tim's experiment

I don’t like to rain on anyone’s funeral parade, but am I the only person in Hong Kong who thinks the posthumous adulation of Lee Kwan Yew is grossly excessive?

We are, since great antiquity, urged to say of the dead nihil nisi bonum. A pleasing convention. Also the passage of time lends a certain patina to the great figures of our youth, even if they were not particularly popular at the time. Most English people now look back in sorrow rather than anger at Harold Wilson, for example. Aged rabble rousers like Tony Benn are treated as national monuments as they enter their dotage, and earn praise from surprising quarters when they finally pop their clogs.  Longevity itself commands respect, so that people who have never liked a Cliff Richard song still concede that the lad has had an extraordinary career.

Having said which, I do not recall Mr Lee as one of the great figures of my youth. In fact from a safe distance, and seen through the sort of independent media he did not allow in Singapore, he appeared as an obnoxious little despot, bullying those he could bully and fawning on those he could not. Appreciation of his successive electoral successes was diminished by the amount of cheating and fixing going on. A slightly loony air was added to the story by warnings about chewing gum, tourists being refused admission if their hairstyles were unconventional, and scientifically illiterate concerns that the stupid were breeding more quickly than the intelligent. I do not know if it was ever true that you could be jailed for failing to flush the loo in Singapore, but it is significant that this was widely believed.

It is interesting that Mr Lee inspired so much praise, even when he was alive, from other political leaders, but this is a symptom of a phenomenom first identified, I think, by Conor Cruise O’Brien. He observed that over every gathering of international leaders hovers the odour of an Orwellian pigsty, and that the pigs have an instinctive fellow feeling for each other based on their shared love of power, however obtained. Mr Lee was, of course, not much more than a puffed-up Mayor by international standards, but he made up for this by virtually achieving power for life.

In some ways he reminds of those Renaissance princes who ruled Italian cities and followed the principle enunciated by Machiavelli that it is better for a prince to be feared than to be loved. Success is getting safely into your grave without being overthrown or invaded, with bonus marks for passing the job on to your eldest son.  Mr Lee would perhaps not mind being compared to Lorenzo the Magnificent. But where are the artistic masterpieces?

Mr Lee’s economic achievements seem a bit oversold. Other Asian entities managed to combine dramatic growth with a measure of civilisation and even democracy. He can be credited, perhaps, as an early observer of the fact that if you want foreign investment the easiest way is to provide international business with what it likes in a foreign country: a functioning phone system and a workforce with no rights.

The idea that Singapore is now a first-world country holds up if you look at per capita GDP. If you look at living standards it doesn’t. I read an interesting piece of research the other day by a Singaporean writer comparing his country with Norway, which happens to be similar in population, GDP, and the size of its sovereign wealth fund. He found that 80 per cent of Singapore’s population earned less than a cleaner on the statutory minimum wage in Norway. The Singapore people paid more in tax and compulsory savings than the Norwegian street sweeper, and got less for it. In Norway, to start with, education and health care are free.

Singapore does, on the other hand, have a surprisingly large number of millionaires. It’s a paradise if you’re rich, but most of the population isn’t. The fact that the Lee family is on the up-market side of the distribution makes it less acceptable, in my view.

I realise that some of the adulation now being bestowed on Mr Lee’s ghost comes from people who would like to recruit him as an early supporter of the view that Chinese people were so traumatized by four centuries of being ruled by foreign emperors that they have neither the ability nor the wish to rule themselves. If a Western person said this it would be an example of prejudice and discrimination. If a Chinese person says it then it’s a legitimate yearning for strong government. This is the political counterpart of those sexual tastes which run to leather straps, chains and whips. And in both instances, the enthusiast envisages himself as the one with the whip.

Read Full Post »

I find these days that the only part of the SCMPost with thoughtful and provocative writing on it is the back page of the Business section. But this week has seen a little epidemic of writers shooting themselves in the foot. First we had the former banker explaining that there was no need to worry about banks employing the offspring of their rich customers, because these rich kids did not have the pathological levels of greed necessary to succeed in the industry.  Consequently they would not reach positions of power. Very reassuring.

Then there was the lady who complained of the “parasites” who bought into index or tracker funds because they were too cheapskate to pay for the “research and analysis” needed to run a proper investment trust. Leaving aside the oddity of anyone in the financial industry accusing other people of parasitism, this seemed a perverse interpretation of what people were doing. After all someone who decides to invest in a tracker fund may not be a cheapskate at all. He may just be an alert investor who has read “A random walk down Wall Street,” “The Black Swan” and the relevant works of Michael Lewis. He is aware of the copious amount of research indicating that the “research and analysis” does not produce any worthwhile information on the future movement of prices, and that actively traded funds regularly and predictably produce worse returns than the simple index-following ones. Oddly enough the Post’s leader writer was making exactly this point on Thursday.

