Brisbane Hosts Morally Despicable Hong Kong Investment Forum
Smart money is getting out of China!
Friends, welcome to my new Substack. With the Chinese government painting a rather large target on my back in the form of fake bomb threats and terror charges in London, I thought I would give my family a break from the stress of my front-line human rights activism by spending more time writing and blogging in the months ahead. For today’s blog, I’m going to be looking into a terrible CCP sponsored investment forum in my home city of Brisbane.
In what promises to be a truly mind-numbingly vacuous event for those suffering acute LinkedIn Grindset Syndrome, The Hong Kong Australia Business Association is hosting a ‘‘keynote and networking event’’ in Brisbane this Thursday evening encouraging young hustlers who lust for dough to ‘‘seize new growth opportunities in Hong Kong and China.’’
This promises to be a truly special event because it will feature a very prominent guest speaker in the form of Stephen Phillips, Director General of Invest Hong Kong. Invest Hong Kong is, of course, the department of the Hong Kong SAR Government responsible for Foreign Direct Investment. In other words, officials representing the brutal CCP-controlled Hong Kong police state will be fronting a gala in Brisbane, Australia to encourage morally bankrupt businessmen to prop up their odious regime through investment.
Quite how the distinguished Mr Stephen Phillips can sleep at night propping up such a brutal government is beyond me. In a more moral and just world, a man like Mr Phillips would certainly not be fêted at Australian business functions - he would be banned from Australia and placed under Magnitsky Sanctions for his direct work on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party regime in Hong Kong.
If this sounds harsh, consider that Mr Phillips will be speaking in Brisbane just days after media reports revealed some 47 trade unionists, academics, activists and legislators in Hong Kong face prosecution before closed courts for ‘‘conspiracy to commit subversion’’ - Beijing’s preferred term to describe their involvement organising a primary election in July 2020 in which some 600,000 Hong Kongers voted for their own candidates to contest Legislative Council elections. These activists, academics and trade unionists face the prospect of life in prison under Article 22 of the draconian National Security Law and they’ve been denied even the most basic right of a trial by jury to fight back - in other words, they face telefonnoye pravo or "telephone justice’’ at the hands of an increasingly unhinged and rigged judiciary. And soon they may not even have access to proper legal representation - in July, three prominent UK human rights barristers representing Jimmy Lai revealed they received anonymous threats from someone claiming to be ‘‘an officer of the national security wing in Hong Kong,’’ warning them against travelling to the city to defend him lest they too should face charges under the National Security Law.
I mean, the sheer cruelty and viciousness of the Hong Kong authorities seemingly knows no bounds at this point. There’s no attempt to hide it, no attempt to smear lipstick on the proverbial pig - it’s out there in the open, before the entire world to see. Just last month, courts sentenced a terminally ill 75-year old activist with late-stage colon cancer to nine months jail under sedition laws for simply *planning* to protest against the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Mr Phillips must be honest with both himself and the attendees at his special Investment Forum in Brisbane - this is the nature of the regime he works for. He works for a regime that sentences elderly, terminally ill human rights activists to prison for planning simple acts of open dissent and protest. He props up a regime willing to sentence activists to life in prison for organising a democratic primary election. The Hong Kong Australia Business Association wants to encourage Australian investors to ‘‘seize new growth opportunities’’ in the city. Just a day after the Hong Kong courts imprisoned the terminally ill Koo Sze-yiu in July, they sentenced the harmless and totally peaceful elderly ‘‘Grandma Wong’’ democracy activist to eight months in prison. Only the most sclerotic and calcified of regimes could regard the insurrectionary potential of a peaceful, elderly grandmother sufficiently dangerous enough to warrant imprisonment on treason charges. Mr Phillips and the Hong Kong Australia Business Association make utter fools of themselves talking up the exciting growth opportunities on offer to investors in Hong Kong while Hong Kong authorities carry out political purges against grandmothers. Perhaps it was this terrifying clique that kept Xi Jinping sufficiently fearful as to avoid sleeping overnight in Hong Kong when making his recent celebratory jaunt to the city in July. No doubt a terrified Xi must have kept his butt cheeks clenched tight in fear until the moment his high-speed train crossed the border into Shenzhen, such was the fear Grandma Wong must have struck into his cold, shrivelled black heart.
Given the absurdity and terror of daily life in Hong Kong now, it is little wonder that the city has collapsed into a deep economic slump from which it might never recover. Xi’s deluded COVID-Zero strategy has pushed the city into a second recession in just three years while a vast exodus of young Hong Kongers threatens a savage brain drain. The city has recorded a net outflow of 157,000 residents in just the first half of 2022 and surveys of Hong Konger youth reveal up to one-fifth of those under 30 want to permanently leave. A European Chamber of Commerce survey in March found almost half of European companies considering an exit from the city.
So come one, come all to invest in Hong Kong. Exciting growth opportunities available include:
The worst performing economy in East Asia outside of North Korea with GDP contracting by 3.9% in the first three months of 2022
Constant rolling lockdowns in pursuit of the Great Leader’s impossible COVID Zero strategy
Political purges of democracy activists that would make Saudi Arabia blush
A rigged legal system featuring constant risk of expropriation, arbitrary detention, imprisonment and torture
A permanent state of fear and terror pushing hundreds of thousands to flee the city into exile
The sentencing of terminally ill cancer patients to die in prison for planning a protest
Oh and if you run into trouble, your international lawyers might be threatened with imprisonment for working on your case. Thank you Mr Stephen Phillips and Invest Hong Kong for bringing these wonderful opportunities to those Australians still unaware that we now have a Magnitsky Act of our own on the books. The era of engagement is well and truly over and your ilk will soon be out of business - shouldn’t be much longer now.
Only a brain dead sleeping beauty would wake up now and go to this Hong Kong forum and tip their money into this part of Asia. I came home from owning a company in Asia after multiple rip off scams run by both government and private sectors. Bring production home to Australia and give expat companies the same benefits to set up here now, where we need the skills and mostly the self sufficiency to look after ourselves.
I appreciate your enthusiastic support.