Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Phew! National security is now to be protected from subversives in saunas

Posted in Uncategorized on June 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Here’s one from our “you could not make it up” department. In Hong Kong you will soon need, in effect, a security clearance to operate a washing-up machine.

This is the latest message from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, which is supposed to regulate the restaurant business, among other things, but is now, like most parts of the government, trying very hard to look as if it is making a contribution to national security.

You would think this was quite difficult. What could be subversive about commercial food?

Where there’s a will there’s a way. The FEHD has been sending a letter to restaurants, warning that a new condition will be added to the licences for restaurants and other food outlets. This will state the proprietor’s intentions as follows: “I shall ensure that no act or activity engaged or involved in by me or any of my related persons… may constitute or cause the occurrence of an offence endangering national security under the National Security Law or other laws of the HKSAR, or conduct [that] is otherwise contrary to the interests of national security or the interest of the public (including public morals, public order and/or public safety) of Hong Kong.”

“Related persons”, the letter adds, include directors, management, employees, agents, and subcontractors. Similar conditions, according to local media, are also to be imposed on cinemas, gaming centres, funeral parlours, and saunas. Failure to keep to the new conditions will lead to loss of licence.

Chief Executive John Lee defended the new arrangements with a straight face at a press conference as “appropriate and the right thing to do.” He added that “Offending conduct means any offence that endangers national security, or acts and events that are contrary to national security and public interest in Hong Kong. It is very clear,”

But it is not very clear at all. “An offence” and “national security” are legal terms subject to carefully framed definitions to which citizens may refer, although at some risk of disappointment. But what are we to make of “acts and events” which are contrary to “public interest”?

The new arrangement looks disturbingly like an attempt to make a large group of people – of whom, by coincidence, the government disapproves – unemployable in a wide range of venues and industries, because the proprietor will fear that the inclusion of one of them in his “related persons” will lead to loss of his licence.

It is of course true that many jobs or professions are barred to some people because of features in their background: medics, teachers, district councillors, bus captains, the Pope… But such restrictions are justified by the need for a qualification or the potential for harm.

Does the Hong Kong government seriously expect us to believe that national security will be endangered if the flunky who hands you your towel in the sauna has dubious views about the merits of the Chinese Communist party? Are there really dangerous opportunities for an active subversive employed in a funeral parlour?

Then there is the question who is actually affected and how we are to know who they are. I do not see how this new arrangement can be compatible with our frequently voiced devotion to the Common Law. After all we are all supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.

The government, or the restaurant proprietor, may suspect that a would-be waiter has an eccentric view of the “public interest”. But an opinion is not a crime. If a person has infringed the law he will and should be prosecuted. During his custodial sentence he will not be in the market for jobs in restaurants, or anywhere else.

Upon his release, having as the old phrase has it “paid his debt to society” he is again entitled to all the legal rights of a citizen, including the right to be presumed innocent until a court decides otherwise.

Clearly though the FEHD intends its restriction to cover a wide area. Unless the department proposes to publish a black list of people unsuitable for employment in cinemas or funeral parlours there is going to be a tricky edge zone. Here neither the employer nor his potential underling know what the position is and there will be a temptation for the employer to err on the side of safety.

I really do not think it would be a good idea if there was a large group of Hongkongers subject to restrictions on their employment (as well as engagement in politics) like those imposed on English Quakers in the 18th century or Jews in the Austrian Empire in the 19th. Will this make them love big brother?

I also note the danger that the FEHD’s initiative will be copied by other departments. Will similar conditions attach to my next dog licence?

Read Full Post »

An offenders registry? National security does not need this sort of help

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

National security took care of herself for many decades in Hong Kong. Now it appears the poor lady is in constant peril. Or so you might think from the number of white knights galloping to her rescue.

Latest is Mr Greville Cross, who amused readers of the China Daily with a piece entitled “Keeping tabs on released offenders reduces risks”.

Mr Cross notes with concern that four of the famous 45 primary election offenders recently emerged from prison, and several more will soon follow. He believes that prison is supposed to have a salutary effect on inmates, but worries that “if … individuals have committed crimes against society that are politically motivated, they may also be resistant to reform.”

This apparently was “partially addressed” by the provision in the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (the latest legislative masterpiece on this topic) which states that nat sec offenders are not eligible for the usual early release schemes unless the Commissioner for Correctional Services thinks they will not be a threat.

New to me was the additional snippet that the Commissioner is “advised” in this matter by the Committee for Safeguarding National Security, a high-level group of law and order officials who will not, perhaps, be inhibited in their deliberations by thoughts of rehabilitation or reform.

But what to do when the offender comes to the end of his or her sentence? Mr Cross goes on to note that Singapore has solved this problem with legislation empowering the Home Affairs minister to keep people in jail indefinitely if they are “a threat to the public”.