These offerings were just the warm-up for Wednesday’s effort, alluringly leadlined “Parallels with the Klan”, and decorated with an ancient picture of a Ku Klux Klan meeting. This piece started with eight reasonable paragraphs about the problems presented by mainland shoppers, parallel traders etc. and the possible solutions. At this point we are more than half way through the article and the Klan has not yet been mentioned. In the ninth paragraph we are told that parallel trading has had another “local impact”. Some members of radical groups “behave as hooligans under the guise of populist politics to protest against the traders.”  Well hooligans is a bit strong for what is after all verbal abuse, however obnoxious that may be, but let us continue. “Some features of their behaviour bear resemblance to other organisations in history that were motivated by political ideology. The best researched in modern times is the Ku Klux Klan, which was examined by economist Steven Levitt in Freakonomics.”

Now this is hogwash. The Klan is not the best researched organisation in history motivated by political ideology, a questionable honour which probably belongs to the Communist movement in its various manifestations, with the Nazi party and its off-shoots a close second. Freakonomics is a good book, but it covers a variety of topics; only one chapter is on the Klan. Our author summarises this chapter in his next five paragraphs but it is clearly dishonest to claim that he picked the Klan because of its international historic status. He picked it because it was handy and disreputable: a good stick with which to beat a group he disapproves of. And are we told what are the features which the Klan has in common with the unnamed hooligans opposed to parallel trading? No we are not. All we get is the limp conclusion that “the Hong Kong public should also be better informed about the myths and truths behind … local groups that advocate extremist ideologies.” No details are supplied of the extremist ideologies involved in protesting against crowds of tourists. No group is named, no ideology outlined, nobody is quoted. Prejudice floats free from any contact with evidence or reality.

After reading this offering one can only weep for the trees which were sacrificed to put this poisonous piece of propaganda on local breakfast tables. After all no local political organisation is in the same class as the Klan, which used to be anonymous and homicidal. They used to lynch people, for heaven’s sake. Odious comparisons can be offered about anyone if no evidence is required. Is the Voice of Loving Hong Kong like the SA? Is the Special Branch like the NKVD? Is the government information coordinator like Dr Goebbels? This sort of thing does not get us anywhere.

The only comfort I can draw from this sorry mess is that it was not perpetrated by a journalist. The author was one Richard Wong, who is described in the usual endnote as “Philip Wong Kennedy Wong Professor in Political Economy at the University of Hong Kong”.  He’s a teacher? Words fail me.

Read Full Post »

Well it happens to all of us at one time or another. We say something stupid, and when this is pointed out we say we that was not what we meant at all. The first symptom of foot in mouth disease is the “I didn’t really say that” line.

Which brings us to Michael Chugani’s piece in the Post this morning. Mr Chugani says he “chuckled at the feeble attempts to make me out as a fan of the world’s dictators just because I said Hong Kong needed firm leadership.” Well it is always nice to find that one has given a reader pleasure. I am always entertained when a columnist in the Post (circulation in the hundreds of thousands) decides to waste his precious space commenting on my blog (read by 50 people on a good day). But Mr Chugani is not inhibited by irrrelevant shibboleths like accuracy, because he did in fact not just say that Hong Kong needed firm leadership. Indeed if that were all he had said there would have been no reaction from anyone. He said we needed a dose of dictatorship, which is not the same thing at all. We can most economically see the difference by considering who might be considered suitable examples. Leadership: Lincoln, Kennedy, Churchill, Mandela, Gandhi. Dictatorship: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Galtieri, Mao. Got it, Michael?

Now let us dispose of a fringe matter which is bothering Mr Chugani, which is that people commented on his possession of an American passport, “as if a Hong Kong-born Indian naturalised as a US citizen has no right to speak his mind”. Nobody is suggesting that anyone has no right to speak his mind. Freedom of speech involves not only the right to speak one’s mind, but the right of other people to respond with the contents of their minds. Where Mr Chugani was born or the ethnic origins of his ancestors are not relevant. The fact that he has a US passport is, because it means that if we follow his advice and it all ends in tears he does not have to share the consequences. He is a surrender monkey with a “get-out-of-Colditz-free card. He is inviting us to a Titanic tour on which he has a lifeboat but many people do not. This is not a reason for rejecting an argument but it is certainly a relevant consideration. If your aeroplane fills with smoke and a voice on the speaker says there is “no cause for alarm” you would be interested to know whether the author of this reassurance was in the cockpit or on the ground.

