Interview with Joshua Wong AUGUST–OCTOBER 2020 VOLUME 5, NUMBER 4 China’s Rise of Japan’s hidden hand Shenzhen pop culture 32 Plus A short story by Bao Ninh 9 772016 012803 VOLUME 5, NUMBER 4 AUGUST–OCTOBER 2020 HONG KONG 3 Kong Tsung-gan The edict INTERVIEW 5 Elaine Yu Joshua Wong HONG KONG 8 Jeffrey Wasserstrom City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong by Antony Dapiran; Aftershock: Essays from Hong Kong by Holmes Chan (ed) POEM 9 Lok Man Law ‘Records of a Floating Island’ CHINA 11 Tom Baxter Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang POEMS Yuan Changming ‘Woman-radical: A feminist lesson in Chinese characters’; ‘Fragmenting: A sonnet in infinitives’ FOREIGN RELATIONS 12 Michael Reilly Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg SINGAPORE 13 Theophilus Kwek Air-Conditioned Nation Revisited: Essays on Singapore Politics by Cherian George NOTEBOOK 14 Anjan Sundaram Asia matters INDONESIA 15 Lara Norgaard The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World by Vincent Bevins MEMOIR 16 Helen Jarvis First, They Erased Our Name: A Rohingya Speaks by abiburahmanH BIOGRAPHY 17 Gozde Deniz Altunkeser MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman by Ben Hubbard URBAN AFFAIRS 18 Anne Stevenson-Yang The Shenzhen Experiment: The Story of China’s Instant City by Juan Du HISTORY 20 Paul French Champions Day: The End of Old Shanghai by James Carter JOURNAL 21 Louis Raymond Personal history FICTION/TRAVEL 23 Emily Ding Stories of the Sahara by Sanmao SHORT STORY 24 Bao Ninh ‘White clouds flying’ FICTION 25 David Payne Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui FICTION 26 Esther Kim The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See; White Chrysanthemum by Mary Lynn-Bracht THE PHILIPPINES 27 Bryony Lau Insurrecto by Gina Apostol; The Kingmaker by Lauren Greenfield; America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan FICTION 29 Anna MacDonald Rise & Shine by Patrick Allington POEM Siddharth Dasgupta ‘Three photographs’ NOTEBOOK 30 Pauline Fan Carried away POETRY 31 Michael Freeman Moving House by Theophilus Kwek CONVERSATION 32 Rupert Arrowsmith Jennifer MacKenzie NEIGHBOURHOOD 33 Febriana Firdaus Ubud, Bali mekongreview.com PROFILE 34 Olivia Norrmén-Smith Voan Savay PUBLISHER & EDITOR Minh Bui Jones POP CULTURE 36 DEPUTYPeter EDITOR Guest Ben Wilson MANAGINGPure Invention: EDITOR How Robert Japan’s Templer Pop Culture Conquered the World CONTRIBUTING EDITORS ko ko thettby (poetry), Matt Alt Preeta Samarasan (fiction) DESIGN Jess Barr WEBSITE Nicholas Lhoyd-Owen TRAVEL 37 Marc deSUBSCRIPTION Faoite MANAGERCoffee Shu in Jeju Wen Chye SUB-EDITORS Allen Myers, Sandy Barron PROOFREADER Izzy Souster POEM Rory HarrisCOVER ILLUSTRATOR‘& Damienin’ Chavanat ARTISTS Gianluca Costantini, Charis Loke, Oslo Davis, Leto Bui Jones BOOKSELLER 38 Andrew Quilty Danish in Kabul PRINTER Phoenix Press DISTRIBUTOR APD Singapore LETTER OFFICE39 34 ForsythErfan St, Dana Glebe, New South WalesDon’t 2037, forget Australia; us [email protected] Mekong Review is published four times a year; next issue May 2 HONG KONG The edict Kong Tsung-gan t 11 p.m. on 30 June, the Chinese Communist The edict is intended to give the CCP a free hand Party imposed on Hong Kong what it calls a in dealing with HK people however it sees fit, to keep ‘national security law’. The edict effectively HK people guessing, to instil pervasive fear throughout Amarks the end of the ‘one country, two systems’ period, society. It is already, as intended, chilling freedom of which was to last from 1997 to 2047 and the cornerstone expression in the media and on line. of which was a strict separation between the governing The edict has nothing to do with national security. systems of China and Hong Kong. No one in HK has ever threatened the security of the Article 23 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini- Chinese nation. It has to do with preserving the CCP’s constitution, obliges the HK government to enact monopoly on power. We the HK people are the CCP’s national security legislation. It had always been ‘national security’ threat. We the HK people are the understood by all concerned, no matter where they enemy. were on the political spectrum, that this was how The edict grows directly out of the CCP’s fear that such laws would eventually come about. The pro- it has lost HK. And on that point, its perception of the democracy movement argued that if such legislation political situation in HK is correct. The edict is actually were to be passed, it had to arrive ideally after or at an admission of failure: after twenty-three years of least simultaneously with passage of genuine universal rule, the CCP has so entirely lost the consent of the suffrage, for only under such an arrangement would HK people by continually rejecting their