Just realised allpoetry.com now has AI "analysis" at the bottom of every poem and the insights are mindblowing

The funny thing about the “yacht economy” is that pro-democracy DCs called for more berths for years — there are only enough for 1/3 of HK’s boats. Suddenly, CCP-aligned politicians are all on board now that it’s for foreign billionaires instead of locals’ access to water sports and boat ownership.

Prosecuting journalists for acquiring “unauthorised information” is common in China. Document No. 9 is a textbook example. Last year, Article 23 also made this all-encompassing definition of “state secrets” law in HK, giving the CE authority to certify whether any materials involve state secrets.

22yo student Zhang Yadi, an activist with 华语青年挺藏会 ChineseYouthStand4Tibet who's supposed to begin her MA study at SOAS, has been detained while visiting family in China & charged with "inciting separation" www.instagram.com/p/DOy4rwViEk...

Journalists covering the US are about to realise what those of us covering China have always known: for laws and campaigns in authoritarian society, the ambiguity is the point. That’s why authorities here target “spiritual pollution,” “historical nihilism,” “picking quarrels,” and “soft resistance.”

For Americans who want a play-by-play of what an authoritarian transition looks like in the 2020s, I strongly recommend catching up on what’s been happening in national security-era Hong Kong. One of the first shots fired in the ongoing crackdown was cancelling a comedy show for “insulting police.”

Sounds familiar

Cool.

By voting down a gov’t bill for the first time, LegCo has apparently shown it is “not a rubber stamp.” Seems more like an illustration of how pro-establishment and pro-Beijing are not interchangeable, and even the former are now sidelined in HK. Those who voted it down took their cue from Beijing.

So I'm protecting my peace and (mostly) ignoring politics to get back to my happy place: maritime history. In a new 3-part series for Zolima, I look at the incredible story of Seawise Giant, the Hong Kong-owned tanker that — even decades after she was scrapped — remains the largest ship ever built.

US-PRC convergence takes another step forward as Washington adopts the time-honoured practice of "One Institution with Two Names" (一個機構兩塊牌子).

A job advert for RTI that says a lot about the sorry state of journalism in Taiwan. Successful candidates are expected to do everything — planning, hosting, editing, promoting, socials, engagement reports, etc. — for just NT$48,000 a month. That's about what I was making as a newsroom intern in HK.

When I went freelance again recently, I checked LinkedIn for remote editorial positions and virtually all of them were seeking "Content Editors" or "Proofreaders" for AI. I'm lucky to have a big portfolio and existing relationships with publications. What a grim time to get started in the industry.

I was recently reminded of the backlash in early 2019 against the Foreign Correspondents’ Club introducing a long-overdue sexual harassment policy and wowsers — it was offensively stupid at the time but so much worse now after all the actual threats to free speech and journalists in Hong Kong since.

1/ #ProtectJournalistsInGaza: At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed. In nearly 23 months, at least 210 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in this territory, according to Reporters Without Borders.

A seriously uninformative “deep dive” that seems to invent its own narrow definition of “digital payment” — meaning mainland mobile wallets — in order to paint HK as backwards. As others have pointed out, daily life in HK is almost entirely cashless already. The only straggler is the taxi industry.

Wake up babe new reason to hate Jackie Chan just dropped

Strava now has a “made for you” feature that uses AI to generate “optimised routes” for running, hiking, etc. Without fail, it advises me to run highways with no pavement and onto private property. In Hualien, prone to frequent earthquakes and typhoons, it also points me to trails I know are closed.

An extremely familiar scene for anyone who was in Hong Kong in 2019.

Bipolarity minus the competing ideologies

Get a load of this POS

Another one for the very long and ever-growing list of beloved Hong Kong businesses that have closed down in recent years. This one’s not so likely to make the headlines but it’s a big loss for the local trail running community. Basecamp just recently featured in the hit, acclaimed film Four Trails.

I moved east to touch grass, not cover politics, but I’ll offer this one observation about 大罷免 campaigning in Hualien County: 不同意 billboards are huge and everywhere, taking up the best real estate; but when it comes to volunteers on the street and support from individuals/businesses, all I see is 同意

This year’s Hong Kong Book Fair saw a precipitous 100,000-person drop in visitors. It’s being blamed on the typhoon but visitor numbers have never recovered to their 2018 high, before post-pandemic fairs began to face heavy state censorship. 書展結束共吸89萬人次入場　較去年少十萬人次 news.mingpao.com/ins/%e6%b8%a...

Yes, air-conditioning shaming is somehow still with us in prominent spaces in 2025. And yes, reflexive “AC is a sin” thinking *contributes to getting people killed during heat waves* by means of dampening support for helping the vulnerable get access to life-saving cooling systems.