Nestling in the fourth paragraph of the predictable diatribe against democrats and other usual suspects we have Mr Chugani’s defence in a nut-shell: “I said we needed a dose of dictatorship – read that as firm leadership – to get things done.” What Mr Chugani does not explain is why anyone should read “a dose of dictatorship” as “firm leadership”. After all the “dose of dictatorship” was not just an oratorical flourish or an elegant variation. It appeared twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. It looked as if the writer was pleased with it and the headline person took the hint and used it in the title. As the Law Lords put it in a long-ago libel case: “The rule is well settled that the true intention of any writer of a document … is that which is apparent in the ordinary and natural meaning of the written words.”  Most of us know what dictatorship means and if offered it as a political prescription we have a perfect right to ask which of the current dictators the author regards as a suitable model.

Well it is easy for prolific writers working in haste to slip in an ill-chosen word. No doubt Mr Chugani did not really mean he wanted a dictatorship. But that is what he said. Under these circumstances one does not expect an apology. But complaining that “anyone who wanted to understand would have known that,” as Mr Chugani does, is blaming the reader for not being a mind-reader. Next time silence might be a better option.

And be careful with those big words. Dictatorship is like war: the more you talk about it the more likely it is to happen.

Read Full Post »

The Chinese New Year is my favourite Hong Kong festival. There is fun, a week off, pleasant social occasions, agreeable rituals and none of that nonsense about buying people presents you hope they will like. Of late, though, I find myself wondering if it will still be this much fun in a year or two’s time. There are freedoms without which self-fulfilment and true happiness are impossible. They continue to wilt.

It was reported without comment, and even in some places with approval, that the attempt to sell toilet rolls with C.Y. Leung’s face on them had been prevented because the disrespectful bumf had been confiscated on the Mainland. Now as an exercise in freedom of speech having CY’s face on your bogroll probably counts as some sort of pinnacle of bad taste. But an exercise in free speech it is. No self respecting court in a free country would fail to recognise this as an infringement on the citizen’s right to express his opinion, favourable or otherwise, on his local leader. Yet here it passed without comment, even from the usual  “trouble-makers”. We have become inured to attempts by the national authorities to curb the rights guaranteed to us by the Basic Law, the Bill of Rights, and (giggle) the Constitution of the PRC. Apparently it is no longer worth complaining.

Then there was a story this week saying that the police had “taken down” some messages on the Internet. Once again the worrying thing about this was the points which were not explored. Since when did the police monitor the internet, and what for? Do they really have the power to “take down” items, and if so from what legislation? Is there a right to be notified, a right to appeal? Many years ago the right to censor stage performances was moved from the police to the Commissioner for Television and Entertainment Licensing. Censoring films has always been a matter for a separate body and broadcasters are answerable to an authority of their own. So what is going on here?

I wonder if this was what it was like in Germany in the 30s, or in Italy in the 20s. In more primitive societies you know when the tanks appear on the lawn of the Presidential Palace that you are going back to the middle ages. But in more sophisticated ones that does not work. What happens is that a regime appears which sells the idea that it will concentrate on livelihood matters, from which bourgeois notions of rights and freedoms are an unwelcome distraction. Some citizens overlook the resulting deficiencies in the matter of human rights in the hope that the concentration on “livelihood matters” will enrich them. Some overlook these deficiencies because they are dumb, because they are doing well out of the system, because they are sycophants or because they are easily scared. Anyone who complains is branded a miscreant and trouble-maker, and told to shut up even by his friends. Until one day we all look round and discover that rights and freedoms we took for granted have been spirited away. And the livelihood problems still have not been solved.

The media freedom frog is, it seems clear, now pretty well cooked. Will other freedoms now have their turn in the pot?

Read Full Post »

I do not mind the presence in Hong Kong of people who sincerely believe that since the Communist government of China is the only government they’ve got, they might as well get along with, or maybe even have a patriotic duty to support it. Nor do I criticise those who, having nowhere else to go, feel that it is not in their interests to be critical. What never fails to annoy is people whose passports and nationality come from places where human rights are taken for granted, but who nevertheless feel the urge to tell people here that such things are not for them. Which brings me to Michael Chugani, who told us in a column on Saturday that “What Hong Kong now needs is a sharp dose of dictatorship.”

Mr Chugani apparently believes this is the only antidote to the symptoms of social decay which he sees all around him: motorists stopping in yellow boxes, travellers being allowed to take large suitcases on the MTR or buses, and distilled water companies leaving their wares on the pavement. Mr Chugani elucidates the signs of a civilization on its last legs: taxi drivers negotiating over fares, construction sites ignoring noise laws, and a restaurant in Arbuthnot Road which plays loud music in the evenings. Possibly sensing that by this point in the proceedings readers may suspect the whole exercise to be satirical, we are now offered hospital waiting times and the abuse of public housing, which are at least serious public issues.

