The “Great Escape from Hong Kong” & Exclusive Revelation from Dong Jingwei’s Acquaintance
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Today I will first of all give you another update about the possible defection of CCP’s top counterintelligence chief Dong Jingwei, some exclusive information from his acquaintance. Then I will talk about how, in just a few decades, the “Great Escape to Hong Kong” has become the “Great Escape from Hong Kong”, what does it mean by “we can only show you once”, and what the world can learn from this. I will show you some rare and precious historical footage that you might have never seen before.
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Acquaintance Says Dong Jingwei's Defection Is Possible
Now, let’s move to our first topic today.
An acquaintance of Dong Jingwei said to Chinese language media Vision Times that from what he knew about Dong, there does exist a possibility that Dong would choose to defect.
He said, Dong Jingwei used to work at the Hebei Branch of the People's Bank of China after graduating from university and was transferred to the Hebei Provincial Government's General Office around 1990.
He said that Dong has very white skin and is clean-looking, medium-sized, and didn't talk much.
Dong Jingwei's wife is Du Jinmei(杜金梅), who is the sister of a classmate of Dong Jingwei. She once worked as a nurse at the Hebei Provincial Hospital, and then with Dong's promotion, she was transferred to the provincial Environmental Protection Department.
Dong Jingwei has a daughter named Dong Bo(董勃). She was born in 1989, and is 32 years old. She looks exactly like Dong Jingwei.
People have been circulating a photo of a woman on the internet, saying that she is Dong Jingwei’s daughter. Actually, she is not. She is another woman called Dong Huahau(董花花). Dong Jingwei’s family is very low-key and never posts their photos online.
The acquaintance said that Dong Jingwei is very good at writing, that’s why he was transferred from the People’s Bank to the Hebei Provincial Government to be a secretary.
Later he was transferred to the Public Security Department in Hebei Province.
The reason why he was later transferred to Beijing was because of his connections with Xi Jinping’s buddy Li Zhanshu.
Li Zhanshu is currently the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, head of the de facto legislative body of China. He is a No.3 member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP, China's top decision-making body.
So to give a not that accurate analogy, Li Zhanshu’s position is somewhat similar to Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Anyway, Li Zhanshu’s father in law was the head of the Hebei Branch of the People's Bank of China. So Dong Jingwei was his employee. Because of this, Dong Jingwei had a very good relationship with Li Zhanshu’s family. That’s why he got promoted very fast, and became the vice minister of State Security.
By the way, Xi Jinping came to know Li Zhanshu when he worked in Zhengding County as a party secretary in the early 1980s’.
So you see, in China, having some sort of relationship is very important.
The acquaintance said that from what he knew about Dong Jingwei, his defection is possible. Dong doesn’t have any family background within the CCP’s inner circle, his mother is a very simple housewife, his nature is not bad, etc. But once somebody enters the CCP’s system, good people can also become bad.
The acquaintance said that given Dong Jingwei’s position within the system, he must have learned many of the CCP’s top secrets, and he knows all the bad things that the CCP has done. So he must be very disappointed with the CCP.
On the one hand, he may have been involved in some sensitive cases, and his own safety was at stake; on the other hand, he may have wanted to expose the truth to make up for his mistakes, so that the world could control the pandemic as soon as possible. So it is very likely that he chose to defect to the United States.
So, the above is what this source said to Vision Times in Chinese. I think it is worthwhile reporting this as it offers us some more information about Dong Jingwei and his family.
The Escape of Five Young Hong Kong Protesters
Now, let’s move to our next topic today: From the “Great Escape to Hong Kong” to the “Great Escape from Hong Kong.”
An inflatable speedboat, iPhones and a compass... five young men from Hong Kong, aged 18 to 26, risked their lives to escape to Taiwan by sea in July last year with simple equipment, and more than 10 hours' steering in fear. These are some of the details that three of them recently shared with The Wall Street Journal.
The three young men are Ray, a 25-year-old warehouse employee, Tommy, a 22-year-old art student, and Kenny, a 26-year-old civil engineer. They said that at the time of their escape from Hong Kong, all three were in hiding from Hong Kong authorities, and two of them have been charged and might face years in prison for their involvement in pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Ray, Tommy and Kenny all decided to flee Hong Kong after they thought that they were unfairly persecuted. They spent about $1,300 each on an inflatable speed boat with twin engines. Before that, they had already each spent thousands of dollars trying to escape from Hong Kong without success.
To avoid reprisals from the Hong Kong government, they did not disclose who organized the escape.
One day in mid-July last year, they set out to sea. They took turns steering while the others kept watch. For more than five hours, the GPS on their phones showed that they were still in Chinese waters.
Whenever they saw vessels they couldn’t identify, they were scared to death.