Oddly we are not told, although it appears relevant, that our motherland has also solved this problem. People deemed “a threat to the public” disappear into the detention system for years, sometimes for ever. However the UK and Hong Kong have (unlike Singapore) signed up for the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, so something like this is “unlikely”.

Thus at the moment there is no arrangement for monitoring nat sec offenders post-release. However the UK has “shown a possible way forward”. And where is this seductive highway to security? The Sex Offenders Register.

Under this, convicted sex offenders are required to register with the police, provide addresses and other information, admit inspecting police to their homes at any time, and so on. The register can be consulted by potential employers.

We could have a “National Security Offenders Register”, Mr Cross suggests, which “would go a long way toward neutralizing any continuing threats to national security posed by offenders who have completed their sentences. It would enable the police to keep tabs on them, and the individuals concerned would know they needed to be careful.”

Wow! Lots of places have registration schemes of one kind or another for sex offenders, They are particularly popular in the US. A variety of bells and whistles are commonly added to the basic requirement of an occasional visit to a police station.

Actually they are not particularly effective. Repeat offending among sexual offenders is rather rarer than for more conventional criminals. Victims of such repeat offences generally knew their partner (the vast majority of sexual offences are committed in the home) was on the register. Some critics have dismissed registers and the associated restrictions as having very little effect beyond depriving the released offender of two keys to a successful return to society: somewhere to live and a chance of employment.

The whole idea is based on the questionable notion that crime can be prevented by identifying potential offenders and looking ostentatiously over their shoulders. So far as it inconveniences the released offender it also violates the basic principle that people should be punished for what they have done, not for what they might do in future.

Of course how this will work in Hong Kong depends a lot on the details. Will the released offender be required to wear an an ankle tracker, report regularly to a probation officer, undergo weekly drugs tests? Will he be forbidden to go – or live – within 1,000 yards of any police station, government office or other national security establishment?

Will the offender have to register email addresses, Watsapp numbers, any name used on the internet, his car registration, his Octopus number? Will the register be public? Indeed will the police, as they are in some American jurisdictions, be expected to notify the neighbours if a released offender moves in nearby?

Somewhere at the bottom of this slippery slope we may be heading for a national security equivalent of the Sexually Violent Predator Order, under which the offender who has served his sentence is shunted into a “hospital” in which treatment is a choice but leaving is not.

Anyway, this is a really bad idea. It will generate international criticism; most common law countries will take the view that a sex offenders registry is one thing and a political offenders registry is another. Domestically Mr Cross notes that some 20 per cent of prisoners reoffend within two years of discharge. But that means 80 per cent do not. They are entitled to their freedom.

And it is not as if, without some formal scheme, released national security offenders are going to disappear from view completely. Presumably those three hotels full of nat sec specialists, not to mention our friendly local police force and patriotic nosy neighbours, will be looking out for signs of sin.

Read Full Post »

I have no quarrel with these low-budget tourists, but their fear of foreigners is overdone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Well you should be careful what you wish for. Hong Kong is seeing a lot more tourists visiting from the mainland. The bad news: many of them are coming in ways which involve very little local spending.

Many tours reportedly come just for the day. Their interaction with the Hong Kong economy is limited to maybe one meal. “Forced shopping” is apparently no longer a thing; these visitors can’t afford it.

There is also a new category of visitors: mainland backpackers. They are looking for an ultracheap visit, and many of them can be found economising on accommodation expenses by spending the night in a 24-hour McDonalds.

Clearly this sort of thing involves all the inconvenience for locals that tourism can bring, while making a disappointing contribution to wealth and business. Perhaps this explains the Hong Kong government’s newfound enthusiasm for marinas catering for big yachts.

After all a billionaire in a private plane is attended only by a pilot and a flight attendant. A yacht will bring to our shores not only the super-rich owner but his crew: skipper and mate, engineer and mate, chef and assistant, a couple of “house-keepers” to make the beds and a couple of deckhands to pull ropes and polish brass. Enjoy your run ashore, people.

Sooner or later I expect to see the government take this approach to its logical extreme and provide facilities for the most expensive and upmarket of sports: horse polo. Players have to be rich – a small herd of horses is required – and there are four people on each team. A simple knock-our competition for four teams would assemble 16 millionaires.

In response to complaints about the cheap end of the tourism boom, Chief Executive John Lee said that Hong Kong must “welcome all kinds of tourists”. I find myself in the unaccustomed position of agreeing entirely with Mr Lee.

There are two reasons for this. One is that it is the right thing to do. Poor people have just as much right to merriment and diversion as rich people. Helping the poor is praised by most of the big religions. Being kind to strangers is a virtue.

The second more pragmatic reason is that today’s young backpackers will be tomorrow’s well-heeled visitors. Some of them may even eventually own yachts. Early impressions of holiday destinations have a lasting impact on later choices.

