Bonnie's Struggle to Learn Wikiboxing

[Bonniecanuck]

To begin, a couple prototypes that I made a little while ago to begin a proper Wikiboxing career.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

This is my first wikibox of a political figure, which I threw together over the last hour as a bit of a side project of Kanan's Our Fair Country timeline.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Send help

 

[Bonniecanuck]

 

[Makemakean]

Kind of weird that a Trotskyist would be wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, seeing that when Che Guevara visited the Soviet Union, he made a point of paying his respects at Stalin's grave to indicate his opposition to Khrushchev's de-Stalinization.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Kind of weird that a Trotskyist would be wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, seeing that when Che Guevara visited the Soviet Union, he made a point of paying his respects at Stalin's grave to indicate his opposition to Khrushchev's de-Stalinization.

Hong Kong's Trotskyists are among the...most unique branch of them, many were defectors from pro-Beijing Communism in the 1960s and 70s (Leung in particular turned to Trotskyism after the Tiananmen Incident) and by the 80s were staunch supporters of the democracy movement in the Mainland. These days they're mostly demsocs.

 

[Makemakean]

Hong Kong's Trotskyists are among the...most unique branch of them, many were defectors from pro-Beijing Communism in the 1960s and 70s (Leung in particular turned to Trotskyism after the Tiananmen Incident) and by the 80s were staunch supporters of the democracy movement in the Mainland. These days they're mostly demsocs.

The Tiananmen Incident of 5 April 1976 or the Tiananmen Incident of 4 June 1989?

(I've long felt that you could do a truly awesome miniseries on Deng Xiaoping having those two events be the bookends. It just works so spectacularly good, especially when you start taking into account these traditional Chinese Confucian notions of the Mandate of Heaven, etc.)

 

[Bonniecanuck]

The Tiananmen Incident of 5 April 1976 or the Tiananmen Incident of 4 June 1989?

(I've long felt that you could do a truly awesome miniseries on Deng Xiaoping having those two events be the bookends. It just works so spectacularly good, especially when you start taking into account these traditional Chinese Confucian notions of the Mandate of Heaven, etc.)

The former. In fact, after the original Trotskyist party disbanded in 1991, Leung founded a new party named April Fifth Action after the events of 1976.

 

[Makemakean]

The former. In fact, after the original Trotskyist party disbanded in 1991, Leung founded a new party named April Fifth Action after the events of 1976.

Kind of interesting, seeing that, err-... the protesters in 1976 were not just expressing their anger with how Zhou Enlai had been treated by the party and Mao in his final years, but was also very much anti- the Gang of Four, and pro-Deng Xiaoping. Like, people would put out little bottles on the streets to indicate their support for the man (it's apparently a pun that works very well in Chinese).

So, like, err-... neither 1976 or 1989 are events you should be particularly pleased with if you're a Maoist, seeing both of them were very much anti-Maoist.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Kind of interesting, seeing that, err-... the protesters in 1976 were not just expressing their anger with how Zhou Enlai had been treated by the party and Mao in his final years, but was also very much anti- the Gang of Four, and pro-Deng Xiaoping. Like, people would put out little bottles on the streets to indicate their support for the man (it's apparently a pun that works very well in Chinese).

So, like, err-... neither 1976 or 1989 are events you should be particularly pleased with if you're a Maoist, seeing both of them were very much anti-Maoist.

Oh, Leung is very, very anti-Maoist. When Li Peng died, he and the LSD organised a toast to celebrate the occasion outside the PRC Liaison Office.

 

[Makemakean]

Oh, Leung is very, very anti-Maoist.

Really?

Then I pray forgive me for my ignorance. From his Wikipedia article, I got the impression that he was basically a Red Guard.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Really?

Then I pray forgive me for my ignorance. From his Wikipedia article, I got the impression that he was basically a Red Guard.

It's one of the many paradoxes of local politics. On the one hand you have pro-democracy social democrats who have a rallying figure in the form of a former Trotskyist who still uses the iconography of Che and whose shenanigans would make Dennis Skinner blush, and on the other hand have pro-Beijing trade unions operating as a political party defending capping pension raises to be below the inflation rate.

