Bells toll and send a chill
IT wasn’t unexpected, but it was still shocking news this week when the fearless Hong Kong newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai was led away in handcuffs on the orders of the Chinese Communist Party.
The chief of the pro-democracy HK newspaper Apple Daily had seen this coming a long way out. Back in 1997, I interviewed him just before the “Handover”, when the British relinquished tenure of the territory, handing control to China.
Nominally, Hong Kong was not supposed to become a totalitarian province. It was to be a “special administrative region” and continue to enjoy democratic government and a private enterprise economy separate from the dictatorial system on mainland China. This was always a most unlikely prospect, but a convenient fiction for both sides.
After 150 years of colonial rule it allowed the British to withdraw without appearing to totally abandon the people of Hong Kong.
Before the 1997 Handover Jimmy Lai told me: “For Hong Kong to remain a free democracy will require either the strongest support from other democratic nations or a change of regime in Beijing.”
Lai’s faint hope was that democracy might evolve in China, but in fact Beijing became even more hard-line with the succession of Xi Jinping.
Apart from diplomatic protests, there was nothing the Free World could do. Or was prepared to do.
Jimmy Lai is one of the bravest men I have ever met, a billionaire businessman who could have joined the diaspora of wealthy Hong Kongers fleeing to safe havens in America, Britain and Australia.
Instead he stayed on in the city into which he had been smuggled from mainland China as a penniless 12-yearold aboard a leaky fishing boat. His first job as a child labourer earnt him $8 per month.
Lai was the archetypical HK success story. He built his billion-dollar fortune in the clothing business, but journalism was his passion and his undoing. His popular newspaper Apple Daily was a trenchant critic of Beijing and hated by the regime.
It was only a matter of time.
Jimmy Lai’s arrest this week has seen him charged with treason under the territory’s new national security laws. He was bailed on Wednesday and now awaits trial on allegations he “colluded” with foreign powers. The 72-year-old supporter of Hong Kong’s democracy movement will be under no illusion. He will be tried by a regime where there is no separation of powers.
The Chinese Communist Party is the Policeman, the Prosecutor, the Judge and the Jury.
The state-owned Global Times, a mouthpiece of the regime, has claimed that diplomatic complaints by the US government about Mr Lai’s arrest were confirmation that he was a foreign agent. “He’s become a 100 per cent traitor,” the paper said.
In China, the criminal conviction rate is almost 100 per cent, so you would not fancy Mr Lai’s chances.
Meanwhile, in nations like Australia and even in smaller corners like Tasmania, wherever the Chinese Communist Party vigorously advances its interests, the persecution of the great Asian newspaperman Jimmy Lai should send a chill through every newsroom and every newspaper reader.
In the seemingly endless repetition of history, from which we never learn, Ernest Hemingway best summed it up in his 1940 prescient novel of the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls.
Hemingway invoked a quotation from the great 17th century English poet John Donne:
“Each man’s death diminishes me.
For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to find for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.”
Again, it wasn’t unexpected but we certainly didn’t want to hear the news this week that COVID was again on our island, brought in, as you would have guessed, from Victoria.
You might have noticed there is a battle for your hearts and minds right now over whether to maintain lockdown or get back to business and tell Granny to take her chances with the plague.
This week the world recorded 20 million cases of infection.
It took six months to get to 10 million and only one month to double that figure.
In our island state you will hear arguments from sectional interests, across a variety of businesses, as to why Premier Peter Gutwein should relent and open our borders sooner. But the Premier continues to take expert medical advice, which seems the most reasonable default position during a medical crisis.
Of course, it is also an economic crisis and there is a valid question as to why we should inflict $130 billion — or $4 billion per week — of national economic damage when (at the time of writing) there have been only 361 deaths registered. But the rejoinder might be: If we didn’t lock down, how many people might have died?
It’s a rhetorical question. We don’t know and never will. Unless we open up now.
I am a reasonably hardened veteran of Opinion Wars, but I can’t really give you any advice better than the advice given to me as a young journalist by an old practitioner. “Son, you will find there are only two questions in journalism. The first is, what do they have to say? And the second is, who is paying them to say it?”
We live in an age of spin. Lobbyists are no longer behind the scenes. They are on the news every night. They are personalities in their own right. The news media even does their work for them by seeking out their views, where once we sought the expert opinion of disinterested academics.
As Tasmanians learned this week from this newspaper, lobbyists hobnobbing with politicians at opening functions, even in border lockdown, can score travel exemptions for their mates.
Yet no matter how persuasive and how honeyed are their words, the spokespeople for sectional interests are always paid to say them.
That doesn’t necessarily mean what they say is not true. But even if it were a lie, they are still paid the same to say it. It is worth remembering that.
JIMMY LAI IS ONE OF THE BRAVEST MEN I HAVE EVER MET, A BILLIONAIRE BUSINESSMAN WHO COULD HAVE JOINED THE DIASPORA OF WEALTHY HONG KONGERS FLEEING TO SAFE HAVENS … INSTEAD HE STAYED ON IN THE CITY
A few weeks ago I wrote about the giant trees in the Styx Valley west of Maydena. Given the fierce and longstanding argument between conservationist and forestry lobby groups, perhaps you have difficulty seeing the wood for the trees.
I suggested the best way to make up your own mind is to take the kids and have a look.
Perhaps because it is contentious, the mighty forest containing the tallest trees on Earth is not much promoted for visitors. It can be easy to get lost in the labyrinth of logging roads.
Tomorrow conservationists are holding an open day in the Styx between 10am and 3pm.
Go to the junction of Mueller and Styx roads, southwest of Maydena, and see for yourself. The route will be well signposted.