PLA’s world war Z scenario, Philippines’ new tourism slogan and Hong Kong’s expats — SCMP’s 7 highlights of the week

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues.

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The Chinese military has recently added a “total war” scenario when testing and evaluating the performance of new weapons. The Z-war scenario was declassified for the first time in a peer-reviewed paper published in the Chinese Journal of Ship Research this month. The enemy hardware that appeared in the paper, such as the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, belonged to the US Navy and its allies.

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English language tutor Alice Wong moved to Hong Kong last August and was stunned to find the biggest chunk of her pay going towards rent. She said a 245 sq ft flat in Mong Kok cost her and her flatmate HK$11,000 (US$1,400) a month. “One-third, if not more, of my wages was just going on rent, and then with living costs, the rest was gone. I was pretty much always living pay cheque to pay cheque,” Wong recalled.

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She has been cancelled, barraged with internet opprobrium and hit by a vague threat to get Interpol on her case, but US-born, Singapore-raised comic Jocelyn Chia is unrepentant over the joke that enraged Malaysia and kicked up a commotion over taste, decency and humour in Asia’s increasingly patrolled online space.

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Covid-19 has worsened China’s midlife employment crisis, leading to more older displaced workers seeking re-employment. Mia Fan, who was laid off from her job as an administrator in early May, has applied for over 70 positions across various job portals but only received offers from companies which did not quite meet her requirements. Some even rejected her due to her age, saying that they only want people under 35.

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Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr’s hopes of turbocharging the country’s tourism sector with a new slogan are being met with little enthusiasm from citizens. Marcos said the latest branding campaign, “Love the Philippines”, would act as a “guidepost” for the travel industry as it slowly recovers from the doldrums of Covid. But Filipino social media users said the marketing drive lacks creativity and sounds like a “command”, not an invitation to visit the country.

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A famous financial columnist and commentator in China with late-stage breast cancer has advised young people who do not plan on having children to prepare psychologically and financially in case they become ill later in life. Ye Tan, 50, said: “I was asking myself if I made the wrong decision. I worked so hard in my job, but it seemed that my life was not as good as that of others with a child.”

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Hong Kong’s leader John Lee Ka-chiu has delivered on nearly all 68 goals he vowed his administration would achieve during his first year in office. Of the 194 key performance indicators (KPIs) he set out in his October policy address, 68 were to be met by the middle of this year, another 55 by the end of it and the remainder within two to 10 years. However, observers have warned residents might still not be any better off as a result.

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