 

[aurinoko]

It's one of the many paradoxes of local politics. On the one hand you have pro-democracy social democrats who have a rallying figure in the form of a former Trotskyist who still uses the iconography of Che and whose shenanigans would make Dennis Skinner blush, and on the other hand have pro-Beijing trade unions operating as a political party defending capping pension raises to be below the inflation rate.

Man, I LOVE Long Hair. When I worked at the KCTU last year, my boss, who got himself arrested in Hong Kong in 2005 during the anti-WTO protests, had nothing but good things to say about the guy, as the only Hong Kong-er who "got it."

 

[Bonniecanuck]

Has it really been two years since the last post?

That

That feels illegal.

Anyway, been thinking up some contributions.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

ohsweetjesuswhathaveidone



The Imperial Airways Bureau (IAB) is the state-owned Crown corporation operating the civil aviation industry in the British Empire. Its core is formed by its namesake Imperial Airways, the flag carrier and largest airline of the United Kingdom, and it is headquartered on the grounds of London Thames-Medway International Airport in the London Capital Region. It is jointly owned by the British Empire's Board of Trade and the United Kingdom's Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation, with governments of the Empire's self-governing Dominions possessing controlling interests in the carriers based respectively in their region. Formed in the aftermath of the collapse of the aviation industry across the British Empire that brought an end to the Airline Boom in the late 1940s, the IAB's aim was to consolidate, regulate, and expand the civil aviation market to provide Empire-wide service under a common open skies framework. Nationalisation and consolidation with regional carriers serving the Empire's colonies, many of which had pre-existing relationships with Imperial Airways, led to the development of a route network comprising transcontinental trunk routes with a range of connections at numerous stopovers that would develop into airline hubs serving as the gateways to their respective Dominions. In addition, the IAB contributed to the establishment of numerous airlines based in former colonies which became independent from the Empire in the 1940s and 50s, with which it continues to maintain holdings as a minority shareholder and cooperate with on providing long-haul service to West Africa and India.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

The Kowloon Line is one of the six lines on the Hong Kong Harbour Railway network. The line runs from Kowloon terminus at the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront on Victoria Harbour to the Yeung Choi crossing and customs checkpoint at the border with China, connecting the urban cores of Kowloon and Shamchun with towns and villages in Kowloon and Po On counties.

The line was originally built as the Kowloon-Canton Railway, a joint project between Britain and China to construct a railway between Kowloon and Canton in Mainland China that was completed in 1910. Its original alignment included a section of track north of Fanling that runs through the old market town area of eastern Shamchun. After the Kowloon-Canton Railway was merged into Harbour Railway and development of the modern city of Shamchun was carried out, a new alignment was built to the west through central Shamchun to facilitate rapid transit service. However, the original alignment continues to host intercity rail service to Canton and freight operations. The remainder of the line was double or quad-tracked to support two-way operation, express services, and intercity and freight operations.

The Kowloon Line is elevated or at-grade throughout its route, with a handful of tunneled sections. Trains run at a headway of 2-5 minutes. The line shares its track with the New Kowloon Line between Kowloon and Kowloon Tsai, and the Channel Line in two sections, one between Kowloon and Yaumati and the other between Lok Ma Chau and Shamchun stations. The branching of the Kowloon and Channel lines has led locals to colloquially refer to the Kowloon Line as the East Rail.

The Kowloon Line's northern terminus at Yeung Choi has immigration and customs facilities enabling pedestrians to cross the border with China, and its historic southern terminus connects to the Star Ferry to Victoria City, the capital of Hong Kong. Proposals to extend the Kowloon rail corridor to Victoria have been discussed, but are controversial due to the cost of rebuilding the Kowloon terminus and tunneling under Victoria Harbour.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

A brief history of legislative politics in the Constituent Country of Hong Kong

The politics of Hong Kong in many ways mirror the evolution of the colony turned constituent country as it grew and took on new political and cultural identities since its inception in 1839. It is hard to draw a straight line from the granting of Responsible Government and establishment of the House of Assembly, the first incarnation of the modern Parliament of Hong Kong, in 1843, to the devolved Irish model that has remained in place since 1987, but filling in these gaps can shed some insight into a rich history of civic engagement that keeps the country one where political activity is quite more pluralistic and lively than in the British Isles.