It’s all apparently the fault of legislators, who “clash daily over what exactly true democracy is,” while not being equally concerned about “polluted air, rampant illegal parking, overcrowded MTR trains, subdivided slum flats and the growing number of elderly poor.” Well unaccustomed though I am to defending legislators, this is clearly a bum rap. The majority of legislators are docile supporters of the government, with no interest in finding out what democracy might be, exact, true or otherwise. Mr Chugani, however, is by now busy with other discontents. “Surely leadership decisions can replace consultations on issues such as electronic road pricing … and expanding landfills.” And so we come to the triumphant conclusion that “A dose of dictatorship is what we need to get things done.”

Now we should not argue ad hominem and indeed Mr Chugani’s views would be horse manure whoever voiced them. But Mr Chugani is sensitive (and rightly so) in spotting signs of prejudice against Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities. It is sad to see him succumb to the prejudice so common in Western countries — that Asian people do not appreciate or need the rights which are taken for granted in Europe and North America. Mr Chugani presumably does not think the US needs a “dose of dictatorship”. After all to get his US passport he swore to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.  Anyway, enough of these particularities.

The problems with “a dose of dictatorship” start with the fact that you don’t get just a dose. History teaches us that the first thing dictators dispense with is any time limit on their own powers. They rarely leave office alive. You cannot turn dictatorship on and off like a tap. Freedoms once lost are rarely regained quickly or without a struggle.  The next problem is that dictators do not have a particularly good record when it comes to making decisions for the societies under their rule. It is, for example, not true that Mussolini made the trains run on time or that Stalin industrialized Russia. Hitler did build good roads. You want him back? The death toll caused by Chairman Mao’s loopy ideas is currently estimated at about 60 million. History does not record any dictator who was good at solving air pollution, overcrowded public transport, housing shortages or elderly poverty. Social improvement is not their forte. Dictators do not do prosperity. They do concentration camps, secret police, torture, assassination, lies, wars and famines.

No doubt it is frustrating that our rule-bound, consultation-happy system cannot guarantee the nocturnal tranquility of Arbuthnot Road. But there are worse problems than noisy music. Be careful what you wish for.

Read Full Post »

The nice thing about the print edition of the Post, as I fear I have said before, is that when really infuriated you can fling it on the ground and jump up and down on it. You can’t do that with an iPad. My ire yesterday was aroused by a piece on the housing crisis, which advanced the daringly contrarian view that no crisis existed. This will be news to people living in crowded and sordid places. One expects to find that it has been written by someone who does not himself live in a crowded and sordid place. Sure enough the author is one Ian Brownlee, who is the managing director of a firm of “planning consultants”. Not written from a squatter hut, then.

Mr Brownlee takes the official figure of 105,600 households “inadequately housed” and maintains that it is too large. It is interesting to see how this trick is performed.

Firstly Mr Brownlee accepts as beyond dispute that all residents in public housing are “adequately housed”. This is an ambiguous concept, of course. Does adequately mean safely sheltered from rain or wind, with access to a toilet somewhere. Or does it mean the sort of place in which we can imagine Mr Brownlee himself feeling comfortable? Look at it this way. If you take the footbridge from the Lucky Plaza podium roughly Northeast you will get a good look at Lek Yuen Estate, and in particular at a few units which have been left empty because they are unacceptably close to the flow of passing pedestrians. So you can see the amount of space which our local housing chiefs think is “adequate” as a family home. It is about the size of my car port. Public housing dwellers in North Lancashire might allocate this much space to their whippets. The public housing in which I spent my youth was built in the early 50s in a period of post-war austerity. It was, nevertheless, a house, with living and dining rooms downstairs, along with kitchen, small toilet and space outside for the dustbin and coal store. Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a bathroom. This was not luxurious. Heating was provided only by an open fire in the living room and there were no arrangements for a car at all. The history of Hong Kong public housing is a story of ferocious parsimony, reflected in tiny flats, lifts which stop only on selected floors, no gardens, no dogs … The oddities resulting include the fact that most Hong Kong people never entertain at home (the flat is already full) and many schoolchildren do their homework in public places (the flat is effectively one room). Hong Kong public housing flats rarely feature in Hong Kong films, because by the time you get the producer, director, cameraman, sound man, continuity person, lighting wizard and prop wrangler into the flat … there is no room for actors.

