

I’m afraid they have shown their true face once and for all, and I’m so very, very sorry to see that the face hasn’t changed one iota since 1949, and that it still is: Total fcuking plonkerism.

A Sojourn In Guangzhou

Published
by
cecilie
on July 20, 2008
in Beauty, Cantonese, Cards, China and Travel
. 14 Comments

Damn the olympics. Damn and damn. My three year visa runs on on the 25th of July and then what? My bet is the Chinese government will keep up this nice little money earner forever - keep the nasty foreigners out (we have our own people) and just get the ones with businesses in Guangdong to pay full fare every single time they want to enter the blasted place and a few one-time tourists with full China Travel tours thrown in. That’s my theory.

So to utilise my last visa hoorah I decided to spend this weekend in my favourite city, Guangzhou. Full pot! The city showed its most beautiful place with lots of China Drool

and sleeping geezers galore

Guangzhou is a city which hasn’t still got rid of all the beautiful bits and a walk just north of the colonial Shamian Island, outpost for the old Brits, Germs and other Europeans in its time, now famous for “Tobacco, beer, adoption” kiosks, reveals a warren of narrow back streets where nothing much has changed for 70 years.

That’s where we found the aforementioned China Drool and don’t you think he invited us to a party in his hovel populated by seven guys and a tiny dog, an evening of beers and cards. I love these Canto speakers. So much more lively than the stick-in-the-mud, dour northerners with their communist spoutings. These guys had been soldiers, and when I asked if they’d spent their time getting ready to invade Taiwan, they laughed loud and hard, instead of giving me the normal spiel about Taiwan always having been, always being and always … I lose track. Give me southerners any time. We had a laugh about Taiwan and Tibet! That never happens anywhere else in this increasingly sterile, uniform nation.

Also, the bridal action is HUGE! I like the washing background:

The last hoorah. Maybe I can never come back because of the damned olympics. That would be a shame, but I won’t go begging the silly fcukers to let me in. I still have my memories. But: Damn!