In this connection it is useful, as Scotland’s national poet put it, “to see ourselves as others see us.” This is, interestingly, from a poem called “To a louse, on seeing one on a lady’s bonnet at church.” but I digress.

One rather worrying account of a low-budget visit appeared recently in the Standard, translated by Marco Lam from a social media post. It relates the visit of two ladies (not really relevant link but I couldn’t resist it), who decided to economise by staying a costless night in the Central McDonalds.

On their way they recorded nervous moments in “dimly-lit backstreets” in which there were “foreigners peering out.” They changed their route and took to main roads.

The McDonalds was “full of holidaymakers”. They met one helpful local, and one suspicious man who (thank goodness) was a mainlander. They then set off at three in the morning for the ferry pier. Apparently they wanted to watch the sun rise on Cheung Chau. At this point the story gets a bit puzzling:

“Walking through Lan Kwai Fong’s bar district, they endured what they called ‘the most intense part’ of their night – a gauntlet of drunken foreigners whose ‘invasive, provocative stares’ left them terrified despite their conservative clothing. Only upon reaching the ferry pier and seeing other travellers did they finally feel safe, the woman wrote.”

The puzzle is this: the all-night McDonalds is in Sheung Wan. To get to the Outer Island ferries you must walk northeast. To get to Lan Kwai Fong you must walk southeast, quite a long way. Did the ladies take a huge detour? Mix up their timings? Mix up their geography?

Common sense suggests that walking through any city’s bar district at three in the morning is not for the timid. I doubt if Hong Kong is in any way unusual in this respect and in many places wandering women would have more than “invasive provocative stares”, whatever that means, to worry about.

The horror story provoked some constructive comments from local netizens, including suggestions of other free sleeping places, or affordable offerings where you would actually get a bed and a bath. Perhaps some sort of Lonely Planet-like directory of Hong Kong for the financially challenged visitor could be produced.

I would like to take issue with the two mainland ladies’ evident problem with “foreigners”. Look, there is nothing to fear here. The times have long passed when most of the young foreign men in Hong Kong were drawn from the brutal and licentious soldiery. We also no longer have young Brits arriving with nothing but a fresh degree and a UK passport, with a view to looking for work and enjoying 24-hour drinking, not then permitted in England.

Most of the foreigners in Hong Kong now are mature and respectable lawyers, bankers or (yawn) accountants. English teachers cannot afford Lan Kwai Fong prices. We may peer but we do not pester. Relax.

Read Full Post »

A row over relics? How 16th century!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on May 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »

With all due respect for what seems to be an unusually charming and harmless religion, it is surprising, for me at least, to see a public row over Buddhist relics. I thought that was a Christian thing.

I recall when I was still a student enjoying Albert Finney playing Martin Luther in the play of the same name, lamenting that “Jesus Christ had 12 disciples and 15 of them are buried in Germany”. John Calvin, the most austere of Protestant reformers, was similarly baffled by the numbers, writing that if all the relics were catalogued it would be found that “every apostle has four or more bodies and every saint two or three.”

Erasmus was also suspicious: “What would Jerome say,” he wrote, “could he see the Virgin’s milk exhibited for money; the miraculous oils; the portions of the true cross, enough, if collected, to freight a large ship?”

And indeed the field does seem to attract the unscrupulous, like the man who claimed to have found the coffin of Jesus’s brother (he allegedly had four brothers and a sister). This manifest forgery was at least surfaced plausibly in the Holy Land. What can we say for the enterprising individual who claimed he had found part of Noah’s diary … in Michigan?

Anyway the story which sent me scurrying down all these historical by-ways concerned a stash unearthed in India by a colonial official in 1898. This included a pot inscribed with the claim that it contained some of the bones of Buddha, which according to the usual unreliable sources were distributed to various pious monarchs after his cremation. There were also other boxes and a variety of small jewels.

The finder was not the keeper. Colonial attitudes to such matters had improved by this time and the finder passed the lot to the Imperial Museum in what was then called Calcutta. The bones were then passed to the nearest Buddhist Monarch, the King of Siam. Some of them have since been exported to various Buddhist centres, where they are venerated. The finder, though, was allowed to keep some of the jewels on the grounds that they were straight duplicates of other items in the collection.

These were then passed down his family until last week, when it was announced that they would be auctioned in Hong Kong. Cue bitter complaints from India’s (aggressively Hindu) government, after which the auction was postponed for negotiations.

The jewels are, according to the Indian government’s complaint, “inalienable religious and cultural heritage of India and the global Buddhist community.”

Well I am not sure about the cultural heritage. Most of the pieces appear to be very small and not much worked. It may be, of course, that like the profusion of gold bees found in the tomb of the early Frankish king Childeric I, the jewels were attached to a garment which has since rotted away.