The point I am trying to make is that whether a public housing dweller is “adequately” housed depends on how many people are living in the same flat. As well as the well-publicized cases of “rich tenants” there are also less well-publicized cases of desperate overcrowding. It is misleading to imply that anyone in public housing must ipso facto be considered to have no unmet housing needs.

Now we get to private housing. Mr Brownlee notes that the official line is rather confusing: “not all people in inadequate housing are necessarily inadequately housed,” according to the Long Term Housing Strategy. Confusing indeed. But Mr Brownlee is not exactly a model of clarity himself. He starts going through the official list of the “inadequately housed”. The first is those living in “temporary structures, huts or illegal rooftops”. Wait, says Mr Brownlee. These are made of wood and tin sheet. But these are acceptable building materials in Canada and New Zealand. Therefor these people are not necessarily inadequately housed. Note the interesting logical structure here. You may feel that an igloo in Hong Kong is a poor long-term housing investment but packed snow is an acceptable building material in Canada so you can stop complaining.

Then we come to people living in converted industrial buildings. Again in other cities “loft-style” accommodation is common and accepted so we should accept it here. Indeed Mr Brownlee claims to know of many “unauthorised” high-end loft apartments in Hong Kong. I find this difficult to believe. I am sure many people would be happy to convert part of a factory building into a luxurious “loft-style” apartment. I would quite like to have a go myself. But the idea that large number of people have undertaken this expensive process on an “unauthorised” basis, meaning they can be thrown out at the drop of a Land Office pen, is a bit difficult to swallow. Mr Brownlee notes that such conversions would be feasible in Hong Kong “if fire safety requirements could be met” but the reason why these dwellings are automatically classified as “inadequate” is because the fire safety requirements are not met. People are living in death traps.

Then we come to people living in shared accommodation. The line will now be becoming familiar: in other countries shared accommodation is accepted for “people at a certain stage of their lives” so we should not classify such people as inadequately housed. But we are not comparing like with like here. Shared accommodation is acceptable for people like students, who want something cheap and temporary which is not a home, but as a permanent arrangement for a family it is questionable. If it is affordable the space is going to be tight. If people are desperate they are not going to pick their flatmates. It’s a recipe for misery.

Mr Brownlee now turns to subdivided flats. Curiously we are not offered any international comparisons on this topic, and he concedes that there are “situations in which the physical conditions in these units are not acceptable”. But there are also, mirabile dictu, “good standard subdivided flats that accommodate people who prefer this form of affordable housing to other options”. I think this is hogwash. Mr Brownlee should have been required to provide a few examples before his piece was printed. The majority, the vast majority of subdivided flats are dangerous, squalid and overcrowded. People who prefer them to “other options” are the people whose other options comprise the local fly-overs.

Mr Brownlee notes with approval the government’s line that all other people in private housing are “adequately housed” and notes triumphantly that even the government’s figures (which he disputes as too pessimistic) show that 95 per cent of the population is “adequately housed”. Therefor there is no housing crisis. Actually I rather agree with Mr Brownlee’s further conclusion, which is that the government should not panic and should not reallocate land properly reserved for other uses, but should build properly planned new towns. But there is no reason why proper planning should not be done urgently and attempts to stir up complacency are a public disservice.

What people think is adequate housing will of course change over time. What was an accceptable alternative to a squatter village in the 1950s will be regarded as an insulting suggestion now. Many Hong Kong people have traveled overseas and have seen for themselves that houses in Canada and New Zealand may be built with the same materials as temporary structures here but they are built on a much more spacious scale. It is no longer regarded as a privilege to have three generations of the family sharing 600 square feet. Hong Kong housing is by international standards indecently crowded and outrageously over-priced. Quibbling over definitions to magic the problem away is not going to help.

Read Full Post »

The back page of the Post’s Business section is now the only part of the paper still publishing thoughtful and controversial material, so it seems churlish to complain about any of it.  I have managed to restrain myself in the face of the little campaign being waged against 7-11, which is apparently unpopular in Lan Kwai Fong. Barflies realize that the local bars retail for $60 a drink which you can buy in a supermarket or a convenience store for five bucks. So the more frugal ones are in the habit of tanking up with a few carry-outs on the pavement outside a 7-11 before they hit the hang-outs for big spenders. This is no doubt very upsetting for Fong bar-owners, but as a reason for changing the law on alcohol licensing which affects the whole territory it seems a bit thin, not to say parochial.

More provocative, though, was a long piece this morning by one Peter Guy, who is described as a former international banker. In it he laments that American banks are being subjected to regulation designed to limit risk taking and over-generous salaries. “Arbitrarily limiting bank pay,” he says, “will drive away the smartest and most innovative people away (sic) from finance.” To which I think the shortest answer is: thank goodness. We have seen what the smartest and most innovative people can do and it produced a global financial catastrophe. Bring on the mediocrities. They can hardly be worse.

