Fourth Plenum set; Hong Kong; US-China; New Party propaganda and rural work regulations

Good morning, today is a holiday in the US and the last day of summer vacation for our kids, so the newsletters is short and sweet. Regular programming returns Tuesday.

Hong Kong saw another weekend of protests, arrests, police brutality, violence and vandalism. School starts this week and there are no signs of any path towards a peaceful resolution. It is heartbreaking to watch, and I fear that the core protestors do believe “If we burn, you burn with us”, as Joshua Wong and Alex Chow wrote in their New York Times Saturday OpEd “The People of Hong Kong Will Not Be Cowed by China”.

The October 1st celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the PRC is 27 days away. As Wong and Chow wrote:

We know that the Chinese government wants grand celebrations for the 70th anniversary of the birth of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1; it wants to put history on its side by rewriting the memory of the people. But Hong Kongers won’t let it commemorate that day without a fight.

The Pa…