I'm still getting over being sick from last week, which is why this is late: I was about 90% finished it last night, and then I thought "okay, I'll lie down for a bit and then finish it afterwards" and then I slept for fourteen hours straight. I feel much better now, though, so that's the good news!

HONG KONG ELECTION SPECIALROO

Hong Kong, in the midst of its protests, had its past week its municipal elections - which, given Hong Kong's special status within China, are effectively akin to state or provincial elections anywhere else in the world, all the moreso considering China (as an ostensibly Communist state still) doesn't have direct leadership elections anywhere else.

I've written about Hong Kong's electoral background before, but the quick recap is that it's a multiparty system where there are basically two distinct alliances: the pro-democracy alliance, which isn't really wild about Chinese governance at all and wants Hong Kong to remain its own special thing (maybe completely independent of China, maybe being a "special rules" bit of China, it varies from party to party - although most of the larger democratic parties aren't openly pro-independence) and the pro-Beijing alliance, which wants Hong Kong to unify within the Chinese system more quickly (maybe retaining a little bit of autonomy, maybe not, again it varies by party). The pro-Beijing alliance has always won every election in Hong Kong at both levels: the municipal elections and the legislative council elections.

All of this is to say that the pro-Beijing alliance got thwomped this week, with pro-democracy parties taking 57 percent of the vote (they had never managed more than 45 percent previously in local elections) and about 85 percent of the seats in the district councils. Numerous prominent pro-Beijing politicians lost their jobs, and some of the pro-democracy candidates that got elected were outright radicals (like Jimmy Sham, leader of the Civil Human Rights Front, which has basically organized every pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong for the past fifteen years).

Now, it's important to remember these are the municipal elections, not the Legislative Council elections (which are probably more important for determining Hong Kong's path forward), which will be held in September and which structurally favour the pro-Beijing camp because a certain number of seats are assigned to "functional constituencies" (meaning various industries). But this was a massive shock to Chinese politics, because this has literally never happened before - Chinese newspapers had in fact already written their "pro-Beijing parties win again" stories - and because a lot of Chinese leadership had severely underestimated the level of popular support for the Hong Kong protests.

Immediately following the election, there were protests in Maoming, a large city on China's southern coast about two hundred kilometers away from Hong Kong. The protests were already scheduled and were in relation to a local issue (the government had announced construction of a crematorium on a site that had previously been promised to be a park), and protests in China about land use are relatively common, so the protest itself was nothing out of the ordinary. What was out of the ordinary was that the protesters used localized versions of the Hong Kong protest chants, and suggested that Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement should extend to the entire Guangdong region (which is already a bit distinct from most of China since it's where most of the Cantonese speakers live, along with a majority of the Hakka).

I'm not trying to suggest that the Hong Kong democracy movement is spreading like wildfire outside of Hong Kong - it isn't, at least not yet - but these are the sorts of signs that are probably keeping Chinese leadership up at night, since the whole idea of One China sort of relies on pretending that there is One China instead of China being what it is, which is a whole lot of Han Chinese and then a mess of smaller minority groups, mostly located in the south, who mostly sort of identify as "Chinese" but who have their own distinct differences. For example, like the fact that Cantonese and Mandarin sound nothing alike and the Cantonese tend to be more worldly in their outlook because the Chinese diaspora was for a very long time primarily Cantonese - because the Cantonese predominantly live in southern China, where all the most important ports are.

(Aside: at this point the Chinese government is probably very thankful that Taiwan has always been primarily a Mandarin-speaking nation, because the worst possible thing from their point of view would be for there to be cultural or ethnographic ties between Hong Kong and Taiwan. There really aren't any, though - outside of Taiwan's Hokkien population, which is also a secondary minority in southern China, but that's not a terribly big deal because the Hokkien are a reasonably small demographic.)

Anyway, I'm going to end this bit with the standard "what happens next? who knows" that you're used to from me, with the caveat that the Chinese government is obviously stunned by all of this, which indicates - again - that they severely underestimated how angry Hongkongers were with Chinese leadership and how much Hongkongers consider themselves, nationally speaking, "Hongkongers" as opposed to just "Chinese."

FIVE KNUCKLE CABINET SHUFFLE

Justin Trudeau shuffled his cabinet, which is meaningless in most respects because cabinet shuffles aren't actually very important at all. Policy direction mostly flows from the Prime Minister's office outward and has done at least since Pierre Trudeau's later years, so it doesn't matter if Dave is the Minister of Cool Beans or if Steve is the Minister of Doing Important Things, because the Prime Minister is the one who decides how many cool beans and which important things.