Only after reaching international waters, did they dare to slow down and eat their stores of chips, candy and canned corn.
After more than 10 hours on the water, they shut down the engine, and purposely damaged one of them. They figured that with only one engine left and not enough fuel, the people who found them would have to take them ashore.
In the darkness, they sent SOS signals with a flashlight, and about an hour later, the Taiwan Coast Guard took them to a secret location, and the authorities provided them with living supplies.
Some of them had hoped to stay in Taiwan, but were told they had to leave. Taiwan's national security officials were concerned that if they helped them, the CCP might use it as an excuse to invade Taiwan.
It took six months for them to finally come to the US to seek asylum. When they talked to their families back in Hong Kong after they arrived in New York, Tommy’s parents, brother and sister broke down sobbing. Ray’s mother told him she was surprised to learn he was still alive.
Kenny now lives in Washington, D.C., in an apartment with other Hong Kong refugees. He co-founded an organization to help protesters from Hong Kong.
Ray and Tommy stayed in New York and rented a basement apartment together. Both of them want to attend college and join the U.S. military.
Big Prices of Escaping
So that’s the story of the 5 brave young men.
However, not all of those who wanted to escape were as lucky.
On August 23 last year, another 12 Hong Kong residents fled by sea, but were intercepted by CCP’s Guangdong Marine Police. They were arrested and detained.
Two months later, eight of them were sentenced to seven months in prison.
The CCP police took 2 months intensively monitoring and intercepting information about their escape attempt.
Then, on October 10 last year, nine Hong Kong people were arrested for assisting the above-mentioned 12 Hong Kong people’s escape attempts. They had spent over a million HK dollars to try to help, but ended up being arrested. The youngest one is only 26 years old, the eldest one 72.
On January 14, 11 more people were arrested for the same reason, including lawyer and District Councilor Daniel Wong Kwok-tung(黃國桐), and mother of Willis Ho, deputy secretary-general of the student organization the Hong Kong Federation of Students.
Wong had set up an "Umbrella" restaurant in Taiwan to provide help to Hong Kong activists living in exile in Taiwan.
"New Operation Yellowbird"
The risks associated with escape attempts are high. But for many Hong Kongers who are facing long sentences for participating in the anti-extradition bill protests, they still choose to flee.
In February, a group of pro-democracy activists in the U.S. launched "New Operation Yellowbird" to rescue Hong Kong people facing arrest and sentencing.
Zheng Cunzhu, vice chairman of the United Headquarters of China Democratic Party, said to The Epoch Times that "New Operation Yellowbird" was launched to help the Hong Kong people who have been forced to flee.
So far, four Hong Kong residents who participated in the anti-extradition bill protests have been granted asylum in the United States through "New Operation Yellowbird", and many more are awaiting interviews or court appearances.
One of them, a 21-year-old Hong Kong man was granted asylum in immigration court in mid-June. He still bears the scars left by Hong Kong police.
The name "New Operation Yellowbird" originates from “Operation Yellowbird” , a program that assisted Chinese people to flee from China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. The operation has helped over 400 people to escape from China.
The name "Operation Yellowbird" comes from the poem "The Yellow Bird in the Wild Field” by Cao Zhi, a prince of the state of Wei in the Three Kingdoms period of China(from 220 to 280 AD). He was also an accomplished poet of nearly two thousand years ago.
So several lines of his poem goes like this:
“While the snare is glad to catch the yellow bird,
The young man feels sorry for it.
"When he draws the sword and cut the snare,
The yellow bird is set free to cut the air. ”
At that time, Cao Zhi was unable to rescue his close friends, so he expressed his distress with this poem, which has been loved and spread widely in China ever since.
I am pretty much sure that he had never expected that after nearly two thousand years, people would use his poem to name an operation that rescues persecuted people.
“The Great Escape to Hong Kong”
Actually, apart from "Operation Yellowbird”, people of Hong Kong also offered tremendous help to people who escaped from China from the 1950s to 1980s, especially after the great famine in early the 1960s. So this is called “The Great Escape to Hong Kong.”
Let’s play a video. So this was in 1962, at Luohu port in Hong Kong. On the trucks were people from China who just escaped. Hong Kong authorities wanted to send them back, but local Hongkongers gathered around, throwing food and medicine to the people on the trucks.
During that period of time, on average, there were 5000 people escaping to Hong Kong every day. And within one month, 150,000 arrived. In some villages in Guangdong, all the villagers escaped, without a single one leaving behind.
Before this peak of new arrivals, the British government, which was ruling Hong Kong then, had always accepted refugees from China. However, in 1962, as too many people were arriving, the British government decided to catch those people and send them back.
At that time, around 30,000 refugees gathered at a Hong Kong district called Huashan, for their relatives to come and take them home. They were hungry and exhausted.