A somewhat longer answer would be that arbitrarily limiting – or indeed limiting in any other way – bank pay will not drive away the smartest and most innovative. It will drive away the people whose main motivation is greed. There are plenty of smart and innovative people in the world who are not bankers. I realize that people in the business itself need to convince themselves that their extraordinary pay levels reflect some magical quality of which they are the sole owners. But this is nonsense. People choose their careers for a variety of reasons. Perhaps if banks were not besieged by applicants who want to retire as millionaires in their 40s they could recruit some people with more idealistic aims in mind.

And this brings us to the matter of regulation generally, which in Mr Guy’s view is turning banking into a boring dead-end job. There is no mystery about this. Bankers used to be trusted. Mr Guy notes that the public now “respects lawyers more than bankers,” an alarming thought. Your banker used to be someone like your doctor or lawyer, who are bound by a code of professional ethics to put their clients’ interests before their own. Your lawyer’s recommendations should not be influenced by the prospect of fat fees and your doctor is not allowed to prolong your illness to increase his income. Bankers used to be the same. Times have changed. If you read the works of Michael Lewis, Greg Smith or Neil Barofsky it is clear that at least in American investment banks – the ones Mr Guy is worried about – the client is no longer the recipient of faithful service. He is a sheep to be fleeced. Bankers will happily sell you an instrument which is not only not in your interest; it has specifically been designed to fail so that they can make money by betting against it. Caveat emptor, as swindling TST camera shops used to say. Bankers are now regulated for the same reason that the members of other disreputable professions are regulated – because if left to themselves they get up to mischief. This is perhaps not the sort of thing that local bankers wish to read. Other denizens of the Business section might find it quite entertaining, though.

Read Full Post »

Now what have we here, a new youth movement? Well sort of. Weird story in Monday’s Post of an event the previous day: a new youth group had been inaugurated in the PLA naval base on Stonecutters Island (which is of course no longer an island) but only selected media (Wen Wei Po and CCTV) were actually allowed in to watch. There were plenty of other people there though, we were told. C.Y. Leung was there, the director of the Liaison Office was there, along with the Education Secretary and the chairman of the Youth Commission, one Bunny Chan Chung-bun. Mrs Leung, who goes for official purposes by the name of Regina Tong Ching-yee, was also present, and according to the Post’s source — the lucky reporter from Wen Wei — is the group’s “commander-in-chief”.  The organisation behind this happy event, a non-profit company called the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association, had been registered the previous Thursday, which seems to be cutting things a bit fine. This meant, though, that the group’s articles of association were available to reportorial reading, and they included to “encourage the youth of Hong Kong to be aware of their responsibilities and obligations as Chinese citizens.” To join you have to be aged over six. The Post’s report came with a picture of some young things on a bus, wearing a green uniform with a shoulder badge advertising the “Hong Kong Army Cadets”. It seems that little thought has been bestowed on the uniform, which follows the lamentable local practice of including a beret as headgear, despite this titfer being totally unsuitable to our climate. A few other details: Tung Chee-hwa (yes, that one) is the group’s Hon President. Mrs Tung is an honourary adviser, whatever that means. The group has three Honorary Patrons: C.Y. Leung, Liaison Office honcho Zhang, and the PLA garrison commander, Major General Tan Benhong. Bunny Chan of the Youth Commission doubles as the chairman. Lots of top people on the notepaper, then.

The following day, though, it appeared that they hadn’t actually got round to many members yet. The 200 “members” who turned up were not all members, if indeed any of them were, the Post reported. One young person, named Jackie, said he had been recruited via a Facebook posting on a page for people who had been to a PLA summer camp. The recruiting was being done by non-profit group called the Concerted Efforts Resource Centre. The deal was that if you participated in the opening ceremony you could keep the uniform. Another non-member said that 120 people from his school had attended on the understanding that they were spectators. The Post had tried without success to contact Tai Tak-fung, the president of Concerted Efforts. He is, surprise surprise, a businessman and member of the CPPCC … and a director of the Cadets Association.

