Open-source intelligence (OSINT)
🔻 IMPORTANT
▪️ This article introduces some categories of political rhetoric that are widely used in Hong Kong and beyond. It then presents some examples while analyzing Hong Kong's recent political development and fake narratives.
The main principle is that these media, as advertising companies, replace the true and real public opinion of the people and individuals with their own voices-their class, their capitalists, their clients-which are often different from the working class. Thus, incompetent bureaucrats and so-called "public servants" simply take their peddled op-eds as the voice of the people. This is always a fatal mistake. In this case, the public opinion industry and market are well established in Hong Kong and beyond.
1. Straw man refers to the fallacious argumentation technique of distorting and quoting an opponent's ideas and opinions in a debate, and then further refuting the distorted argument or the distorted fictional argument itself.
2. Information manipulation is the act of intervening in a series of newsgathering, editing, and reporting activities of a news organization to limit or alter the information (statements, articles, photographs, images/videos) provided to the extent that it is not false or misleading, thereby attempting to influence the impression or judgment results received by the recipient of the information. "Image manipulation" or "impression manipulation" in common parlance. This is also commonly referred to as image manipulation or impression manipulation. In a broad sense, it also includes commercial activities such as branding, commercials, and comparative advertising.
3. The term "freedom not to report" refers to the freedom of the press not to report as opposed to the public's right to know, as opposed to the danger that the press is sometimes free not to inform the public by not reporting.
4. A personal attack (Latin: ad hominem, argumentum ad hominem) is an attack on the personality or beliefs of the person making an argument or asserting a fact, rather than specifically refuting the argument itself or an argument as such. It has the effect of shifting the argument. It is also called a character assassination argument.
5. Cognitive bias is a psychological phenomenon in which judgments about things become irrational due to preconceptions based on intuition or previous experience. It is a type of various observer effects in cognitive and social psychology, and is also a problem that humans are prone to commit, such as very basic statistical errors, social attribution errors, and memory errors (false memories). Thus, cognitive biases can greatly distort the reliability of case and legal evidence.
6. Cherry picking is the act of selecting from among many cases only those that support one's argument, and hiding or ignoring evidence that contradicts it.
7. A smoked herring falsehood or red herring is an idiomatic expression referring to a rhetorical or literary technique that attempts to divert the attention of the recipient (listener, reader, or audience) from an important matter.
8. An irrelevant conclusion, "putting the cart before the horse" (Latin: ignoratio elenchi) is a type of non-formal fallacy, an argument that is a valid argument in itself but does not answer the original question."ignoratio elenchi" means ignorance of the refutation. "elenchi" is derived from the Greek word έλλεγχος, meaning a claim or argument of refutation.
9. Sedition is the act of making a speech to the masses in order to arouse people's emotions and induce them to change their opinions or take a certain action.
10. Negative campaigning is an election tactic to demean a candidate by slandering him or her.
11. Principle of charity is a term in modern English-speaking philosophy. It is used in a variety of senses, but its most common meaning is the basic principle of critical thinking that "when reassembling an opponent's argument, we should reassemble it in as coherent a form as possible. Abandoning this principle leads to straw man arguments.
12. Rice argumentation is an argumentation technique in which a question is not answered directly by using a metaphor, and the point of the argument is shifted. For example, when asked "Did you eat breakfast?", the meaning of "rice" in either Chinese or Japanese is deliberately interpreted as narrow, so that the answer is "I did not eat rice (rice, white rice)", even though I ate bread.
In general, manipulation of information and misrepresentation, derivative editing - often terrible omissions/filters of the original source/context - by so-called "journalists" are mixed in Hong Kong. In addition, the mixed or confused use of Mandarin and Cantonese in local rhetorical content is also serious. In Hong Kong, the so-called "Chinese" means Cantonese for the local tribes. And another feature is that the English content coming out of Hong Kong is almost dominated by the SCMP and a few small English media. These are all opposition-leaning, Western-backed media. Moreover, the "freedom not to report" as press freedom is never mentioned in the public sphere, as I observed in 2017 and 2025 at present. In fact, when the HKSARG boasts about the "freedom of press", it can only mean the "freedom not to report". The point is that the "freedom not to report" is dialectically the opposite side of the "freedom to report." In other words, the "freedom not to report" becomes a problem here when the news must be reported to the public for the public interest and its abuse in information manipulation.
Fake Narratives
Case A. Anthony Cheung Bing-leung: What kind of deficit problem? （2/4/2025）
Point：The below part is the core of his whole article that this Anthony Cheung Bing-leung was the Secretary for Transport and Housing of the Hong Kong SAR Government from July 2012 to June 2017 and, in that capacity, the Chairman of the Hong Kong Housing Authority, so he belongs to the vested interests of Hong Kong as he peddled here to preserve the land financing mode that caused the decades of suffering of this city. A true reformist won't promote this outdated and dead mode. What's more, a true patriot will not use the term "mainlandization".
當國家經濟再好時，香港是否仍必然好？不能一廂情願。關鍵在於香港仍否維持獨特性（即能內地城市所不能）及國際化、善用大灣區、具區域競爭力，否則「超級聯繫」、「超級增值」流於虛詞。若特區內向化、內地化，漸失優勢，以往的公共財政基礎，包括以房地產去融資大型基建和開發項目的必勝模式，便難以為繼，既兌現不了與民之社會契約，企業也會信心動搖。近期中央官員已表露對香港情况的焦急。
Case B. Easing Development Constraints Increasing Land Sale Proceeds （2/10/2025）
Point：am730 is run by two of the oligarchs in real estate agencies, Centaline Property Agency Limited (the owener has another dominant company). A direct voice of themselves and their greedy real estate speculators of this city. The below part is the nexus of all the rhetoric that Hong Kong must preserve and optimize - deregulate - land finance, while the "reform" peddled here is the anti-reform that does the opposite of what people and nation want to free themselves from the aftermath of land finance. This is also a pseudo-reformist narrative that serves the vested interests presented in the relics of 'reform'.
特區政府的財政，近年不斷出現赤字，其中一項關鍵原因是政府賣地收入萎縮。如果這個問題無法解決，政府在其他方面的努力，亦只是杯水車薪。因此，要解決香港的財赤問題，得從提升賣地收益着手。要提升賣地收入，首先要發展商願意積極出價投地。要發展商願意投地，前提是要一手市場活躍，新盤推出有理想的銷售成績。若然發展商的庫存不斷積壓，貨尾愈來愈多，他們當然不會積極投地。
Point: If they were really confident in their system of government, no one would ask the PRCCG too often for confirmation of the continuation of 1C2S. Moreover, a true patriot doesn't need to ask whether it will continue until the end of the CCP or not. For a true patriot, it doesn't matter whether the 1C2S exists or not. This also shows how deep the mistrust is between the Hong Kong vested interests and the CCP.
李慧琼說香港有時為中央帶來很多麻煩，但中央對一國兩制及香港的支持是由始至終。
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