tim's experiment

It is nice to see local academics probing important social topics, so I found an unexpected gem in the latest issue of “Horizons”. Horizons is one of those occasional magazines which our universities put out for the entertainment of staff, parents and anyone who might be persuaded to buy a new building for them. Horizons is the Baptist U version and the cover story in the latest version is an interview with Dr Odalia Wong (I did not make up this name), whose current contribution to sociological inquiry is a probe into the implications of tiny flats.

Dr Wong is concerned by stories about miniflats in which you can have a bed or a table, but not both, and the toilet is so small that you have to sit with your feet out the door. I can claim some relevant experience here because a few years ago I stayed in a hotel in Singapore. This place was cheap, and had a lot to be cheap about. When you came in you passed the toilet door on your right, and then collided with the bed. And that was it. The bathroom was so small that all the facilities overlapped. If you were in a hurry you could have a shit, a shower and a shave simultaneously. This was all right for a night or two, but in Hong Kong people will seriously offer you something similar as the home of your dreams, with a price tag of two or three million bucks.

Dr Wong, being a sociologist, has a statistical take on the situation as well as the anecdotal one. It is forecast that the annual number of new units built in the next few years will be 18,000, about 60 per cent more than we managed over the last decade or so. But the total square footage will be the same, and according to some predictions will actually shrink. So the average flat size has dropped by more than half and is continuing in the same direction.

Dr Wong blames the steady shrinkage of the Hong Kong flat for the disturbing delay in most people’s marriage plans. The median age of first wedding for males is 31, and for females 29. Having tied the knot the happy couple will then wish to think twice about reproduction, because a microflat which would be crowded with two people will certainly not be a success for three. Indeed inhabitants of very small flats may actually be worse off than they would be in public housing. At this point Horizon offers a cherishable quote: ”Such mosquito-sized units are actually high-end subdivided flats. The only things that set them apart are the existence of a deed and compliance with the Fire Safety Ordinance.”

Well quite. Dr Wong goes on to worry about the possibility that if the property market stabilizes these tiny flats will become unsaleable. I have two doubts about the reality of this danger. One is that there is no sign of our government having the gumption to do the sort of things which might lead to the property market “stabilizing”, let alone declining. It may be, of course, that the bubble will eventually burst of its own volition, but I am not holding my breath. And after all, Adam Smith’s great invention will put its invisible paws in here; if flats become cheaper buyers will become more numerous.

What worries me is what this situation tells us about the life and times of ordinary 20-somethings in Hong Kong. Miss Yau Wai-ching, who did not become the surprise success of the last Legco elections without an ability to hear what people were worried about, caused a little stir a few weeks ago by saying that young people in Hong Kong had no space, even for sex. There ensued one of those massive exercises in missing the point which commonly follow any public mention of sex. Much attention was devoted to the actual word Miss Yau had used, a Cantonese expression which apparently comes somewhere between “bonk” and “fuck” on the acceptability for public oratory scale. Nobody entertained the possibility that this might be a serious point. But it is.

In A.J.P. Taylor’s volume of the Oxford History of England he notes that in the 1920s and 30s people had far fewer babies than they had in earlier periods, yet this drop in fertility was achieved well before practical contraceptives became widely available. It follows, he inferred, that most people limited their output by abstaining. Historians should bear in mind, he wrote, that in this period they are dealing with a frustrated population. Maybe people who complain about the resentment and ingratitude displayed by our youngsters should bear this in mind as well.

This is actually only one aspect of the generally distressing situation facing young people in Hong Kong. The BBC recently quoted a survey as concluding that 80 per cent of the population aged between 18 and 29 would like to emigrate. I do not think China was the destination they had in mind — more likely the prospect that they will be migrated to China without actually moving anywhere. We seem to be embarking on a dangerous sociological experiment, designed to determine how much disillusionment and dissatisfaction a society can generate in its young people and still function. Besides its ominous implications for Hong Kong as a going concern, this involves inflicting a great deal of personal unhappiness.

I conclude that the new Chief Executive needs to attach a good deal more urgency to this than her unlamented predecessor did. I suppose the provision of private places for young people to meet their erotic needs is perhaps not a plausible project for government action. But tinkering with the MPF and MTR fares is not going to crack this problem.

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I received a letter last week from a Mr Wong See-man. I do not know Mr Wong and he evidently does not know me. The whole letter had been written by a computer including his signature. Mr Wong is a Chief Electoral Officer, apparently, which means he is a senior official in the Registration and Electoral Office, which as well as more mundane electoral tasks tries to exclude politically undesirable candidates. So I was prepared to be peeved. This letter, though, was only peripherally about elections, it was a grovelling apology for the inconvenience and distress caused to me (eh?) by the Case of the Lost Laptops.