The religious claim rests on two questionable pedestals: that the interred bones were in fact those of the Buddha, who had died at least 200 years before the burial (estimates of the date vary) and that the jewels are “relics” because of their entirely posthumous physical proximity to the remains.

Inevitably these two questions have been rather overshadowed by two other issues: whether items which found their way out of colonies while they were colonies should be the property of the liberated former colony, and whether it is appropriate that items of sacred significance to some people should be offered in the market place as cultural commodities for purchase by non-believers.

The would-be vendor, Chris Peppé, says he has done some research and in Buddhist circles these items are not regarded as sacred relics. It appears that Buddhists are not as keen on the whole relics idea as Catholics used to be.

This may be so. But I fear few readers will have been impressed by Mr P’s claim that the family looked into donating the jewels to a temple or museum but decided that an auction was “the fairest and most transparent way to transfer these artifacts to Buddhists.” Too convenient.

Also I must say that historically the idea of “relics” was by no means confined to remains of the body of the holy individual concerned.

The Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, for example, had a famous collection of more than 5,000 relics. This included a piece of the Saviour’s beard, the inevitable particle of the Virgin Mary’s milk, Saint Anne’s thumb and 76 pieces of “bones from holy places which on account of faded writing can no longer be read and identified.” But there was also a twig from the burning bush, “one piece of the diaper in which He was wrapped, one piece of the straw on which the Lord lay when he was born” one sample each of the gold and myrrh presented by the three kings and no less than 32 fragments of the Holy Cross.

The collection was shown to the public for the last time in 1522, but the souvenir catalogue, with illustrations by Lucas Cranach, can be seen in museums. Which is perhaps where this whole story belongs.

Read Full Post »

Our government’s latest craze: marinas for millionaires

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

What is it about the Hong Kong government and luxury yachts? This used to be a non-topic. An occasional superyacht (no agreed definition but generally over 24 metres and crew of at least eight) would arrive and tie up at Ocean Terminal for a while.

Well-off local residents owned less super yachts (under 24 metres, crew 1-10) which they kept at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club or the marina on Discovery Bay. This supported a small industry – someone once described a yacht as a hole in the sea that you pour money into – and attracted no official or political interest.

Lately, though, our local leaders seem to have decided that this is a cow which can be milked.

The South Lantau Eco-recreation corridor (how do they think these names up?) has now graduated from a mention in last year’s policy address to an outline which includes a marina for 150-200 yachts up to 50 metres in length.

Then there is Skytopia (see comment on names above) which is planned by the Hong Kong Airport Authority, will be built next to the airport and will have 500 berths. We now also have the proposed development of land round the Hong Kong Coliseum, which will include a marina with space for 200 yachts, size not specified yet.

These plans have sparked a certain amount of scepticism. The owners of large crewed yachts can choose from a wide range of cruising grounds. The overwhelming favourites are the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Your yacht can combine these by spending the summer in the Med and crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean in the winter.

The leading home port for big yachts is Fort Lauderdale, Florida. About a quarter of all superyachts are owned by Americans. Most of the rest are owned in West European countries or Russia.

There is a growing interest in Asian cruising, but this demands dependable sunshine and a supply of interesting destinations, so most of the traffic is in the region of Singapore, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Whatever facilities are built here Hong Kong will always have one serious drawback: typhoons.

In short, this is not really a global industry. Some rather outdated figures on location of yachts in April here. Location of leading marinas here, ownership figures here. The idea that there are 900 or so big yachts out there just waiting for Hong Kong to provide parking spaces seems a bit of a stretch.

Some cynical observers have suggested that Hong Kong might be interested in a niche market: moorings for yachts whose owners would fear confiscation or other problems if they were moored in Europe, or even Singapore. But there is already a very nice marina in Hainan which shares our political peculiarities, such as they are.

Another disreputable theory is that owning a big yacht in Hong Kong might offer mainland millionaires a large floating asset (albeit a very expensive one to run) which could literally sail away at short notice. But of course our government would not dream of conniving at that sort of thing.

Given Hong Kong’s highly uneven income distribution it is difficult to see an expensive watery hobby producing a huge spurt in demand from local resources.

Indeed a striking feature of Hong Kong life is the government’s total indifference to the possiblility that large numbers of people might enjoy messing about in boats. It is interesting to consider the contrast between Chichester Harbour and Tolo Harbour. Chichester Harbour is a heavily tidal mudflat on which everything runs aground twice a day. It is nevertheless usually full of boats and occasionally, indeed, congested.

Tolo Harbour is big, sheltered and virtually non-tidal. It would be an ideal place for kids to catch the boating bug at little expense. There are big waterside towns in Shatin, Taipo and Ma On Shan. Facilities could be provided within walking distance of millions of people. They are not.