demands for sufficient democratic safeguards be in place to prevent genuine autonomy and genuine universal suffrage, as potential abuses. The first mass march of half a million promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the people in post-handover HK in 2003 was against Basic Law, that the edict is the only way it believes it a previous CCP attempt to ram through national can retain control. This is the paradox of tyranny: it security legislation before allowing democracy. Both can appear omnipotent and yet it is so weak. The edict through street demonstrations and representation in represents the failure of CCP rule in HK. It is meant to the Legislative Council, the pro-democracy movement be an assertion of power, but is a sign of defeat. has always had the power to block Article 23 national security legislation until its concerns were addressed. Gianluca Costantini n 1 July, the first full day it was in effect, police So the CCP decided to disregard entirely the Basic arrested ten people under the edict. The date Law (which it authored) and Legco (though it is rigged is the anniversary of the handover of HK from in favour of the CCP, again according to rules of its in China have a long history of being used to crush OBritish to CCP colonial rule and also traditionally the own devising) and imposed upon HK something dissent. They are vaguely worded so that they can be day for a huge pro-democracy march. The march was much more draconian than virtually anyone had applied however the CCP sees fit. banned this year, as all protests have been banned for the heretofore envisaged. The HK government wasn’t The edict legalises the presence of Chinese security last six months, but in spite of police violence and mass involved, not even so much as to present the facade of agencies in HK, creating a new Office for Safeguarding arrests, an estimated 150,000 defied the ban. local participation. Top HK government officials, who National Security, which will reportedly have a staff of Of the ten arrested under the edict, one has so far themselves are unelected puppets of the CCP, didn’t even hundreds, most likely gathered from various existing been charged in court. His case is indicative of how the know what was in the edict. The full text wasn’t even state security agencies in China such as the Ministry of regime plans to use the edict. His alleged crimes are revealed until after it was promulgated. Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the terrorism and inciting secession. What did he actually In terms of both the process of its promulgation and People’s Armed Police, all of which have a long record do? He drove a motorcycle flying a flag emblazoned with its content, the edict is not a law in any normal sense of of systematic rights abuses. This office is not under HK the most popular protest slogan of the past year through the word. Nor does it have anything to do with national jurisdiction. Indeed, the edict enables the CCP to grant a group of police officers who attempted to block him. security, again in any normal sense of the word. It is it jurisdiction over ‘serious’ cases, and defendants can be The terrorism charge presumably relates to his reckless entirely a misnomer. It is an imperial edict imposed prosecuted under Chinese—not HK—law, presumably driving. The slogan on the flag was ‘Liberate Hong Kong, by the rulers of China upon their colonial subjects in courts in China though details regarding such Revolution of our times’. After the edict came into effect, and, as such, represents the way the dictatorship sees procedures are notably absent from the 66-article edict the HK government implied that the slogan is now its relationship with the people it presumes to rule and its more than 100 pages of implementation rules. illegal as it supposedly ‘connotes independence’. That was over. CCP and HK government propaganda claims The edict also reorganises HK government news to the millions who’ve been shouting it for the past that the edict will affect only a tiny number of people, bureaucracy and requires various government bureaus year. For most, it means they want HK to be free, that but nothing could be further from the truth. It is wide and agencies to serve CCP interests. It sets up a new, is, to have genuine autonomy and democracy. Suddenly, ranging and meant to reshape Hong Kong society in the secret Committee for Safeguarding National Security these demands, which are actually conservative insofar party’s image. headed by the chief executive and a new department as they ask the party simply to live up to its legal The edict has two specific primary purposes: to put for safeguarding national security in the police obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and an end to freedom protests, which have been ongoing force.