This goes back to the election, such as it was, of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which was held last month. You would think that this was a fairly easy election to organise as there were only 1,200 electors. However, haunted as organs of our government often are these days by the fear that some sort of protest would keep the electors from the polling station, which was of course in a convenient central spot, the election people decided to pick a “fallback” site. Here electors could cast their ballots while the riot continued round the original venue. The fallback site was well out of the way, in the exhibition centre next to the airport. During the preparation of this predictably superfluous facility two “notebook computers” were, it seems, left in a locked room at the centre. And when the electoral flunkies went to collect them, they had disappeared. Quelle horreur!

It transpires that one of the missing microchips contained only the names of the actual electors, which were already public. The other, however, contained the names, addresses and ID card numbers of all the Hongkongers — there are nearly 4 million of us — who have registered to vote in the other elections, in which we peasants are graciously allowed to vote. The electoral office has reported the whole matter to the Police, who have, the letter says, classified the case as theft, which I suppose is a start. The REO, the letter says “has all along been handling the voter registration particulars very carefully”, which hardly seems to be born out by this incident. It also says the information is vigorously encrypted, password protected etc. This is no doubt true, but I suppose a computer is rather like a safe — if you can take it back to the Batcave and take as long as you like you will get into it eventually.

The electoral people also reported the matter to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data. And naturally they followed the office’s advice, which was apparently to provide details of the incident to the data subjects — who include me — and also to inform “government departments and relevant organisations from various sectors about the incident and called upon them to adopt appropriate measures to protect their own interest and also the interests of data subjects”. And at some point in this interesting dialogue between the election fixers and the privacy freaks, common sense went out the window.

What is the point, one wonders, of telling government and other agencies about the incident and calling upon them to “adopt appropriate measures”. Is this an attempt to tell people who may not already know this that things left in ordinary locked rooms for a few days may disappear? May “relevant organisations” not feel that the Registration and Electrical Office, in the light of this cock-up, might be better advised to consider its own deficiencies before offering advice to other people? The only reason offered for all this is that the electors concerned are being told “to increase public awareness and mitigate the potential damage”. I am not clear why the public needs awareness of the dangers of leaving computers loaded with millions of people’s personal information lying about. And what are we supposed to do to mitigate the damage? There is no point in changing your ID card number, which without the card attached is worthless. Changing your address could be considered rather a drastic approach in these circumstances. I realise that privacy enthusiasts get excited about these things but people’s names and addresses used to be routinely published in a thing called the telephone book. This never did us any serious harm.

What really seems excessive, though, is the idea that the information and apology should be sent in a personal letter to each elector. The REO spurned even the basic economy to be secured by sending electors living at the same address their copies of the letter in one envelope. Indeed these days the use of an envelope could be considered rather antiquated for a duplicated communication of this kind, which might easily be folded and adorned with an address label. This exercise has consumed some three and a half million pieces of A4 paper. It has also consumed some three and a half million envelopes. A small forest has been sacrificed somewhere to provide the necessary tree carcasses. And the envelopes were not the free “on Government service” envelopes either. Mine had a chop saying postage had been paid. Nice bit of business for the Post Office.

Now look, people, here in the 21st century we have a variety of ways of communicating with the public. These are not infallible but they are perfectly sufficient for a case like this where the interest of the individual recipient in the matter is negligible or non-existent. Actually the whole case was lavishly reported in the usual media. A grovelling apology from the head of the REO would have been reported as well. Sending out three and a half million individual letters was an egregious waste of money, paper and time. If that was what the Privacy people suggested then the suggestion should have been ignored. I note also that the letter makes no attempt to answer the one question left hanging about the whole affair, which is why the second laptop was needed at all. The election only concerned the 1,200 members of the election committee. Who thought they would need the names and addresses of the entire voting population, and what for?

And if by any chance you are reading this, Mr Wong, I do not like being addressed as Dear Sir/Madam.

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My last excursion on freedom of speech produced a variety of reactions. Some people thought it too long. Some people thought it too short and simplistic. I have actually taught this topic and I can do two or three hours on the history and theory of the concept. I generally do not, however, explore recent efforts to justify curtailing the freedom of people whose views you disagree with, because I don’t agree with them. Hooting a speaker off the stage or having his visit preemptively cancelled is an infringement of freedom, whether the person concerned is a saintly Buddhist or a neo-Nazi. Frankly I think in Hong Kong’s circumstances this sort of hair-splitting is a luxury we cannot afford. Freedom of speech is in serious danger here.

