Carrie Lam Still Won't Budge

Carrie Lam on Commercial Radio to further explain her policy address

Is it the chicken or the egg that came first?

We can only shake our heads at Chief Executive Carrie Lam's latest pronouncement.

Lam and her cabinet have no brilliant ideas to end protests

Today during radio phone-in shows on RTHK and Commercial Radio she said she hinted she would be open to reshuffling her cabinet, which included ministers and advisers -- but only after the political crisis died down.

"I will not rule out the possibility, but I will decide when we have reached this stage," she said.

So when would that be? Isn't now the time to try and get fresh blood and new ideas to solve the four-months' long protests? It's quite obvious that after four months no one has any brilliant suggestions to break the impasse and try to resolve the situation.

During the radio program on RTHK, Lam said she was relieved Chan Tong-kai, 20, the murder suspect at the centre of the extradition bill that sparked the months' long protests, wrote to her, saying he would turn himself in to the Taiwan authorities.

Chan Tong-kai is willing to face murder charges in Taiwan

Chan is wanted in Taiwan for the February 2018 murder of his pregnant girlfriend, and he will be released on Wednesday after serving time in Hong Kong for money laundering.

When this news was reported, many on social media commented that at least he was willing to face up to his crime unlike Lam with her massive mistake...

Zhao Ziyang in his Final Resting Place

Zhao Ziyang's and Liang Boqi's family by their grave plot outside Beijing

Back in April 2015, I wrote a blog post that Zhao Ziyang, former premier and general secretary of the People's Republic of China, would finally be laid to rest, as the senior leadership agreed he could be buried together with his wife. But it took another four years to decide where.

In a very low-key ceremony outside Beijing today, his children buried the cremated remains of Zhao, who died in 2005 and his wife, Liang Boqi, who passed away in 2013. It has taken this long for them to be buried because the senior leadership didn't make a decision for years until now, a day after what would have been Zhao's 100th birthday.

Zhao tried to tell the students to leave Tiananmen Square

"We feel relieved that our parents can finally rest in peace," said Zhao's daughter Wang Yannan. "But we also feel regret that it took such a long time and back and forth discussion with the authorities. It still feels surreal that this day has finally come.

"We feel guilty about not being able to inform everybody about today's [burial] in advance," she added. "Please understand we did not have much choice."

The family had been negotiating with the senior leadership about Zhao's final resting place since their mother passed away six years ago, and in all this time the children kept their parents' cremated remains at their old Beijing home.

Originally the government wanted to keep Zhao's remains in a cemetery for officials, but the Zhao family wanted more control and access. So it was a victory for Zhao's family to be able to finally choose where to he and their mother would be buried.

This book features Zhao's memoirs

Zhao will be forever remembered as a liberal reformer who felt as China was opening up with economic reforms, of which he was a leading proponent, political reforms were the next logical step.

When the students occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 demanding democracy, he tried to warn them on May 19 that year, telling them to leave the square. After that he was stripped of his position, expelled from the Communist Party and was under house arrest for the rest of his life.

On the evening of June 4, he recalled in his memoirs, recorded on cassette tapes that were then smuggled out of his home and published in Hong Kong, that he heard pop-pop sounds and realized it was the PLA soldiers opening fire on the students in Tiananmen Square. He was resigned to the fact he could not do more to save them.

"Zhao is a ghost that haunts the Chinese Communist Party," says Julian Gewirtz, a China historian at Harvard University. "He represents a different path for China's rise -- one profoundly different from Xi Jinping today.

"To some he is a martyr who sought to stop the violent crackdown of 1989, and to others -- in the official line -- he's an enemy who sought to bring down socialism in China," he added.

Imagine what would have happened if the senior leadership had agreed with Zhao and talked to the students to negotiate some kind of compromise. China would be vastly different from what it is today, and even Hong Kong would be in a very different situation it is in now.

Zhao lived under house arrest until his death in 2005

Deng Xiaoping's hard line approach, encouraged by the likes of Li Peng, has shaped the CCP to what it is today. Zhao lost that ideological and political battle and that fallout forever changed China.

Which is why there are still many people, former officials, intellectuals and dissidents, who paid tribute to Zhao on the anniversaries of his birth and death at his old Beijing home. Now they can visit the burial plot, 60km from the capital city.

In a letter published in Ming Pao newspaper on Monday in Hong Kong, Zhao's children wrote that their father's time as premier and Communist Party general secretary in the 1980s was an era of bold change and intellectual ferment that is in striking contrast to China today.

"That truly was an exciting time that caused people's hearts to jump. The whole country was prospering, officialdom and the public, in power and out, worked in tandem," they wrote.

Many people would pay respects to Zhao at his old home

"These days we're confronted with ideological regression and doctrinal shortcomings. There is a spiritual malaise the likes of which hasn't been seen for a century."

In a conversation Zhao had with his friend Zong Fengming, that was later published in 2010, the former general secretary said: "China's failure to transform toward democracy runs against the global tide. Sooner or later we must take that path."

Zhao is probably still waiting, patiently.