Clearly this was not quite the sort of public launching that the people behind this interesting effort had in mind. So on Tuesday some explanation was attempted. C.Y. Leung, we were told, had defended the proceedings, saying that it was everybody’s duty to “serve the motherland”, as members of the association had sworn to do. This was the first indication that the assembled non-members, or some of them, had been swearing strange oaths. We were also offered an extended interview with Chairman Bunny. Mr Chan is something of a political landmark: as well as chair of Youth Commission, he is chair of Kwun Tong DB, Jockey Club member, textiles, JP, Bauhinia Baubles in two colours … the usual stuff. This extensive career of social climbing has not taught Mr Chan the art of coming up with plausible excuses. The association chose the PLA naval base for their performance because it was rent-free, he said, and the consequent restriction on press admission was an unfortunate consequence of that. As if an association with CY, the liaison office and a full cast of local sycophants on board could not have found a free playground somewhere to which the public has access.

According to Mr Chan the association was formed by “young people who took part in a military summer camp for Hong Kong youth”. How they managed to recruit him, Mr and Mrs Leung, Mr and Mrs Tung, The Secretaries for Security and Education, General Tan and the Liaison Office godfather he did not explain. Nor did he explain who had paid for 200 uniforms. He did say that “several dozen” people had been sworn in, all of whom were university students. The summer camp graduates had “learned marching skills in the camp and wanted to impart the skills to young people so they could get fit and strong,” said Mr Chan.

The China Daily, meanwhile, put a more explicitly political cast on the matter.”Through drills and training camps, the new voluntary uniformed youth group aims to promote civic awareness,”  it said on Monday, adding cheerfully that this was the city’s “first uniformed youth group to follow Chinese foot drill protocols.”

So what have we here? Well it seems that about 200 young things turned up on Sunday, at least 120 of whom were Form One students where were bussed in to make up the numbers but were kitted out in the group’s uniform. Of the remaining 80 or so some were part of the scenery but something in excess of 36 took the oath, whatever it was. Some of us feel safer not taking C.Y. Leung’s word for anything. Mr Chan did not really explain how the association had brought together a group of young people who wanted to help other youngsters to “get fit and strong” with a band of local patriotic worthies who wanted to use drill to promote civic awareness. So we are I think entitled to feel a certain suspicion is warranted about who wooed who.

However we can now consider the important question raised by all this, which is does Hong Kong need another y0uth group devoted to the joys of foot drill, and if so is this association a plausible way of providing such a thing. Now foot drill, in anyone’s protocol, is a tricky topic. Some people, of whom I am one, quite enjoy doing it. Others, of whom I am also one, enjoy watching it. However apart from its merits as entertainment, foot drill is a dubious area. It was a life-and-death battlefield skill until about 1870. It now has no practical purpose outside itself. Some people say it inculcates discipline and team spirit, though whether these qualities transfer themselves off the parade ground is not clear, and is perhaps unknowable. Some people say that units which are good at drill are also good at fighting, but this is probably because they care enough to want to be good at everything they do. For the organisers of basic military training foot drill has the merit of being easy to arrange, time-consuming and permitting a very high ratio of students to instructors. Nobody has ever suggested that it promotes “civic awareness”. It is, though, surprisingly (at least to me) popular with youth and other uniformed groups in Hong Kong. This covers not only the explicitly paramilitary ones like the Boys Brigade or the Adventure Corps (which used to be a British Army off-shoot) but also organisations devoted primarily to good works like the Scouts, Saint Johns, the Red Cross, and the Civil Aid Services. They all want to do passing out parades modeled on the Police ones, which in turn are modeled on the British Army ones. I suppose this is harmless enough. Certainly it means that the supply of foot drill opportunities for young people probably already exceeds the demand.

As well as foot drills we are also to be offered “camps”, and this brings me to another matter. Frankly if the association is going to stick to university students they can do what they like. Students are adults who can look after themselves. If on the other hand they are going to recruit members from age six up, then other questions arise. When I was a youth leader (no names, no packdrill, but we Did Our Best) we were not allowed out unsupervised until we had done a succession of  training courses spread over two years, with further specialist modules required if you wanted to take the kids away on camp or other residential holidays. Skills are required and problems come up which people outside the education business will not have met before. It is nice to know that these people have the Secretary for Education and the chairman of the Youth Commission on side but is there anyone involved who has actually been a youth leader of any kind before? I know there has been a lot of enthusiasm for flag-raising groups in left-wing circles since the government started subsidising youth groups, but at least they are based in schools, and presumably run by teachers whose skill and morals are subject to some monitoring.

Well the Army Cadets may turn out to be a Potemkin youth group intended only for the entertainment of CCTV viewers, in which case no harm will be done. Certainly the curiously shy approach adopted so far does not resemble a recruiting drive. However, if the association is going to be a full-fledged youth group catering for all ages and both sexes then I hope the organisers will remember Edith Cavell’s immortal words: “patriotism is not enough.”

