2023 is not an easy year to live through. After the epidemic, customs clearance was resumed, but the United States encountered a series of violent interest rate hikes. The cumulative interest rate hikes exceeded 5%, interest rates increased sharply, and global investment and consumption intentions dropped sharply. There are new funds for time deposits in Hong Kong banks. In the days when the interest rate exceeded 4%, investors were busy transferring funds between different banks to earn high interest rates, and had no interest in investing in real estate, stocks, or even industries, so everyone suffered.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of “Bus News”. Someone asked me how I see myself in the next ten years. I’m still confident. In the past ten years, the global situation has changed dramatically. In this unprecedented change, in the next ten years, Hong Kong will naturally find a new position following the country.
The book that best explains the principles of change is the Chinese philosophical classic “The Book of Changes”. Life and death are called changes, and everything is constantly changing and changing. If you want to look at the rise and fall of a country’s fortunes, the so-called three yuan and nine fortunes in the Chinese calendar can be used as a reference. One fortune lasts 20 years, three fortunes make one yuan 60 years, and the upper, middle and lower three yuan form a 180-year cycle. Every 180 years, the nine planets will come to the same side of the sun, forming a pattern of nine stars in a row. We are living in the 180th year of the Three Yuan Nine Movements, which started in 1864. In those years, the Qing Dynasty of China was in decline and had just suffered a major defeat in the Second Opium War. The victorious country, Britain, was like Japan, and its invincible fleet dominated the world. The United States is like a young boy who has just grown up. In the late period of the Civil War, the country’s ideology is gradually unified and entering a stage of vigorous development. Now, more than a hundred years later, it is moving from the Eighth Movement to the Ninth Movement. The Ninth Movement will start in 2024. There are several points worth writing about.
1. It is easy to decay before transshipment.
For some reason, Hong Kong’s environment is getting worse every time before it turns to the next luck. In 1983, the year before the seventh anniversary, the Sino-British negotiations on Hong Kong entered a low ebb. The Hong Kong dollar plummeted, and people panicked and rushed to supermarkets to buy toilet paper. The last linked exchange rate of 1 US dollar to 7.8 Hong Kong dollars was set that year. In 2003, the year before the Eighth National Games, Hong Kong was also in great turmoil and the SARS epidemic broke out. This year is the year before the ninth year of fortune. Although the economy is a bit sluggish, it is already better than before.
2. A century of national prosperity
Looking back on the development of the Eighth Games in the past 160 years, the United Kingdom has turned from prosperity to decline. In 1914, its total GDP was surpassed by the United States. The United States is like a “flying dragon in the sky”. They are squandering, running a fiscal deficit of more than two trillion US dollars a year, and accumulating a national debt of 33 trillion US dollars. Even if they have gold and silver, they will be wiped out. The Western media always pessimizes that China will collapse, but China is rising amid the collapse. The West also claims that China’s population has begun to age, its economy has weakened, and the country has reached its peak. In fact, the founding of the People’s Republic of China is only 74 years ago, making it a quite young country. It took the United States 138 years after its founding to surpass the United Kingdom in economic aggregate. China will achieve this goal in a shorter time. China is like “seeing a dragon in the field, benefiting from the master.” Under the leadership of the master, China has completed this major change in China-U.S. trade.
3. Feed the country’s water
Many people are worried about the future of Hong Kong. It would indeed be cause for concern if everyone in Hong Kong lies flat and landslides occur. However, at a time when the country is rising and Hong Kong is undergoing transformation, Hong Kong has a favorable geographical location and is in the right position of the country, so there is room for development. Just talking about RMB and innovative industries, there is a way out. More and more countries are conducting local currency transactions with China, and countries with trade surpluses with China will accumulate a large amount of RMB. For example, Russia had a trade surplus with China of US$38 billion last year. In September this year, 95% of Russia’s trade with China Settled in local currency. In other words, Russia will hold more than 30 billion U.S. dollars in equivalent RMB a year, either converting it into other currencies, or retaining RMB for investment. This will happen to more and more countries in the future, such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong will only trade in RMB. You can be soft-hearted in any business.
Fourth, don’t wait for shipment to arrive
When it comes to the Three Yuans and Nine Lucks and luck, many people think it is superstitious. Indeed, neither a country nor an individual can “wait for luck to arrive”. When the fortune is bad, as long as one works hard, one can change the fortune; when the fortune is good, one must continue to work hard to reach the top. America’s fortunes are lagging, but as long as it returns to balancing its budget like the Clinton administration did in the 1990s, the nation’s fortunes can continue to prosper. But if you continue to squander like you are “bewitched by ghosts”, the country’s fortunes will not be that good.
The same goes for the country and Hong Kong. In the face of a difficult international environment, old businesses must be preserved as much as possible and new businesses must be discovered as quickly as possible in order to break new ground. I believe that Hong Kong will not decline in the future. In the past 20 to 30 years, those who looked at Hong Kong’s decline ended up being disappointed.
Lu Yongxiong
Xu Jinshan, then associate professor of the Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine of the Faculty of Medicine at CUHK, was earlier convicted of murdering his wife and daughter in 2015. Xu Jinshan, who was serving his sentence, appealed to the Court of Final Appeal. The Court of Final Appeal issued its verdict on Tuesday, ruling that Xu Jinshan’s appeal was allowed and the case was remanded for retrial. This is really a fascinating case with twists and turns.
Xu Jinshan was accused of placing a yoga ball filled with carbon monoxide in the trunk of the car. Since the yoga ball had the air plug removed, a large amount of carbon monoxide leaked out, eventually causing the poisoning and death of his wife and daughter. This kind of high-tech death case is already surprising in itself, and it is even more surprising that the case can be retried on appeal.
Generally speaking, criminal cases tried by the High Court involve a jury to determine the facts, and it is considered that the factual disputes cannot be appealed. Therefore, the difficulty of the appeal itself is low. The only reason for the appeal is that the original judge’s legal view is wrong, or the jury is led to make mistakes. to successfully appeal.
The Court of Final Appeal ruled that the appeal of Xu Jinshan’s case was allowed, mainly because the original judge made mistakes in guiding the jury. The judgment was written by Permanent Judges Fok Siu-kang and Lam Man-han of the Court of Final Appeal. The dispute in the appeal was that Xu Jinshan’s wife and daughter died in May 2015. The police only focused on investigating the silver yoga ball in the private car involved in November of the same year. The evidence collected was The police officer stated that there was no yoga ball inflator in the car. It was not until May 2016 that the police found an airlock suspected of being involved in the case in a drawer of Xu Jinshan’s apartment.
The original judge once told the jury that if the jury accepts the police evidence, it will be able to identify who put the yoga ball in the car, which means that the young girl will be excluded from putting the yoga ball in the car. However, Xu Jinshan’s side suggested that the young girl may have put the yoga ball in the car to kill insects. Since the private car involved was under police custody for nearly half a year, it cannot be ruled out that the evidence was interfered with. The judge of the Court of Final Appeal agreed in the ruling that the trial judge’s guidance may have caused the jury to adopt “an idea that is not allowed by law” and rule out the possibility of the young girl putting the yoga ball in the car, thus ignoring that the airlock was not removed before the police searched the car. Be careful of the possibility of taking it away or misplacing it in other places. The hospital also stated that more than half a year passed between the incident and the police search of the car, and the items in the trunk of the car had been moved, so the possibility that the air plug had been removed cannot be ruled out.
In addition, the court also believed that the air plug found in Xu Jinshan’s apartment was not important because there were other yoga balls in Xu Jinshan’s apartment. Therefore, the air plug itself found in the drawer was not important and the evidence value was not high. It could not accuse Xu Jinshan of committing crimes. Put the yoga ball in the car and remove the air plug at the same time. During the original trial, the prosecution connected the drawer air plug with the yoga ball in the car, which was very biased. The original judge should at least remind the jury that there is no connection between the two. Unfortunately, the judge did not guide the jury properly and the jury was unable to properly evaluate the evidence. .
The final judgment of the Xu Jinshan case is indeed a good teaching material, teaching everyone to understand two things in court trials. 1. A criminal case must prove the defendant’s guilt “beyond reasonable doubt.” If the defendant can establish the case beyond “reasonable doubt,” the defendant should be found not guilty. The doubtful dispute in Xu Jinshan’s case revolved around who placed the yoga ball and who removed the air plug. However, the judge’s guidance did not clearly instruct the jury to consider the relevant points.
2. The importance of establishing a complete chain of evidence. If it is a real crime, the criminal will leave evidence at every step, and the prosecution will have to find this evidence and prove it at every step. In the Xu Jinshan case, the Court of Final Appeal even pointed out that the prosecution did not present any evidence in the original trial that the police properly kept the items in the car. In other words, from the moment the yoga ball was put in the car to the moment the police found the yoga ball, there must be evidence to prove it. In particular, it must be proved that Xu Jinshan put the yoga ball in the car and removed the air plug, and Not just by inference.
In fact, we have also seen some cases in which the prosecution relied on inference to convict. The most typical case is the 1974 Happy Valley corpse hiding case. The naked body of the girl Bian Yuying was found hidden in a TV carton. Ouyang Bingqiang, a clerk at a nearby ice cream shop, was accused of being the murderer. Since there was no direct witness, the prosecution relied on the scientific evidence that Bian Yuying’s clothing fibers were found on Ouyang Bingqiang’s clothing, and finally ruled that Ouyang Bingqiang was guilty of murder. However, Ouyang Bingqiang has been insisting to the outside world for more than 20 years. I am innocent. This case refreshed Hong Kong people’s understanding of scientific forensics and criminal case inference at that time.
Relatively speaking, the Court of Final Appeal adopted a very rigorous attitude in the Xu Jinshan case, paying attention to the chain of evidence at every link and the judge’s reasonable guidance. In the end, it ruled that the judge’s guidance was wrong and the case had to be remanded for retrial.
Of course, the retrial of the case does not mean that Xu Jinshan is innocent, but everything has to start again.
Lu Yongxiong
2023-11-23 10:25:30
#Hong #Kong #transferred