Tolo Harbour, whatever the weather, is usually completely empty. We are apparently more interested in providing facilities for millionaires than facilities for the masses. Shame.

Read Full Post »

Who wears the trousers in Hong Kong’s prisons … and who wears the shorts?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »

One of the interesting consequences of the way the law has worked since 2020 is the arrival in Hong Kong prisons of many inmates rather different from the usual inhabitants. A large influx of young, articulate and educated criminals whose offences are, if not explicitly political, well off the usual sex, violence and greed track has shone light into some neglected corners.

Practices hallowed by decades of history have been challenged, with interesting results.

The latest episode in this series stars Ms Chow Hang-tung, who has been enjoying correctional hospitality since 2021 and is currently awaiting trial on national security charges.

We may note in passing at this point an unintended consequence of the way national security cases work. Those convicted are not eligible for the usual discounts for good behaviour. So they can enjoy attempts to stick it to The Man without the apprehension which keeps conventional prisoners quiet – that The Man will, if provoked, perhaps find ways of sticking it to them.

Ms Chow’s complaint, which was aired in the High Court last week, is that prison clothing policy is discriminatory between the sexes (or if you prefer genders) because male prisoners are allowed to wear shorts in the summer, and female prisoners are not.

The resulting hearing was a good illustration of the way in which legal reasoning and conventions can take us a long way from the messy reality of the real world.

Of course nobody can stand up in court and say that Ms Chow is not really motivated by the minor unpleasantness of being trapped in long trousers through another of Hong Kong’s sweaty summers. She has noticed that the Hong Kong authorities are exploring every legal avenue in their determination to give her a hard time and is retaliating as best she can.

Nor would it be polite for counsel for the government to admit that the ban on shorts defies common sense, and is the legacy of decisions made decades ago when ideas about dress were rather different and sexual discrimination had not been invented. In those days respectable women did not wear shorts in the street while uniformed men had a summer get-up involving shorts.

The uniformed types have pretty much dropped shorts, but in civilian contexts women now wear them all the time. Ms Chow’s suggestion is nevertheless unwelcome, because it comes from her. Good order and discipline in local prisons is endangered if the Correctional Services Department is coerced into changing a rule by an uppity inmate.

So we can expect to see the government fight this all the way to the Court of Final Appeal, just as it did Leung Kwok-hung’s challenge to prison haircut rules.

One can only sympathise with the legal eagle, senior counsel Mike Lee, in charge of defending the prison uniform rules. Mr Lee argued that the ban on shorts resulted from consideration of a “basket of considerations” arrived at in decades of departmental consideration and experience. This had revealed, according to a CSD psychologist, that there were “inherent differences” between men and women. The women, consequently, did not in the department’s view wish to be allowed to wear shorts.

The saga will no doubt continue. I would respectfully suggest that Mr Lee drop the argument that uniform wearing is an essential part of maintaining “custodial discipline”, because this leaves him open to the question why custodial discipline in male prisons appears to be compatible with allowing shorts as an option.

I was also not impressed by the analogy to school uniform which, in Mr Lee’s view, “fosters a sense of learning” as “education is the prime objective”. Few educators subscribe to this view of uniforms, which are generally defended as concealing differences of wealth among students and fostering esprit de corps.

In any case some of the most successful education systems, like those of Finland and Denmark, do not require school uniforms at all. I note in passing that some of the most successful prison systems do not require uniforms very much either.

Another point I have some difficulty with is the suggestion that the department is defending the rule on long trousers because the prisoners like it. I know and admire quite a lot of correctional people – the department was at one time a hotbed of enthusiasm for the Great Highland Bagpipe – and I acknowledge the idealism and humane sentiments which animate much of the department’s work. But a prison is not a democratic institution and the whole concept of punishment involves NOT giving the prisoners what they want, which in most cases is to go home.

Read Full Post »

A man, a plan, Panama!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 27, 2025| 2 Comments »

I generally hesitate to say anything about what appears in the Chinese-language press, because it reaches me only second-hand, and in translation. But recent commentaries in Ta Kung Pao have me puzzled.

I do not participate in controversies about China, for or against. Such matters are not very interesting and in any case, as a marooned Brit, none of my business. But I thought I understood how the game was played.

Take the row about Huawei and its exclusion from the business of providing telecom networks in Western countries. What we might call the Trumpeters’ tune is that there is no such thing in China as a private company. Whether or not Huawei wished to tweak its software to facilitate spying, it would have no choice.

But this is a smear peddled only by China haters and stirrers-up of trouble who wish to start a new Cold War. Actually Huawei is free to make its own decisions and would not dream of tricking its customers in this way.

A similar division of views hovers over the Belt and Road scheme. Critics say this is a cunning ruse through which China can extend its ownership and control over vital links in the world trade network.