Consider two contrasting cases. In August 1997 a Legislative Councillor of the pro-government persuasion took issue with two columnists who had disagreed with him. Both of them had day jobs at local universities so he wrote to the two universities urging that the two men concerned should be fired. When this became widely known it was made clear to him, even by fellow pillars of the establishment, that this sort of thing was not acceptable. He apologized. One of the academics, who happened to be a distinguished visitor from America, returned home. The other, who happened to be me, continued to write columns unmolested.

Compare this with the case of Mr Edward Yau. Mr Yau used to write a blog on his own Facebook page, and also occasionally contributed pieces to the media under the pen-name Kursk. Many of these contributions were to Apple Daily or the HK01 website, so we may take it that Mr Yau is of a progressive disposition.

On the day after the Great Police Rally Mr Yau wrote a commentary on the matter, suggesting that the orator at the rally who had mentioned Nazi Germany had made a poor choice of analogy, and one might wonder whether policemen who gassed or beat demonstrators believed that they were “only following orders,” a defence once popular with retired SS men. This was perhaps controversial, but hardly off the piste for acceptable public discussion. Supporters of the police could not really complain of rhetorical overkill after their own hero had compared peaceful demonstrators to Nazi death squads. I seem to remember writing something rather similar myself.

However Mr Yau was unlucky enough to be selected as a target by the Silent Majority, a downmarket pro-Beijing group, proprietor Mr Robert (They could kill this city) Chow Yung. The SM criticized Mr Yau on their website, as they were perfectly entitled to do. However as the Silent Majority are widely regarded as a bunch of dimwitted paid puppets this no doubt did not have the desired effect on public opinion. So they decided to go after Mr Yau personally.

It happens that Mr Yau in his day job is a teacher at a secondary school in Chaiwan. So the SM people tried to contact the principal, clearly in the hope that he would give Mr Yau a hard time. The principal did not return their calls, so a troop of SM people then turned up at the school, claiming to be reporters, and demanded an interview. Drawing a blank with the principal, they then turned up at the clinic of the school’s supervisor, and tried to interrogate him. Other members of the school’s board of governors have reportedly also been harassed.

Mr Yau has now decided to give up blogging “to protect the people he loves”. He will in future concentrate on writing for Catholic publications. He said he had not had any pressure from the school. The principal reportedly said that what his staff said in their personal capacity as bloggers was their business alone, and the school would not interfere. He also said he would like some peace and quiet. This, actually, is what gives actions of this kind their chilling effect. Somebody who has a day job and writes part-time will wonder, even if his employer says the right thing, as Mr Yau’s did and mine did, whether he ought to continue to expose his colleagues and students to harassment and possible violence.

This is a shameful episode. The Education Bureau, however, did not think so. Its reported comment was that society set high expectations for the behavior of teachers, and “teachers need to be responsible for their words and actions.”

This was eerily similar to an unrepentant comment from the Silent Majority on Sunday, which said that “events prove that a person cannot escape responsibility for his words and actions.” Which leaves you wondering who was inspiring who here.

The SM also said that “their visits to Yau’s school were not threatening in nature, and they can be described as just the actions of concerned citizens.” No they can’t. Ordinary concerned citizens do not turn up at the workplace of a blogger and demand to interview his employer, masquerading as reporters. Clearly the people who turned up at the school were not reporters. So they were liars. The SM went on to criticize sections of the media for publishing “slanderous” accounts of its activities. A little legal knowledge required here. If it’s in the media it’s libel, not slander.

While we are on the law let us also visit the Basic Law, which says that Hong Kong people enjoy freedom of speech, and the Bill of Rights Ordinance Article 16, which goes into some detail about the permitted limits of such freedom. Exceptions may only be “such as provided by law”. There is no law which says that perpetrators of opinions deemed “malicious thoughts” by “concerned citizens” may be subjected to having a band of goons visit their employer masquerading as reporters. I infer that the actions of the SM were a clear breach of the rights accorded by law to Hong Kong citizens. This thought has apparently not occurred to relevant parts of our government, which is ominous.

It was nice having freedom of speech. Is it now time for this lovely song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9KO0ZtLoDM

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The legal status of the Occupy movement in Hong Kong has a curious history. Before September 28 2014 the official line was that, as C.Y. Leung, put it, the protest would be “neither peaceful nor legal.” The Secretary for Security urged potential participants to consider their “personal safety and legal liability”. The Commissioner of Police said that “any collective attempt to hold up traffic unlawfully” would not be tolerated.

