tim's experiment

One of the recurring sad features of recent years has been the way that government branches previously regarded as professional and impartial have been sucked into the cesspit of partisan persecution of people the government does not like.

The epidemic has now progressed so far that it is easier to list the few survivors. One of which used to be the Audit Commission. For many years the commission engaged in the entirely apolitical pursuit of financial glitches in the smooth working of public administration.

Amid some bleating from the victims, it cautiously spread its purview from the counting of beans to the more delicate question of whether their spending was producing the desired results.

It has not previously felt it necessary to extend its activities to local universities, possibly because they are not financed in the way in which government departments are. Universities get a block grant from the UGC. It is up to them what they do with it. Also the objectives of a university are difficult to define. Unblocked drains or solved crimes can be counted. The inculcation of wisdom or the creation of knowledge are harder to quantify.

Still, no doubt we can all do with an audit. But if universities were to be added to the list there was a trap for the unwary. They should not have started with Chinese U. It is difficult to say whether this choice was a consequence of total political naivety or a high level of political conformity, but the message should have been clear.

Chinese U has become something of a target for the more lurid wing of the CPC fan club. It is the only university to have had its constitution tinkered with, the only one whose choice of Vice Chancellor was criticised. The ICAC is looking into a research centre. The Director of Audit should have been aware of the danger that taking up this topic would look like one of those inter-departmental pile-ons previously inflicted on independent bookshops and insubordinate media outlets.

I am not sure why Chinese U attracts so much attention from the People’s Puppets. It may be due to its origins as a refuge, half a century ago, for academics who correctly supposed that they would have a better time in colonial Hong Kong than in “liberated” China. Or it may be due to the perception, for which there is no evidence, that Chinese U students were unusually rebellious in 2019.

Like the Polytechnic University, Chinese U was geographically unlucky, being next to an important transport artery. This made confrontations inevitable and consequential. Whether Chinese U students were more rebellious than their counterparts in universities less strategically positioned we do not know. We also do not know how many, or even if any, of the protesters who engaged in disorderly behaviour at Chinese U were actually students of the university. Ignorance is, alas, no bar to prejudice.

Just in case we didn’t get the political message the audit report zeroed in on national security matters. Apparently the university did not include in tenders or contracts a clause saying that the relationship could be cancelled for national security reasons.

The question which this raises is: why should it? Endangering national security is a crime. If the university suspects that one of its paperclip suppliers is endangering national security its proper course is to notify the police. Whether a crime has been committed is a matter for the courts. Taking your business elsewhere should wait. Universities do not include in their contracts clauses forbidding the employee from engaging in murder, fraud or illlicit sexual relations with students. That is not generally regarded as a deficiency.

The auditor also stated – and if he did not realise how this would be reported he should have done – that none of the university’s 33 food outlets had a food business licence. This is because they do not need one. Food outlets catering only to staff and students do not need a licence.

Aha, says the auditor, but some of them were serving people who were not students or staff. Apparently the auditor’s underlings took the trouble to trot around the campus and see where they could get served. This is a bit unfair. Chinese U is in the middle of nowhere. Outsiders turning up in its catering outlets are not a problem.

Then we come to the bookshop. The bookshop was, apparently, selling some small items which were not books. So? Also the contract with the bookshop said it should not engage in “unlawful” action but did not mention national security as such, and the university had not supplied the bookshop with any “guidelines” on avoiding national security risks.

The funny thing about this is that the bookshop is operated by Commercial Press, a firm well connected with the local state organs. I can think of some criticisms of Commercial Press – which operates the only bookshop left in Shatin – but indifference to the requirements of national security is hardly one of them.

I realise that the higher ends of accountancy are a cerebral, or even surreal, area, but they surely do not require the abandonment of common sense. The auditor complained that the university had not followed in all its intricate details the usual tendering process in arranging for two bank branches.

Could this be, one wonders, because there are only two banking networks in Hong Kong and the university, like other similarly isolated places, wanted one branch from each of them?

The complaint that many of the people offering retail services on the Chinese U campus have been doing so in the same way for years, with no change resulting from tenderings or renewals, has a simple explanation.

Offering services on university campuses in out-of-the-way places is not a road to riches. Most of the potential customers are only there for 30 weeks of the year. It is more like working on a luxury yacht (boss on: work like dog; boss off: nothing to do), than a conventional retail experience.

I confess that when I lived in a village near Chinese U I occasionally visited their supermarket. It is very small, even by Hong Kong standards, and was never busy. I may have dropped in for a cup of coffee once or twice. Sorry.

Unaccustomed as I am to agreeing with the Standard’s Mary Ma (whoever that is this week) I think she made an important point the day after the audit story hit her front page. The Audit Commission is supposed to “make sure public resources are used properly and effectively”. This latest exercise suggests that it is not setting a good example.