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Alex Lo
Alex Lo
Toronto
Columnist
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.

From a US perspective, the outgoing president and his foreign policy team did surprisingly well. But without a supportive successor – or rather with an actively hostile one – their work is likely to come undone.

It was no accident that a law expert specialising in various charters had convinced fellow ‘Hong Kong 47’ conspirators to trigger legislative crisis.

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There is much to admire about the most dynamic society of the past 500 years, just not necessarily the kinds of things that have most mesmerised many Hongkongers.

The Dutch ASML has been slowly strangled by Biden with export restrictions to China. Now it’s the Taiwanese TSMC’s turn under the president-elect to hand over the manufacturing assets or pay high tariffs.

The death and displacement of millions of Muslims in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen mean little. But if they are Muslims in Xinjiang, suddenly, their lives take on phenomenal value – propaganda value.

Unlike China’s state-run think tanks and media groups, their Anglo-American counterparts have industry ties and interests whose influences are often far less obvious.

As public health standards decline and resources dwindle, the country’s medically assisted suicide programme no longer inspires confidence.

Beyond mere facts, the news media have always been about providing or manipulating their contexts to constrain how you think and lead you to the conclusions they want you to reach.

The rise of China is not specific to the nation but part of a larger historic trend in the fall and rise again of the non-West – and of the reverse for the West.