These were not the most lurid predictions, of course. On the internet your mistakes go on for ever. Readers who would like to hear the unmistakable voice of Mr Robert Chow Yung engaged in a piece of terrifying fiction can still find his short video “They can kill this city!” here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEH_TdDwXjo

After the tear gas extravaganza on the night of September 28, spontaneous non-Central occupations sprung up in two other places. Violent repression as a strategy was then discarded. The Commissioner of Police was muzzled; other top officials disappeared from view. Occupations continued for three months, during which the legal scene was tranquil. The Mong Kok occupation was finally cleared at the end of November, at the behest of a rather unlikely paladin of legality, the minibus owners’ club. On December 3, 75 people who had at various times been involved in organizing Occupy turned up at a police station and confessed. They were not arrested or indeed charged. Other Occupy sites were cleared later in the month and most of the occupiers went back to their day jobs.

The Commissioner of Police emerged from the teapot to say that 950 people had been arrested during the occupation, but as the cases emerged it became clear that they had been involved in scuffles of one kind or another. Actually occupying as such had not been treated as an offence.

This seems to have come as a surprise to the organisers, who had expressed willingness to be prosecuted for unlawful assembly. It is an offence in Hong Kong for more than three people to meet without the permission of the police. A charge of obstruction under the Summary Offences Ordinance was also considered a possibility.

But for more than two years … nothing. This could be considered controversial in itself. Someone who is to be charged with a criminal offence is entitled to know in reasonable time what it is. He or she may wish to organize witnesses, collect evidence, go over his own recollections. If you are charged with an offence and it doesn’t come to trial for two years that is bad enough. If you have to wait two years to discover what the alleged offence actually is then that is even worse. I do not know why it took the government so long to get round to the idea that organisers as such should be prosecuted. To wait so long and then wheel out an unexpected mediaeval relic charge, abandoned in other jurisdictions, may look legal but is it fair? The rule of law requires more than an indiscriminate and selective prosecution of people the government disapproves of, using whatever legal pretext comes to hand.

It will be interesting to see what comes of “causing public nuisance” as an offence in this context. Public nuisance is, at least to the lay person, a slippery concept. If you live in Happy Valley, a race meeting may be a public nuisance. People ringing you up and asking you to participate in surveys may be a public nuisance. People double parking in Central are indisputably a public nuisance, but all they get is a cheap ticket. Some people certainly did not think Occupy was a nuisance at all. Two of my friends who work in Central thought the travel problems were more than compensated by the resulting clean air. Indeed we may wonder why, if the occupations were a serious public nuisance, the government did nothing about them for three months, leaving the eventual evictions to the private efforts of public transport interests.

Then we have the prospect of some people being charged with “conspiracy”. This is difficult to understand, under the circumstances. Conspiracy is a useful concept if the miscreant is prevented from committing the fell deed he intended. If a protester is found in the basement of Legco the night before a meeting with a pile of barrels of gunpowder we do not exonerate him on the grounds that he did not actually succeed in blowing the place up. But we cannot charge him with mass murder either. A charge of conspiracy catches the murderous but unfulfilled intention. However in the case of Occupy the gunpowder did, as it were, explode. Central was occupied, so those who conspired to do it can presumably be charged with the actual deed.

No doubt all will become clearer when the cases come to trial. In the meantime we can note the further erosion of the rule of law as it is supposed to apply to the media. It is a serious offence, known technically as strict liability contempt, to write anything, once someone has been charged, which implies the innocence or guilt of the accused. This is particularly important when there is a possibility of trial by jury. The law assumes that judges do not read newspapers, but naturally future jurors do not yet know the fate that is in store for them. The consequence of this is that in the old days you were not allowed to write “There seems to be at least some evidence that the nine charged had helped organise and incite people to protest. It was all captured on TV. Maybe they did it for what they thought was a noble cause…” Nor were we allowed to write such things as “If you do the crime, you do the time. If you call your crime civil disobedience, then plead guilty and accept the consequences. Maybe these fakes believe the law does not apply to those who paralyse streets and clash with police for 79 days.” The first quote is from Alex Lo and the second from Michael Chugani. Both were published in the SCMPost. God knows what has been going on in the Chinese press. But I have a pretty good idea what has been going on about this matter in the Department of (ahem) Justice. Nothing.

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