Not at all, explain the scheme’s defenders. Belt and Road projects are win-win affairs which benefit everyone concerned: both the trading countries at each end of the road and the country which actually contains the port, railway, canal, or whatever. They are a benevolent donation to the common good by the PRC, and the eventual ownership of the items constructed will normally be vested in the country in which they sit.

Then there is the matter of the national security law. When this first appeared many critics (I rather think I may have been one of them) complained that there was a shortage of precise definitions of the new offences created. Not at all, we were assured. The descriptions of the offences were perfectly adequate and nobody who had read them carefully would be in any doubt as to what was intended.

All three of these comfortable thoughts have been thrown into doubt by the Ta Kung Pao leader-writers, who are generally assumed to be privy to the truth as senior Hong Kong government people see it.

The news which stirred all this up was that Hutchisons, generally regarded as a Hong Kong firm though most of its business is elsewhere and its registration is in the Cayman Islands, was selling 40 ports to an American consortium led by BlackRock. Among the ports in question are two next to the Panama Canal, about which President Trump has been complaining bitterly.

Hutchison’s explanation was that this was a purely business decision, basically to get out of the overseas ports business; the group will still own ports in Hong Kong and mainland China. In view of the danger of tariff wars shredding the international trading network this is not an ostentatiously surprising decision.

It did not, though, go down well with Ta Kung Pao. Hutchisons’ move was denounced as a “betrayal of all Chinese people”, an act of “spineless grovelling”. Former Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying asked “Do merchants have no motherland?”

Well no doubt the whole thing would have looked more attractive if President Trump had not so rudely called for changes in the Panama Canal Zone in the first place. On the other hand if Hong Kong companies (we’ll leave the Cayman Islands out of it) are expected to tailor their activities to PRC foreign policy objectives, how can we be expected to believe that mainland firms do not?

As the row rumbled on the deal was stigmatised as sabotaging the Belt and Road initiative. This is not what we used to be told about the Belt and Road at all. Is Ta Kung Pao now of the view that the purpose of the Belt and Road scheme was to ensure that no container could be unloaded anywhere in the world without China’s approval and participation?

And as the writers warmed to their task we came to the inevitable ingredient in any political storm these days, national security. Was the sale of the ports a national security crime?

Well one rather hopes not. The crimes created by the national security law are secession, subversion, terrorist activities and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. Clearly the first three are not relevant, and it is difficult to see how the fourth could be applied to selling a business asset for a realistic price to a foreign buyer. It may be a source of pride and pleasure for Chinese people to know that one of their number is a global presence, but it can hardly be a national security necessity for someone with a Chinese name to own a port on the other side of the Pacific.

A couple of thoughts might soothe. The first is that ownership of two Panama ports does not confer any power at all over the canal, which remains the property of Panama and under the control of the Panama government. The ports are actually outside the canal proper and their main function is to deal with Panama’s own imports and exports. President Trump does not seem to know this, among many things.

The second is that the new American owners will not be under the same pressure or expectations which local patriots would like to exert on Hutchisons. Much has been made of the fact that the chief executive of the buyers, BlackRock, is an old friend of Donald Trump.

Well all these plutocrats go to the same parties, no doubt. But American business is not inhibited by concerns about the national interests of the USA, or indeed anywhere else. Ethical standards have gone down the tubes over the last 50 years. Money trumps morals every time. Ports controlled by American companies will be ruled by pure greed, unsullied by politics. Doesn’t that feel better?

Read Full Post »

Commenting on, or criticising, court cases is both legal and helpful

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 10, 2025| 1 Comment »

It is nice to know that the Secretary for Security reads Ming Pao. Think of the alternatives. Sadly however the secretary, Chris Tang, often does not appear to enjoy his reading.

The last item to arouse Mr Tang’s ire was an op ed on the latest legal instalment of the Yuen Long incident, by law professor Johannes Chan. “The author, who is a law professor, has once again published a biased article,” Mr Tang complained, “deliberately ignoring the fact that some white-clad people have already been brought to justice, misleading readers with a warped perspective that the court has made an unfair judgment regarding either party, shaking the public’s confidence in the court system, and undermining the rule of law in Hong Kong, which must be condemned.”

Mr Tang went on to say that the afterword, commonly added to opinion pieces these days, saying there was no intention to incite hatred of the government, did not discharge the obligation on the editor to ensure that his publication was “fair, objective and unbiased.”

He concluded “It is hoped that Ming Pao will not continue to be exploited by people with ulterior motives to use this platform to spread confusing remarks, to poison the community, and to create conflicts.”

Now I propose to ignore some of this. Opinion pieces are not supposed to be fair, objective and unbiased. They are expressions of opinion. Moreover if Mr Tang wishes to campaign with any credibility for unbiased media he needs to avoid the impression that he has some unique problem with Ming Pao.