At such a difficult time, people of Hong Kong offered great help. They called for the government to save these people. A newspaper called Mirror became a center for supplies for these people. Religious organizations, media companies and ordinary citizens sent clothes, food and water to Huashan more than 100,000 times.
Some citizens took some of the refugees home and hid them inside their homes.
When the police planned to send these refugees back with trucks, thousands of Hong Kong citizens gathered outside the refugee camp in the night to try to stop the police.
On the following day, more than 10,000 people showed up with food, and threw them into the trucks.
Also, hundreds of Hongkongers lay down on the street to stop the trucks, so that people on the truck could have the chance to jump out and escape.
Later, it was estimated that as many as 10,000 refugees managed to escape and run back to the city. The police didn’t really push too hard to try to catch those people, either.
Unfortunately, this part of the story was not captured by the camera. So we can’t see it now.
So altogether, from the 1950s to late 1970s, over half a million Chinese people escaped to Hong Kong. I guess that is really a “Great Escape”.
And in Guangdong, more than 300,000 people were arrested and imprisoned for trying to escape to Hong Kong.
So that’s a little bit of the history of the Great Escape to Hong Kong. It always moves my heart to think how the great people of Hong Kong have bravely and selflessly helped those Chinese refugees.
“We Can Only Show You Once”
Sadly, this “Great Escape to Hong Kong” has now become the “Great Escape from Hong Kong”. Who would have thought that those great Hongkongers, and their children or grandchildren would one day also have to escape like those they had helped?
So what is the lesson to learn here? The world once believed that the CCP would keep its promise to let Hong Kong enjoy freedom, and continue its way of life through the so-called “One Country, Two System”.
But the sad reality is, believing in the CCP’s words has ruined Hong Kong.
Another lesson is, wherever the CCP goes, disasters follow. In just 24 years, the CCP completely destroyed Hong Kong’s freedom.
Now let’s show a photo that I can never get over with. This is a young woman from Hong Kong going to Taiwan on Taiwan’s voting day last year. She stood at a railway station with such a sign: “I am a Hongkonger. Please cherish your votes. We can only show you once.”
A young woman from Hong Kong on Taiwan’s voting day last year stood at a railway station with a sign that says: “I am a Hongkonger. Please cherish your votes. We can only show you once.”
Someone posted this photo on her Facebook Page, and said she was moved to tears.
So what does “We can only show you once” mean? Because everyone can only die once, as you have only one life. This young woman means that she hopes Taiwanese can learn the lessons from Hong Kong’s death, and will not trust the CCP’s lies and beautiful promises whatsoever. She hopes that Hong Kong people’s sacrifice and sufferings can wake up Taiwan and the world.
No More Free Press
A few days ago, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily , one of the very few still independent media outlets in Hong Kong, was forced to close. And yesterday, Fung Wai-kong(馮偉光) a former senior journalist with the Apple Daily was arrested at the airport when he tried to leave for UK. He thus became the seventh Apple Daily figure to be arrested in two weeks.
Another media outlet called Stand News is now deleting all commentary articles that were published before June this year. It will also stop fundraising efforts out of concern that they could be targeted by the National Security Law like Apple Daily if they don’t.
Several other media such as Winandmac and Post 852 have also announced that they would move out of Hong Kong, and cancel their Hong Kong registration, or take off all their online content.
So that’s how bad the situation is in Hong Kong now.
A while ago I did a program about my friend Sarah Liang, a journalist with the Hong Kong Edition of the Epoch Times, who was attacked by a CCP thug.
This morning she posted such a post on her Facebook:
“How is Hong Kong now?”
“Friends are meeting for dinner, each meal may be the last one. When we say ‘take care’ to one another, we feel that we may never see one another again. There are countless send-offs and immigrations. Countless have been sent to prison, and friends suddenly lose contact. We do not know where they have gone, it is not even convenient to ask.”
Screenshot of Sarah Liang’s Facebook post.
So, that’s a direct quote from Sarah Liang, a friend and a journalist still living in and reporting from Hong Kong
A Test for G7 Countries?
Many of my Chinese friends say that the CCP’s crackdown on Apple Daily and Hong Kong is a test for the world, especially for the G7 countries, which have just released a joint statement about the CCP’s threat.
The CCP was of course very upset about the joint statement of G7 countries. So it accelerated the crackdown on Hong Kong, to test the G7 countries, to see how serious these countries are when they talk about tackling the CCP’s threat.
Well, I hope we can all remember that young woman’s sign, “We can only show you once.” We have only one Hong Kong to be killed by the CCP. Do we really need more examples to be awakened?
Well, that’s all for today’s “Inconvenient Truths”. Thank you very much for watching. Please don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, and share my videos as widely as you can.
Thank you. See you on Thursday!
6/28/2021 *
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