The House of Assembly as founded in 1843 was designed to be a legislature of Europeans for Europeans. Like many other colonial legislatures, it had strict property-holding and ratepaying requirements that shut out all but the wealthiest from participating in elections, and though its charter never outright excluded participation of the local Chinese, barriers like an English proficiency test held back any political advancement for the Chinese for decades. The class exclusivity built into the House of Assembly also set the precedent for the pseudo-dynastic role played by denizens of the professional classes, particularly in business, finance, and law, which is how many Members of Parliament today still make their names as bankers, managers, or barristers before finding a higher calling in elected office, and why many of them remain connected to firms like HSBC, Jardine Matheson, and Hutchinson International. In the meantime the legislation introduced by the colonial authorities effectively cemented the white-plurality settlement of Hong Kong Island, granted legislative authority over municipal charters, and set up civic institutions overseeing utilities and infrastructure to support a burgeoning new settlement at the gateway to the Chinese market.

Reform came slowly, but as events shaped the colony, the political landscape would realign accordingly. In the 1880s two prominent local Chinese were appointed unofficial Members of the House of Assembly, marking the first Chinese representation in colonial government, though their position was unelected. Their good standing prompted individual Members and civil servants to propose reforms that would bring more Chinese into the government, and it was these reformists who founded the first civic associations that laid the genesis for political parties in Hong Kong. As Britain’s colonial mandate was expanded in 1898, the indigenous Hakka and Punti villages of Po On County fought off incursions by the colonial garrison to occupy them, and in prompting the government to come to the table, set the stage for their integration into the body politic while retaining a unique autonomy that would lead them to coalesce into the Heung Yee Kuk federation of village leaders from the 1920s. Over time the property requirements would diminish and more seats would be added to the Assembly, and this would encourage Chinese intellectuals to take an interest in British constitutional law to further open the door to Chinese political engagement not just in Hong Kong, but also in Nusantara.

With an influx of new residents into Hong Kong following the turbulence surrounding the Chia Dynasty’s rise in China and the Great Continental War in Europe, both urban and rural politics were dramatically reshaped as Hong Kong progressively became more urbanised, especially as Shamchun began its explosive growth from a former market town to the commercial and population centre of the country. The pace of reform had failed to keep up with the clamour for greater representation and increasing social tensions, and the dominance of the corporations over political affairs had reached its zenith. The dam broke in 1952 when the Attlee government would legislate the dissolution of the House of Assembly to promote Hong Kong’s political status and clean up colonial governance. The new legislature, a bicameral Hong Kong Parliament akin to Westminster, introduced universal suffrage to Hongkongers for the first time, and the shakeup resulting from this change brought about a fragmentary and decentralised party system comprising a myriad of community organisations, civic associations, and political clubs. It was in this environment that several prominent figures arose as household names - Lo Man-kam, Ma Man-fai, G.S. Kennedy-Skipton, William Louey, Ronald Gillespie, and Ruth Forbes were among the many MPs elected to the Hong Kong Parliament responsible for bringing government closer to the people of Hong Kong. However, no two names are more synonymous with the Home Rule Parliament than Elsie Hume and Hilton Cheong-Leen. The former, a firebrand progressive activist who advocated for the rights of the underclass and who built a rapport with Prime Minister Roy Jenkins before severing it in anger over the Bengal War; the latter, a prominent reformist among the Chinese community whose close ear to Whitehall and Westminster led him to be dubbed with the unofficial title of “Hong Kong’s High Commissioner to London”.

The rise of a new generation of the Hong Kong Parliament raised new questions regarding Hong Kong’s political status in the British Empire. Officially still a Crown Colony, though enjoying legislative independence beyond most other colonies of that status, many believed the time right to formally reappraise Hong Kong’s status. Many believed the answer was to make Hong Kong a Dominion or even a Commonwealth, bringing it in line with the Nusantaran polities now enjoying Responsible Government. However, this provoked anxiety for various reasons - the treasury and civil servants were keen on maintaining Hong Kong’s unique exemptions to the British Isles Home Development Fund, military analysts stressed the liability of a looser hand on the Royal Navy’s largest base in Asia, and many Chinese as well as immigrants from Sicily and the Philippines watched in horror of the news of Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s tyranny in Avalon and feared that the same fate would await them.

Instead, Lydia Dunn, the first woman to sit on HSBC’s Board of Directors, proposed a more radical and unprecedented solution - to have Hong Kong be integrated into the United Kingdom as a constituent country under the Irish model of internal autonomy. Dunn won support in London from across the Liberal political spectrum, while in Hong Kong, she worked with her husband Michael Thomas, then the Attorney General of Hong Kong, to build a legal case for the union, and a broad coalition supporting it in the streets and at the ballot box. The 1984 general election served as an unofficial referendum for the Unionist coalition to prove its case, and in winning a landslide majority that brought a slate of candidates like Martin Lee, Lee Wing-tat, Emily Lau, and Maria Tam into office and Albert Cheng as First Minister, set the stage for Hong Kong to be made the fifth constituent country of the United Kingdom in 1987. One of the most famous stories of the transition came at the banquet in Victoria celebrating Hong Kong’s accession, when Martin Lee unveiled a box of egg tarts from a local bakery and shared the treats with his British counterparts. The soon-to-be Foreign Secretary Chris Patten took such a liking to the local snack that he would wander off to visit the same bakery the following day, and his patronage of the treat helped make it a staple of afternoon tea in Great Britain as part of the cultural “Pearl Wave” surrounding Hong Kong’s accession, which included Chow Yun-fat’s casting as the first non-white Doctor in Doctor Who and Leslie Cheung’s 1991 headline concert at Greenwich Park.

The broad tent nature of the Hong Kong Unionists proved to be unwieldy and unbalanced both in Westminster and Victoria. Its inclusion of figures from all backgrounds made internal clashes and factionalism a given - while liberals like Martin Lee sought closer ties to the Liberal establishment, more conservative members like Maria Tam believed that the Unionists required more independence to avoid rocking the boat and to keep the economy growing. While both Dunn and Cheng served as mediating influences that kept the coalition together for a few years, Dunn’s promotion to the House of Lords and Cheng’s retirement in 1995 made reconciliation more and more difficult. The final rupture came in 1996 when Prime Minister Glenda Jackson formally integrated the Liberal Alliance’s constituent parties into a single hegemonic Liberal Party. Martin Lee, Anna Wu, and Emily Lau led many of the progressive-minded or otherwise opportunistic members of the government to take the Liberal whip, while Maria Tam and Vincent Cheng took leadership of a rump Unionist caucus that redefined itself as a pro-business party emphasising peace, order, and good government, against the Fabian bent of Jenkinsism.

So lay the roots for the current party system in Hong Kong. Under Emily Lau and Lau Wong-fat, the Hong Kong Liberals took the playbook of their British counterparts and gradually assimilated the local residents’ associations that had once been a cornerstone of colonial politics. Through this, the Liberals won a majority government in 2003 and have held onto that majority since. The Unionists, though able to maintain a minority government until 2003, have not held power since, and their old guard have largely stepped down while the new generation of leadership faces the problem that they have been in opposition for their entire political lives. Then there are the local branches of the Conservative and Labour parties. Conservative office-holders have largely coalesced around socially conservative elements of society, especially some outspokenly anti-LGBT Christian churches. Labour’s MPs draw their roots from the late Szeto Wah, the trade unionist and socialist reputed for his attacks on both the British and Chinese governments, and their main constituents are dissident trades unions and pressure groups that have loosely organised under the Joint Committee for Democracy. Neither party has managed a successful breakthrough out of these niches, but like their counterparts in Great Britain, do nonetheless command influence over local elections and governance that allows them to put pressure on the two larger parties.