I shall also pass by the bit about white-clad people being brought to justice, which strictly speaking is entirely irrelevant. Injustice to one defendant cannot be balanced by justice to another.

More interesting is Mr Tang’s claim that the offending piece misled readers into the “warped perspective” that the court had made an unfair judgment, and that this had “shaken the public’s confidence in the court system”, thereby undermining the rule of law.

This is, alas, nonsense. The rule of law has never required the public to believe that judges are infallible. In 1793 the then Chief Justice, Lord Kenyon, said that “In the hurry of business, the most able Judges are liable to err.”

More recently we can consider the view of Lord Denning:”We do not fear criticism, nor do we resent it. For there is something far more important at stake. It is no less than freedom of speech itself…Those who comment can deal faithfully with all that is done in a court of justice. They can say that we are mistaken, and our decisions erroneous, whether they are subject to appeal or not.”

Or there is the rather more literary, oft-quoted, opinion of Lord Atkin (more famous as an innovator in business law), which goes in part “The path of criticism is a public way. The wrong-headed are permitted to err therein… Justice is not a cloistered virtue; she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even if outspoken, comments of ordinary men.”

I infer that Mr Tang is offering the courts a protection which they have never sought and do not need. If a judge makes a statement about the law it is open to criticism and comment. Similarly if the judge is sitting alone and has to make findings of fact, they may also be scrutinised. The rule of law is fortified, not weakened, if the activities of the courts can be discussed and debated.

He may also care to consider that freedom of the press is not furthered by threatening words from officials in the law and order industry, and if the government wishes to offer a running commentary on media output this might be better left to the information specialists.

Mr Tang’s repeated insistence that appending “this piece is not intended to inspire hatred of the government,” or words to that effect, is not an effective bar to prosecution, is unnecessary. We all know that. It’s like starting a novel with the usual stuff about “no resemblance to real persons, living or dead”. This will not keep you out of the libel courts if your lead villain is an erratic politician called Ronald Frump.

Mr Tang may be a happier reader if he bears in mind the wise words of the American judge Robert Jackson: “The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.”

And if tempted to rush to the defence of some official masterpiece he might also bear in mind another observation from the same judge: “Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame — a good public name — is, as Milton said, the “last infirmity of a noble mind”, it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.”

Read Full Post »

The rule of law and the rule of lies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 3, 2025| 3 Comments »

People who have been complaining about how slowly the legal system works in Hong Kong can draw some comfort from its latest success: an outstandingly swift performance in the gentle art of rewriting history.

This goes on all the time, of course. Mediaeval baronial brawls are recycled as wars of national liberation starring Mel Gibson. Revered founding fathers turn out to have had a sideline impregnating their own slaves because mixed race babies were more valuable. Historians reluctantly admit that much-admired monarchs were secretly gay.

But this usually takes centuries. Not, however, in the courtroom of national security specialist District Court Judge Stanley Chan – a generous provider of material for critical judge-watchers over the years – who was passing sentence last week on seven men accused of rioting during the Yuen Long incident on July 21, 2019.

That was six years ago, a long time for a criminal process but a mere blink in the evolution of history.

Those of us who were here at the time will remember the Yuen Long incident. It was extensively videoed by mobile phone owners. One reporter live-streamed an attack on her. The BBC reported:

Dozens of masked men armed with batons stormed a train station in the Hong Kong district of Yuen Long on Sunday. Footage posted on social media showed the masked men, all in white T-shirts, violently attacking people on platforms and inside train carriages. Forty-five people were injured, with one person in a critical condition.

The Guardian’s correspondent had:

Men dressed in white T-shirts, some armed with sticks, entered the Yuen Long MTR station and stormed a train, attacking passengers, according to footage taken by commuters, journalists and Democratic Party politician Lam Cheuk-ting. Witnesses said the attackers appeared to target black-shirted passengers who had been at an anti-government march earlier in the day.

And it was not just the capitalist press. A few days later the China Daily referred to:

…savage indiscriminate attacks on protesters and passengers in the train cars and the platform at Yuen Long station last Sunday. The attack, causing injury to 45 people, was widely denounced …

Oddly enough the government at the time refused to classify the incident as a riot. And indeed it was not what the lay person usually means by a riot – vandalism, protest, confrontation with the forces of order – and more an exercise in assault and battery on an industrial scale by an armed and uniformed mob.

A curious feature was the absence of police people. Men in white tee-shirts armed with sticks had been marauding in the streets of Yuen Long all day, threatening anyone who looked as if they might be a protester. When they appeared inside the station the MTR staff promptly called the police, who did not show up for half an hour. As the station is only a short walk from the local police station this was embarrassing.

A few days later the then Chief Secretary apologised to the public for the fact that the police response had not met expectations. The apology was bitterly denounced by both the police staff unions.

