tim's experiment

Reporting from China is still a funny game. People doing it can travel much more than they used to when foreign correspondents needed permission to leave Beijing. There is much more access to mainland media, including a lively if heavily censored internet. Chinese people are, I suppose, much more outspoken than they used to be about “sensitive topics”. Yet still you get the impression that in reporting about China a great deal of speculation is perching on a rather skimpy foundation of established fact.

The irritating consequence of this is that some items appear in many stories as catch-all explanations for almost everything. The latest addition to this list goes by the label of “China’s once-in-a-decade leadership change”, or some shorter version of the same thing. This has been cropping up in news stories for the last 18 months and apparently has a couple of months, at least to go. China’s political system does not have the calendrical regularity of the American one, so we could still be reading about the upcoming leadership change next year.

The interesting thing about the leadership change is that it can be adduced in a speculative, non-verifiable sort of way to explain anything. It appears in stories about crackdowns and loosening-ups, about officials being prosecuted and officials getting away with it, about economic initiatives and about economic non-initiatives. It adds nothing to these stories. It is included, I surmise, simply to tell readers that the reporter concerned is an observant and omniscient China hand, who knows what is going on and has read all the latest rubbish produced by his peers.

Of course we cannot object to people writing about the leadership change itself. After all this is an important and interesting topic by any standards. Unfortunately as the number of people actually making the decision is in single digits it is quite likely that they will succeed in keeping their collective thoughts to themselves.  Under these circumstances it is as well to bear in mind that you can produce a pretty accurate weather forecast by saying that tomorrow’s weather will be the same as today’s.  The new leadership will be pretty much like the old one.

Boring.

Sorry.

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Let us consider, as calmly as we can, whether it is a good idea for the Chief Executive – any Chief Executive – to turn up at the scene of accidents and disasters and “take charge”. Our present leader has not been in the job very long and has not had time to give much thought to this matter. Perhaps we should not blame him if he errs on the side of hyperactivity.

Now, there is certainly a role for a regional or national leader in moments of crisis. There may be a need to override departmental boundaries, to abandon cherished practices in haste, to knock heads together and ensure that large egoes are subdued by a common  purpose. There may also be a need to seek external help. But these are things which can, and perhaps should, be done by phone.

The idea of the CE, or his counterpart in other places, actually arriving at headquarters and taking charge is rather more controversial. No CE since the hand-over has had any relevant expertise. Mr Leung’s many qualifications do not include any tuition or experience in maritime rescue, traumatic surgery or post-catastrophe counselling. As a controller of rescue operations he would be as much use as any citizen pulled in off the street for the purpose. I hope he has the sense to leave the decision-making to the professionals, but that does not entirely eliminate the drawbacks of his presence. If the CE, or some other bigwig, turns up on occasions of this kind then he or she has to be met, greeted, catered for and found a place to hang out. He will wish to be briefed, and protocol will probably require the briefing to be done by some very senior person who might better be employed on more urgent matters. The over-eager leader will also probably bring the political press pack in his wake, and something will have to be done about them.

Then there is a danger that underlings will try too hard to be seen to be doing their bit. Consider the news, after last week’s tragedy, that seven seamen had been arrested. It transpired the next day that this was in fact the entire crew of both the boats involved in the collision. This was clearly an abuse of power. Arrest is a major infringement of the rights of the detained person and it should be reserved for occasions when said person is plausibly supposed to be guilty of a crime. It should not be deployed on a basis of “arrest them all and sort out the legal details later”. Clearly on the night of the accident the police had no idea who, if anyone, might be supposed to have committed a crime. Accidents happen. Lay persons obstinately suppose that if there is a fatal accident then someone must be proportionately to blame. People in the law and order business should know better.  Actually the police do not have a great deal to do with marine disasters. The firemen do the rescue work and the Marine Department does the inquiry. Well we all want to look busy.

No doubt Mr Leung will reflect on these things. Naturally one wishes to show one’s concern and sympathy for the victims of unhappy incidents. On the other hand the appearance of a large number of high-ranking amateurs was one of the factors in the Manila bus tragedy, to which we feel so superior. A good compromise is to turn up a bit later when the situation has stabilised and the urgent work has been done. Senior colonial officials used to turn up in their wellies the following morning. Nobody complained that this was too late.

We can come to a crisper conclusion about the merits of turning up with a senior official of the mainland’s liaison office. I do not understand how anyone could have such a tin ear for Hong Kong politics that he thought this would go down well. Mainland practices for dealing with accidents and disasters do not inspire confidence. People like to think that some decisions are made in Hong Kong and the sort of decisions which this situation required are on that list. If Mr Leung is going to turn up at important occasions with a mainland official at his side people will begin to wonder who in this partnership is Ratman and who is Bobbin. I am not a huge fan of Mr Leung but the urge to make comforting noises in moments of tragedy is a nice urge. It would be a pity if Mr Leung’s observations on such occasions met with the response that we want to hear from the organ grinder, not the monkey.