That said, you can safely take away a few minor political notes from the shuffle. The two things notable from this shuffle are that, by being promoted to Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland is clearly sitting in the Paul Martin seat of "probably going to be the next Liberal party leader" because she's popular within the party and with the public generally, and promoting her to something that sounds important and which is as criticism-proof as possible (since the DPM doesn't actually, like, do anything) is a way to keep her safe when the party itself is losing popularity. (Normally Canadian political parties like to put the heir apparent to the party in the Ministry of Finance, because it's a powerful job, but Bill Morneau has that job, is good at it, and is also popular within the party - but not with the general public. So he stays and they find something for Freeland to do that sounds special.)

Secondly, by appointing Mona Fortier to the position of "Minister of Middle Class Prosperity" - officially the dumbest fucking job title in Canadian political history - and then having Fortier define the middle class as essentially white people with kids who play hockey, the Liberals have made it clear that their plan, going forward, is to try to peel off voters from the Tories. This was probably already pretty obvious given the tax cuts and pipeline support Trudeau has already announced since the election, but now it's even more obvious, I guess. How good a plan it is to govern in a way to make Tories happy when most Conservative voters hate Justin Trudeau like poison, I don't know, but on the other hand nobody wants an election soon, Jason Kenney seems determined to do as much as possible in Alberta to ruin the Conservative brand and Doug Ford clearly wants to become the next Conservative federal party leader, so maybe the Liberals figure the Tories can implode before another vote happens.

THE DUMBEST POLITICAL THING AGAIN IS IN BRITAIN

The absolute dumbest thing any politician can do in the United Kingdom is attack the National Health Service. Support for the NHS in the UK is probably somewhere above support for small adorable puppies; while Britons might get upset with the level of service the NHS provides, mostly they want it to be better funded. It's the third rail of British politics, which is why at every election every party promises to make the NHS super-better.

This past week, the Labour Party published trade documents which show that in trade discussions with the USA, the USA had made clear that they wanted the UK to "accord non-discriminatory treatment with respect to the purchase and sale of goods and services." The problem with this demand is that they specifically applied it to "state owned services." The NHS is a state-owned service which works mostly because it prevents people from simply being able to buy better care. This, combined with other US demands on patent regimes, drug price negotiation and medical device pricing, would effectively cripple the NHS's ability to provide services at the cost level the UK is accustomed to.

The Conservative Party - who was the one doing the trade discussions, what with being in charge - only had the defense of "look, they were only asking for this as part of a trade deal we have to have if we have a Brexit and we didn't say 'yes' yet." The problem is that the Conservative Party has long been interested in, at the very least, de-emphasizing the NHS so that private insurers and providers can have greater influence in the healthcare sector, which is why Tory governments have a long tradition of doing that. And Boris Johnson has an established track record of suggesting in print that the NHS be abolished in favour of a multiple-insurer system, although he is not so crazy as to publicly suggest the American model. (In all fairness, Tony Blair's reign as Prime Minister for the Labour party was not so hot for the NHS either.)

The result of all of this: polling has now dragged the Tories down to a point where they seem unlikely to get the majority they likely would have won in an election just a couple of weeks ago. That they would have won a majority at all given their shockingly low support is itself an indictment of the British political system; that given their staggering incompetence over the past few years they aren't in a position to get rolled is an indictment of Jeremy Corbyn's political abilities. Corbyn is generally a pretty good person, but as a party leader he has not been particularly skilled.

THE ENTERTAINMENT SECTION

Movies watched/rewatched in the last two weeks:

Ford v. Ferrari (2019, James Mangold, theatre) - 3.5/5

The Great Mouse Detective (1985, Ron Clements, Disney Plus) - 3/5

Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson, theatre) - 4.5/5

Frozen 2 (2019, Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck, theatre) - 2.5/5

I don't normally watch The Crown, but I did watch the episode about the Aberfan mine collapse disaster, and it was pretty good. Olivia Colman is of course good in everything and I liked Jason Watkins's work as Harold Wilson.

Also, did you know that hummus, in addition to being a great dip, makes a great sandwich spread? Well maybe you did but I just found out how delicious a good hummus sandwich can be.

See you in seven.