When Chris Tang became police commissioner (yes, that one: now the Secretary for Security) he unveiled the new police line, initially suggested by Junius Ho, which was that the conflict was due to Lam Cheuk-ting, who had intensified the tense atmosphere and so provoked the fight.

On the day of Lam’s arrest this had developed further, and the whole incident was described as a clash between “two evenly matched rivals”. The video and photographic evidence was “one-sided” and the reporting was “biased”. It could be considered a bit strange that the police have developed a narrative which they offer with such confidence, because the one fact about the incident that everyone agrees with is that no police people were present.

It appears as a result that Judge Chan was heavily reliant on video evidence, a worrying thought because – as police spokesmen used to remind us whenever footage surfaced of their colleagues kicking the crap out of someone – such films are subject to a variety of interpretations.

Anyway in Judge Chan’s reasons for passing sentence the police story finally achieved escape velocity and freed itself from the gravitational pull of reality. There were, in Judge Chan’s view, not one but two riots, one for each side. The men in tee-shirts would have engaged in nothing more than Ghandian non-violence if they had not been provoked by the first riot.

The provocation seems to have consisted in calling them gangsters. Judge Chan did not believe Mr Lam, whose “chief provocateur” status earned him a three-year sentence, was there to “monitor police actions”. Well that was just as well. The police actions came later. We do not enjoy the rule of law. We enjoy the rule of lies.

Read Full Post »

Mystery ailment causes nervous breakdowns in catering infrastructure?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Are Hong Kong hotels becoming less reliable, I wonder. Or have we developed a new variation on “cancel culture”?

Forgive a detour. Readers who have been following these diatribes will probably have noticed occasional references to the Scottish bagpipe, an awkward and troublesome instrument which I took up as a post-retirement hobby. In due course I joined a band, as one does, and we were often booked to provide loud music (opinions differ about the melodiousness of the bagpipe, but nobody disputes that the volume is tremendous) for festivities of various kinds, many of which were held in Hong Kong hotels.

Until the whole sequence was interrupted by COVID we must have averaged one gig a month for years. We shook the chandeliers in most of Hong Kong’s bigger hotels, usually for weddings but sometimes for formal dinners. None of these events was cancelled at the last minute due to a technical hitch.

I think the only mechanical problem we ever encountered was a faulty escalator. I expect we could have climbed with it stopped but the bride was not dressed for that sort of thing, so we stood and warbled for a few minutes while hotel staff coaxed the thing back into action.

Another passtime I drifted into was the secretaryship of a club which runs social events for people interested in Scottish culture. I thought this would just involve note-taking and minutes, but it turned out the secretary was also expected to organise two or three events a year. These were generally held in hotels or clubs and involved eating and dancing. Again I can recall no example of an event which had to be cancelled due to a last-minute problem in the host building.

Last year a kind friend invited me to the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association’s annual dinner. Upon my arrival I said, in jest, that I had checked my emails before setting out in case there had been an airconditioner problem. This was soon after the Democratic Party’s annual foodfest and fund-raiser had been cancelled at the last minute for this reason.

This year I was again invited. But two days before the event it was postponed because, we were told, the hotel concerned – the Regal in Causeway Bay – had a problem with water on its busbars. This sounds painful, and apparently led to fluctuations in the power supply.

There are two interesting things about this ailment. One is that it apparently precluded such remedies as changing the date, the menu or the venue. The other is that when a reporter visited the hotel (Were we not expecting this? It’s a journalists’ association for goodness sake) the power supply appeared to be in rude health, the staff assured him that normal service was being provided, and indeed the room where the journalists were supposed to be doing their browsing and sluicing later in the day was full of happy visitors.

This gives rise to a certain scepticism about whether the problem with the Regal’s busbars was entirely and purely a technical matter. Looking at the history of last-minute cancellations there seems to be a common theme. The mention of “fund-raising” turns sane and happy pieces of catering infrastructure into nervous wrecks.

But I fear this just conceals the underlying reality which is political. After all organisations which zealously support the government do not need to fund-raise. They get money thrown at them.

Those which adopt a more – shall we say – impartial approach have a problem. Money from overseas is an obvious no-no. Crowd-funding can be prosecuted as money-laundering unless you get the names and addresses of everyone in the crowd, and who wants to do that? So you think perhaps a dinner, lucky draw, auction …

And at this point the mysterious gremlin strikes, usually at the last minute. One suspects that somewhere behind the scenes people are being treated to small tea gatherings in North Point which conclude with a warning that even revealing that this event has taken place would be a national security offence. They not only have to do what they are told but to make up a cock and bull story to explain it.

This is an undignified way of dealing with the problem. If the government or the police force wish to make it impossible for certain organisations to book a venue they should circulate a list. Then we shall all know where we stand. I do not know why they would wish for this but no doubt the motives involved are impeccably respectable so there is no reason why the whole procedure should not be public.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »