CY Leung, former Hong Kong chief executive, promotes bounty for protesters

Leung Chun-ying (梁振英 Liáng Zhènyīng), a.k.a., CY Leung, Hong Kong’s unpopular chief executive between 2012 and 2017, advertised a bounty website, 803.hk, that offers crowd-funded cash rewards to tipsters who can submit information that leads to the arrest of certain Hong Kong protesters. “Please spread,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Tuesday, with an image of the site:

The website is so-named because of an August 3 incident “in which a demonstrator flung the Chinese flag into the water of Hong Kong’s harbor,” according to Bloomberg.

The rewards range from HK$200,000 to HK$1 million ($127,000), reports the Hong Kong Free Press.

In other news from the troubled Pearl of the Orient:

Hong Kong’s chief executive met with “moderate young protesters” on Monday, says the South China Morning Post:

Most of the young people who on Monday spoke with Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor [林鄭月娥 Lín Zhèng Yuè’é] in a landmark dialogue session had taken part in anti-government marches, organisers of the meeting have told the Post.

Government officials stuck to its plan to meet first with moderate young protesters before reaching out to more vocal and radical activists, a source familiar with plans to start a citywide dialogue platform said on Tuesday.

Beijing is using the “Fujian Hometown Association, which represents immigrants to Hong Kong from Fujian,” and other civic groups that are closely tied to the Party, to press its agenda in Hong Kong, according to a New York Times article titled From the shadows, China’s Communist Party mobilizes against Hong Kong protests (porous paywall).

“Hong Kong students abroad have described an atmosphere of fear, intimidation and vitriol in dealing with ultra-nationalistic mainland Chinese since the city’s anti-government protests broke out,” according to the South China Morning Post.

“Hong Kong has been added to YouTube’s list of regions where information panels are included on news channels that receive government funding,” reports the South China Morning Post:

Videos on YouTube from Chinese state media outlets now appear in Hong Kong with an information panel that says they are “funded in whole or in part by the Chinese government”.The label was applied to content from state broadcaster CCTV and its English-language arm CGTN, as well as clips posted by state-run tabloid Global Times, state newspaper China Daily, and state news agency Xinhua.

“Beijing on Tuesday voiced “strong dissatisfaction” with a joint statement issued by the G7 leaders, who backed Hong Kong’s autonomy and called for calm after months of civil unrest,” reports the Hong Kong Free Press.