Read Full Post »

Well if anyone is happy this week it should be those leaders of the Umbrella movement who decided not to take the government up on its offer of an updated report on Hong Kong public opinion, to be supplied if the occupation ended. The government went ahead and produced the report anyway. We can now all read the poor mendacious thing, and see just how worthless the offer was. You can get a better deal in a Tsimshatsui camera shop. The detailed deficiencies of the report have been noted in many places. What seems to have slid by unnoticed is that it ends with a resounding and fundamental lie. “It is the common aspiration of the central authorities, the HKSAR Government and the people of Hong Kong to implement universal suffrage … strictly in accordance with the Basic Law and the relevant interpretations and decisions of true NPC Standing Committee.” No it isn’t. The whole point of Occupy Central was to express dissatisfaction with the prospect of implementing universal suffrage on those terms. The SAR government has, as they once said of the restored Bourbons, learned nothing and forgotten nothing. The speeches, the banners, the writings were all wasted. The government still thinks that public opinion is what it wants public opinion to be, and still thinks that if that is not the case then this shameful fact should not be shared with the Central Government.

The problem with this approach is that it leaves the Central Government with no reliable source of information about what is really happening in Hong Kong. This also became manifest last week when Mr Chen Zuoer (who chairs a think tank but is treated for journalism purposes as a person of some consequence) complained that the Hong Kong education system had been “in a mess” during the occupation. This is nonsense. I work in the Hong Kong education system and I know plenty of other people who do too. The education system functioned pretty normally, apart from those schools ordered to close by the government. Even at the university level there was a week when we were boycotted, slightly higher rates of absenteeism in the rest of the term, but nothing like a mess. Mr Chen went on into even more imaginative territory. “How have the young men, who were babies at the handover, become those on the front line who brandished the UK national flag and stormed into our military camps and the government?” he asked.

This would be a good question. Except that at no time during the three months of Occupy Central could anyone be seen, in the front line or anywhere else, brandishing the UK national flag. I recall a few people found their way into the former Prince of Wales complex, now the PLA headquarters. They were not in the front line of anything, they did not “storm” it, and the building is not in the usual sense of the word a military camp, let alone “camps”. Mr Chen also said that Hong Kong is the “only place in China which doesn’t have a National Security law.” This continues a long tradition of China officials spouting errors about the Hong Kong legal system.

We all know that the Basic Law says: “The Hong Kong SAR shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organisations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organisations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organisations or bodies.” Theft of state secrets is covered by Cap 521 Official Secrets Ordinance. Inciting the PLA to mutiny is covered in the Crimes Ordinance Section 6, and Sedition in Sections 9 and 10 (which admittedly still have “the UK” in places where “China” might be a better choice).  There is also a section on Treason, in which Her Majesty mysteriously still reigns. Actually the only things which are clearly not covered are the ones about foreign bodies, and I suggest the reason we don’t have those is because they would be throughly inappropriate to a cosmopolitan international city and the government is perfectly aware of this.

But there you are. These things come and go. A recent mystery is the disappearance of those writers who observed three months ago, with some condescension, that occupiers needed to learn to compromise, politics was the art of the possible, and perhaps the election procedure which was at the heart of the problem could be improved by tweaking the constitution of the election committee, to make it more representative. It now emerges that tweaking the election committee is off the menu, because the local leftists who would be tweaked into a less influential category will not stand for it. Where are the apostles of compromise noiw that we need them? Nowhere to be seen, so far. Also AWOL we have the worshippers of the Rule of Law. The case of the Chalk Girl, who was thrown into a custodial home without any of the usual formalities after being caught drawing flowers on a wall in washable chalk, was a clear violation of the Rule of Law. I quote from Tom Bingham’s popular book on the subject: Ministers and public officials at all levels must exercise the powers conferred on them in good faith, fairly, for the purpose for which the powers were conferred, without exceeding the limits of such powers and not unreasonably.  I also note that the Department of Justice continues to neglect the law covering reporting of legal proceedings, which was flouted by newspapers who passed on official leaks about the identity and family circumstances of the miscreant.

Then we have the Financial Secretary, who is still complaining about the economic harm caused by Occupy Central. This was an interesting speculation in its day, but its day is over. We have the visitor figures, the retail sales figures, the manufacturing and retail business reports, the Hang Seng Index…   it is now possible for anyone who is not either politically motivated or a complete dimwit to evaluate the economic impact of Occupy Central with complete confidence. There was no economic impact. Period.  I do not dispute the obvious problems caused to some individual businesses, but clearly people who did not buy over-priced handbags in Admiralty were free to buy them elsewhere and did so. I realise it is a good career move to blame Occupy Central for everything from bird flu to global warming but the economic charge is easily refuted. Find something else.

Read Full Post »