Picture of the Day: Chocolate Souffle

It's not easy making a good souffle, but Hugo's does it well

A good souffle is not easy to execute. The egg whites need to be completely clean, devoid of any yolks, and whipped with sugar until peaks form. Meanwhile the flavouring needs to be mixed separately and cooled down before the egg whites are folded in.

This is a chocolate souffle from Hugo's in the Hyatt Regency Hong Kong. The fine dining European restaurant is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and it has its classic desserts perfected over the decades, from crepes Suzette to Bombe Alaska.

And this souffle is perfect. It's a large one, big for one person, but too delicious to share, and inside it's not wet at all, cooked through with a very light texture.

A souffle can't be rushed either -- it takes about 15 minutes to bake in the oven and you hope you did everything right so that it rises evenly and high, and this one does.

Guests can add either vanilla or chocolate sauce to the souffle
. Why more chocolate? We added some vanilla.

The bonus is having the rich chocolate sauce on top with a piece of gold leaf.

So good.

Hugo's
Hyatt Regency Hong Kong
18 Hanoi Street
Tsim Sha Tsui

Carrie Lam's Policy Address Fails the Grade

Carrie Lam is being escorted into the Legislative Council

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor continues to be completely out of touch with what people in Hong Kong want. It was the first time ever in the 71 years since policy speeches were made, she had to give it via a video recording.

Originally she was terrified of encountering the protesters at the Legislative Council building, but they were not there at all. Instead it was the pan-democrats inside the chambers dressed in black who kicked up a ruckus.

They shouted and waved placards of her with bloody hands at her, and played a recording of gunshots and screaming protesters, while using a handheld projector that showed one of the slogans in Chinese characters, "Five demands, not one less!" on the wall behind Lam. Some even put on face masks with President Xi Jinping's face on them.

"Five demands, not one less!" is projected behind Lam

It was all amusing, but Lam couldn't wait for the ridicule to end and walked out of the chambers, not without continued shouts at her and throwing placards near her.

But back to Lam's policy speech, which she made between two red flags, one Hong Kong the other China. Some comments on Twitter couldn't help but notice her standing between two red flags meaning double danger...

So Lam did not offer any political solution to the four months' long anti-government protests. Instead she offered opportunities for people to buy flats.

Are any of the five demands the protesters have been shouting about are of wanting to buy flats?

She seems to have gotten the idea from Beijing, who recently suggested that perhaps protesters were angry because they couldn't afford housing.

And so Lam has gone about and offered easier ways for people to get mortgages, not trying to find a way to make them more affordable. For those who are allowed to borrow up to 90 percent of the value of the flat, the lending cap will be raised to HK$8 million instead of HK$4 million.

And those who can take on mortgages worth up to 80 percent of the property value, the cap was raised to HK$10 million from HK$6 million.

Seems like she is targeting the middle class, in the hopes they will stop protesting and start buying.

But why would they, with the political and economic climate so uncertain? They would really rather buy elsewhere at the moment according to my blog post yesterday.

Lam also proposed building 10,000 "transitional" flats in three years for those waiting for public housing, but is that even enough?

The newly-renovated chamber following the July 1 vandalism

Another good initiative was saying the government will begin aggressively taking back empty private land that developers have been sitting on, as well as take over brownfield sites. Is this where Lam intends to build these 10,000 flats? Not sure.

Then, as many of the protesters are students, Lam decided to give everyone a transportation subsidies, tunnel tolls won't be raised, and there will be more ferries to outlying islands in service.

All these are piecemeal and hardly bold and visionary.

Some critics had suggested ahead of time she could have given more votes to the people by turning votes for companies or industries into votes for people, thus making the Legislative Council "more democratic". And making that change would not need Beijing's approval, but within Legco.

But no, she was not politically savvy enough to think about doing that.

So in the end nothing has really changed, not that the protesters expected much from Lam in the first place. They didn't even bother wasting their energy on her and rightly so.

But surely Lam realizes that she is not a suitable leader to guide Hong Kong out of the terrible mess she herself created?

And her problems are now compounded by the fact that the pro-Beijing camp, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong aren't happy with her police address either.

It's going to be very hard for Lam to pass this policy address in Legco...

Jimmy Sham was in injured tonight in an attack in Kowloon

In the meantime in the last few hours, Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit, the convenor of the Civil Human Rights Front that organizes all the big peaceful rallies, was violently attacked by non-Chinese assailants with hammers tonight in Tai Kok Tsui. Others tried to stop them, but one of the attackers threatened them with a knife. Sham was left on the ground bleeding profusely.

He is now in Kwong Wah Hospital and conscious but this is a damning attack on those who want to protest peacefully. Sham and his group were supposed to meet tonight about organizing another march on Sunday from Tsim Sha Tsui to Kowloon Station.

There was an attempt to attack Sham back in August, and he is not the only one who has been the focus of attacks: There is also Max Chung, the Yuen Long march organizer, Davin Wong, former University of Hong Kong student leader, Isaac Cheng, Demosisto vice chair, Roy Kwong, a Democrat lawmaker, Stanley Ho, Labour Party member, and Janelle Leung and Joycelyn Chau, both district council candidates.

These attacks are cowardly and deplorable -- they must stop now.