tim's experiment

Thought-provoking piece by Michael Chugani the other week, on the question “why do the pan-democrats hate C.Y. Leung so much?” Mr Chugani’s suggested answer to this question is because Mr Leung doesn’t care what they think of him, unlike his predecessors – who in Mr Chugani’s view did care.

This is not on the face of it a very good theory. I do not personally believe that the pan-democrats as a group “hate” Mr Leung. Many of them undoubtably feel that his policies are bad. Some no doubt find his personality unattractive. Some people who would acquit him of these two charges find his appearance disconcerting. Still in these times when we are all trying to get along it should surely be possible to urge someone to resign without being accused of hatred. I also have problems with the other leg of Mr Chugani’s theory, that previous Chief Executives cared what the pan-democrats thought of them. Certainly they did not give that impression at the time. Relations were perhaps less confrontational in the sense that a proposal from a pan-democrat would not have been dismissed out of hand merely because of its source, as it would be now. There may have been more willingness to socialise. But the fact is that since 1997 the government has had a built-in majority. It does not need to care what the pan-democrats think because it does not depend on their support.

On reflection, though, I think Mr Chugani has put his finger on something important. Mr Leung’s problem is that he gives the impression that he doesn’t really care what any of us think about him. This is not only a matter of indiscreet remarks about the need to keep the poor out of policy-making influence, though of course such things do not help. Nor is it just a matter of Mr Leung’s dependable inability to rise to any occasion where a few conciliatory words might bring people together. I winced, for example, when the student umbrella leaders announced a hunger strike in an effort to win talks with the government. One did not expect the government to capitulate. But some signs of regret at the possibility of idealistic young people starving themselves to death might have gone a long way. Instead Mr Leung produced the tired and no longer relevant line about the Basic Law and committee decisions as a pre-requisite.

Of course the public persona of an official or a politician may have very little to do with his real personality as revealed in private. C.H. Tung came across as an amiable old buffer who did not really want the job but was doing his best. Whether this was accurate is neither here nor there. It went down well anyway. Donald Tsang was widely beheld as an ambitious senior civil servant (and ambition is not a sin in a senior civil servant) who had the misfortune to reach a level which required qualities he did not possess. What they had in common  was that both men appeared to care what the world thought of them, even if that was not their main guiding star.

The disconcerting thing about Mr Leung is that he doesn’t care what any of us think about him, at least in appearance. In private, for all I know, he is kind to children and dogs, the life and soul of any party and a model of surreptitious benevolence to deserving causes. His public persona is as a sociopath. This is not a trivial matter. The thing which differentiates humans from other animals is their ability to work together. This is a trait bred in us over millennia and requires that the group should discipline itself. Otherwise free riders will be more successful than those who sacrifice their individual interests for those of the group, and altruism will disappear in the face of cheats’ greater success in reproducing their genes. So being concerned about your reputation in the rest of the group is a fundamental human trait. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, suggests that it is the primary motivation for good behaviour. Robin Dunbar, in Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, suggests that the primary purpose of language is to regulate behaviour by exchanging reports of vice and virtue in others.

The result of this is that people find it disconcerting and repellent, at a subconscious level, if the people they interact with do not seem to care what other people think of them. An important piece of personality is missing. We cannot expect Mr Leung to display a populist touch. Someone who has made a multi-million dollar fortune by dancing in the space between the property developers and the mainland government is obviously not painfully sensitive about what people think of him. Mr Leung’s love affair with the Liaison Office dates back a long time – to long before there was a Liaison Office. He nailed the CCP flag to his mast when the Party’s most recent achievement was the Cultural Revolution. The 30 years of growth came later.

Still Mr Leung could do better if he, or his advisors, remembered that actions speak louder than words. Borrowing the “never mind the human rights, look at the economy” line from our Red Brothers would be all right if lots of Hong Kong people were actually benefitting from the economy. Nobody can object to a leader who wants to concentrate on “livelihood issues”. But Mr Leung’s concentration falls well short of disturbing the vested interests to which he is beholden. He laments the poverty of many elderly people. A sincere attempt to involve this problem would involve a universal pension. That is not what we are going to get. Dismantling the privatisation of the street sweeping industry would have been cheap, appealing and effective. We are not going to get that either. Similarly you don’t score any points for noticing that housing is a mess, though having been on the Executive Council when this mess was made Mr Leung counts as a rather late convert to this view. No doubt the shortage of land for public housing is an important facet of the problem. The solution to it ought to involve concessions from at least one of the three great holders of under-used land in Hong Kong: the PLA, the Jockey Club and the Hong Kong Golf Club. Instead we are going to dislodge a few farmers. This can be turned into a very complicated issue but for people who take a distant view which concentrates on the forest rather than the trees the situation is rather simple. Mr Leung cares, but he doesn’t care enough to tread on any toes in his efforts to do something about it.

I do not think Mr Leung is hated. He is stuck in the same situation as Henry VIII in the Shaffer play, A Man for all Seasons: “There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I wear the crown; and those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I’m their tiger; there’s a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves.” Henry yearns for the approval of someone who is known to be honest. If Mr Leung is suffering from similar yearnings he is doing a good job of keeping them to himself.