HK01 really sent out this push notification yesterday asking, “the July 5 earthquake prophecy comes true?” after a series of minor tremors off the Tokara Islands. A megaquake, as “predicted,” would have to be at least magnitude 8. Be so for real right now.

Relentless coverage in HK and Taiwan’s Chinese-language press lately on a rumoured 7/5 quake in Japan. A sad sign of public susceptibility to misinformation and media willingness to exploit that. Especially galling is SETN’s countdown clock: ghoulish if you take it seriously, imbecilic if you don’t

Hong Kong’s public-turned-state-broadcaster RTHK is promoting the new season of its nightly programme on Xi Jinping’s favourite stories. Unlike all their other posts, comments are turned off.

HKers know this well. A wave of resignations among university leadership followed the imposition of the national security law as pro-Beijing politicians and state media targeted administrators they accused of sympathising with pro-democracy student protestors or not dealing with them harshly enough.

Every masterpiece has its cheap copy

How’s Hong Kong political culture doing, you ask

Western fanfics about China are really getting out of hand

Japan saw 3,693,300 visitors last month, the highest figure ever for the month of May. Visitor numbers to Japan rose across the world -- except in Hong Kong, where unfounded earthquake rumors led to an unusual decline, highlighting the city's vulnerability to fake news

HK’s Environment Protection Dep’t says the wastewater will be too diluted by the time it hits HK to cause damage, so that is reassuring. But if you followed all the official hysteria and state media fear-mongering around the release of treated wastewater from Fukushima, it is also extremely ironic.

The Huizhou petrochemical complex at Daya Bay is extending its wastewater discharge pipe to protect local waters. The catch, Ming Pao reports, is that it will pump the polluted water in Hong Kong’s direction instead. 大亞灣石化排污口南移 距港24公里 將年排3300萬噸 環署料到港前「稀釋千倍」無影響 news.mingpao.com/pns/%e4%b8%a...

Seems like features on the failures of TaiwanPlus have become a regular fixture in the Taiwanese news cycle. The latest, from CommonWealth Magazine, makes some very valid criticisms in some areas but misses the mark badly in others. Here are a few thoughts from a former TaiwanPlus reporter.

"Tea and Solidarity: @jwassers.bsky.social on the Milk Tea Alliance and Pan-Asian Resistance" by @ryanhk.blue newbloommag.net/2025/06/12/m...

Recently, @ryanhk.blue, a Taipei-based reporter who I first became aware of (and was first impressed by) in the 2010s when he was based in his native Hong Kong & I read his insightful reporting on protests there, interviewed me. The Q&A now out in @newbloommag.net newbloommag.net/2025/06/12/m...

Not uncommon in Hong Kong in 2019 to see sad little fires like these mobbed exclusively by reporters. Critics would later point to how they crowded around riot police as evidence of media bias but it’s really more about the reductive nature of a lot of news and video-led storytelling in particular.

Tainan’s international dragon boat championship is under fire for Made-in-China trophies and other goods. Easy solution: stop giving away so much cheap tat no one asked for. The amount of participation medals and t-shirts I’ve collected in Taiwan is crazy, nowhere else (I’ve raced) does this still.

If you want to come to the US to study, the US government says it will review your social media posts before granting a visa. China does not do this.

Yet another tragic traffic incident in Taiwan has killed 3 just outside a school in New Taipei. This comes days after the gov’t launched a consultation into the skyrocketing number of foreign traffic deaths, as if they are uniquely part of either the problem or the solution to this perennial issue.

Initium reports on Hongkongers in Taiwan who are facing harassment and threats for participating in the recall movement against KMT legislators.

Got me feeling homesick

On the anniversary of the Titanic's sinking, @asiancha.bsky.social has an interview by @ryanhk.blue of Steven Schwankert about his book on the six Chinese passengers who survived the tragedy.

It’s that time of the year again. For Titanic Remembrance Day 2025, I spoke with Steven Schwankert about his new book on the six Chinese survivors of the world’s most famous shipwreck. Through their stories, we reflect on the history of the Chinese diaspora and China’s place in the maritime world.

[𝗡𝗘𝗪 @asiancha.bsky.social 𝗘𝗫𝗖𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗜𝗩𝗘] Ryan Ho Kilpatrick speaks with Steven Schwankert about The Six, his book tracing the lives of six Chinese Titanic survivors and exploring China’s role in the early 20th-century maritime world. chajournal.blog/2025/04/14/c...

Nearly four years for urging police to act with restraint and not use tear gas, water cannon, and other less-lethal weapons against protestors.

Had a great time talking to Cindy Yu and Anne-Marie Brady for this podcast on "old friends of the Chinese people" (中國人民的老朋友). It was an honour to be included in the final episode of Chinese Whispers — a series I've enjoyed for years.