tim's experiment

The news that a Hongkonger had comitted suicide four months after migrating to the UK was tragic. At least it was tragic for most of us. For some people it was an opportunity.

The Standard’s report, for example, effortlessly extended the poor woman’s plight to “HK migrants” generally. The newspaper redeemed itself somewhat the next day with a thoughtful and sympathetic leader pointing out that migration was tough, people should prepare themselves, and part of that preparation was to accept that unless you happened to have some rare and mobile qualification you were probably going to finish up in the sort of job you were not accustomed to.

The Cross we have to bear went through some recent news stories about the UK – inflation, Brexit, strikes, NHS in crisis – and suggested that Hong Kong should offer grants to help migrants to the UK who had come to their senses and wished to return.

This rather overlooked one relevant point. Here Mr Cross is free to slag off the country he came from at the risk of nothing worse than being thought a creep by people whose approval he does not seek.

A Hongkonger in the UK who went through the same newspapers and complained on the basis of their coverage that – say – “the SAR has become a police state with fixed elections, increasingly kangaroo-like courts and a puppet government controlled by Beijing” would be accused, as Tom Lehrer might have put it, of “impiety, lack of propriety, and quite a variety of unpleasant names.” He or she would also be well advised not to return to Hong Kong.

The suicide case was picked up on Wednesday by a nameless spokesman for the China Foreign Office in Hong Kong. His main beef was that the BNO scheme violated the Joint Declaration (the one which was of “purely historical” significance three years ago) but he was also bothered by “Hongkongers’ hardships”, which included “embarrassment and discrimination” as well as despair.

Not to worry. According to another recent migration story disillusioned international bankers are returning to Hong Kong after discovering the drawbacks of London and Singapore. These comprised, apparently, the difficulty of finding servants in London and the fact that Singapore was “boring – you eat in the same restaurant every night”.

I had some difficulty in believing most of this. To start with I am surprised by the suggestion that where these people are posted is governed entirely by their personal preferences. Presumably if your bank wants you in Hong Kong that is where you go, and if not, not.

I also wondered why we were supposed to be reassured. There is no shortage of indigenous financial landsharks. A few foreigners here or there is not going to make much difference.

It is of course flagrantly untrue that you cannot get servants in London. Indeed there are schools in London where people pay through the nose to acquire the skills needed for working as a butler, nanny or cook.

The problem, if there is a problem, is that London does not have the employer-friendly rules which keep Hong Kong’s servants in what some people clearly think is their place. There is no two-week rule, so your servant is not thrown out of the country if she resigns. There is no live-in rule, so your servant can and will refuse to work six 16-hour days a week, or to sleep in the broom cupboard with your dog and/or offspring.

It is also unfair to suggest that bankers posted to Singapore have to eat in the same restaurant every night. The Lion City offers a wide range of expensive dining choices covering most of the international cuisines. It is of course true that Singapore is boring, but that is not because of the food.

Singapore is boring because it has a permanent ruling party which successfully discourages dissent and criticism. This creates an environment in which creative and original people feel unappreciated so they either leave, or abandon public manifestations and cultivate their metaphorical gardens.

These people are trouble-makers to the tidy administrative mind, but they put the bubbles in your public life Prosecco, and without them the product is flat. There is a lesson for Hong Kong here, and it goes a bit further than how we can create a welcoming environment for international business bodies.

Law, order and discipline are wonderful things. But like most wonderful things they can be overdone.