 

[Bonniecanuck]

List of First Ministers of Hong Kong

1987-1995: George Walden (Unionist)
1995-1996: Anthony Cheung (Unionist)
1996-2003: David Clementi (Unionist)
2003-2011: Lau Wong-fat (Liberal)
2011-2017: John Tsang (Liberal)
2017-present: Leung Yiu-chung (Liberal)

List of Secretaries of State for Hong Kong

1987-1993: Lydia Dunn (Liberal Alliance - Hong Kong Unionist)
1993-1996: Raymond Chan (Liberal Alliance - Hong Kong Unionist)
1996-2006: Emily Lau (Liberal - Hong Kong Liberal)
2006-2009: Stephen Green (Liberal - Hong Kong Business and Professional Alliance)
2009-2018: Regina Ip (Liberal - Hong Kong Liberal/British Chambers of Commerce)
2018-2021: Jeremy Hunt (Liberal - Hong Kong Liberal/British Chambers of Commerce)
2021-present: Lam Cheuk-ting (Liberal - Hong Kong Liberal)

Parliamentary party leaders, House of Commons (United Kingdom)
Liberal: Lam Cheuk-ting (also Secretary of State for Hong Kong)
Hong Kong Unionist: Norman Chan
Conservative: Roger Wong
Labour: Avery Ng

Parliamentary party leaders, House of Assembly (Hong Kong)
Liberal: Leung Yiu-chung (also First Minister of Hong Kong)
Hong Kong Unionist: Gavin Williamson
Conservative: Junius Ho
Labour: Eddie Chu

Parliamentary party leaders, House of Delegates
Liberal: Philip Dykes
Hong Kong Unionist: Joseph Yam

 

[Bonniecanuck]

The 2020 United Kingdom general election was held on 12 April 2020, with all 89 Hong Kong seats contested. The election was the first electoral campaign in which the Hong Kong branch of the Liberal Party caucus was headed by Lam Cheuk-ting, serving as the parliamentary caucus leader in the House of Commons and Secretary of State for Hong Kong in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Dominic Grieve. Lam, MP for Yuen Long since 2010, had succeeded Jeremy Hunt as Secretary of State for Hong Kong following an internal non-binding balloting process in 2019, as Hunt had been appointed in a provisional role following the dismissal of Regina Ip in 2018 over various scandals. Ip's tenure as parliamentary leader has been characterised as turbulent and erratic, with the Liberal Party suffering from the high-profile defection of Holden Chow to the Conservative Party following calls to resign over homophobic remarks, and the 2018 Sek Kong by-election in which the Liberal candidate had lost to an insurgent campaign by the Labour Party candidate, who emphasised rural workers' and peripheral urban issues in line with the platform espoused by Eddie Chu, the party's leader in the Parliament of Hong Kong. Lam's appointment was seen as a move to clean the party up, with his background as an investigator for Hong Kong's anti-corruption bureau being highlighted in press statements, and his appeal across factional lines was also recognised due to his association with retired MHA Albert Ho and longtime role in campaigning and organising for the party.

The election saw the Liberals gain seven seats, including the seats it had lost to the Conservatives and Labour in 2018. The Hong Kong Unionists, running on a platform aligned with their counterparts in the Hong Kong Parliament and advocating closer relations with the African Commonwealths, made a net gain of one additional seat. The Conservative and Labour Parties saw their vote share decrease and seat numbers fall below single digits. The Conservative parliamentary leader Alice Wong was criticised for what was perceived as a tone-deaf campaign that focused too much on issues seen as trivial or having been settled, and would vacate her position in favour of Gary Chan. The lower number of seats won by Labour compared to the Conservatives in spite of a higher popular vote share was noted by leading figures of the party, with parliamentary leader Avery Ng criticising the disproportionate results of the first-past-the-post electoral system and calling for electoral reform.

 

[Kaddeus]

Alice Wong in a Hong Kong Wikibox is a crossover I neither needed nor wanted.

(that being said, this is excellent)