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One of the easy ways of writing a column or a think-piece is to announce that some people are pursuing a new idea, and then spend a few hundred words explaining why the idea is crazy. If nobody happens to have announced a crazy idea recently, you can make one up.

This explains the recent rash of writings explaining why agitating for independence for Hong Kong is a bad idea. Actually, nobody has been agitating for independence for Hong Kong. This obstacle can be overcome by combining some academic musings on the distinctive qualities of Hong Kong culture with the fact that some people wave the old colonial flag, or even the Union Jack, at demonstrations. Neither of the two groups involved in these phenomena have any connection with each other. The academics do not demonstrate, the demonstrators do not read learned journals. But taken together they can launch a thousand words.

Now let us take the flags first. People do not wave British or colonial flags because they wish Hong Kong were independent, or because they wish it was a colony again. They wave them because the flags symbolise Hong Kong’s distinctive history, values and traditions. What other flag could you use for this purpose? The Bauhinia eyesore was designed in Beijing.  No doubt the old colonial flag is better for this than the flag which still symbolises Britain. But the Union Jack is much easier to get hold of.

Now let us take the cultural thing. Hong Kong people do not want Hong Kong to become just another mainland city. This is not because they are unpatriotic but because mainland cities, on the whole, are squalid, corrupt and lawless. This does not amount to a wish for independence. The whole point of “one country two systems” is that Hong Kong can be different. The local problem is that the left-wing fraternity, having brainwashed themselves into believing there is a “China model”, now want to brainwash the rest of us into believing it too.

The point which is lost in this talk of independence is that there is a great deal of variation in the way relationships between regions and central governments are handled. In federal countries the regional governments have their own legislatures, elections and leaders. In more centralised ones they may have an appointed representative of the central government. In some places there are calls for these arrangements to be changed. A region, or some people in it, may look for independence, as in Catalonia and Scotland. Or they may have no aspirations to statehood, but wish to preserve a characteristic language and culture, as in Wales and Brittany. There is a continuous spectrum between direct rule from the capital and outright or virtual independence. People may legitimately hope to move along it in one direction or the other, without automatically being accused of wishing to go to the extreme.

The problem for Hong Kong is that we were promised a high degree of autonomy. There are too many people around who would like to see that promise broken, for one reason or another. So Hong Kong people are sensitive. They do not like to see mainland officials turn up at the scene of local disasters. When top national leaders instruct the Hong Kong government to pull all the stops out in rescue operations, people do not think “how nice of national leaders to worry about us”. They think “this has nothing to do with defence or foreign affairs; mind your own business”.

Of course (platitudes, platitudes) Hong Kong cannot wish the mainland away and sail off by itself. On the other hand there is no need for us to delude ourselves into thinking that the benefits of interaction with the mainland are a benevolent gift for which we should be grateful. Chinese citizens are allowed to visit Hong Kong and do business here. That’s a favour? Chinese citizens in Hong Kong are allowed to do business in other parts of their own country. Thanks very much.

The increasingly frantic efforts to persuade Hong Kong people to love their leaders are no doubt in preparation for another big disappointment when the next instalment of electoral reform comes along. I do not accept that the democrats were punished in the polls for doing a deal with the liaison office over the last electoral changes. They were punished because they did a bad deal. They were so excited to be doing a deal at all that they left vital details up in the air. So instead of a great step forward we got another variation on elections designed by people who don’t like elections.

In the end China is an authoritarian state which tries, despite its size, to be centralised. Under these circumstances one cannot hope, as one can in a federal state, that the central government will control itself because it knows its place and accepts the limits on its powers. A region which wishes to remain autonomous to any extent will have to be constantly alert to infringements. Those who are alert will be accused of all sorts of things by political purveyors of the “did you enjoy it?” school of rape counselling. But still. The price of freedom is constant vigilance, as a great man once said. Or as another great man said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

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It is disconcerting for military historians to find the Duchess of Cambridge in the news. There are two egregiously excessive and unjustified equestrian statues in London. One commemorates the Duke of York (1763-1827: there have been many others. The title is traditionally bestowed on the King’s second son). This is the one who in the old song marched them up to the top of the hill and marched them down again. The other commemorates the Duke of Cambridge (1819-1904) another Royal sprig, who servcd without distinction in command of the Guards and Highland Brigades in the Crimea, was made commander-in-chief because of his aristocratic status and spend 39 years in that post opposing military reform of any kind. I must in fairness add that he did found the School of Military Music.

Now the title belongs to the young man formerly known as Prince William, who became the Dook on the day of his wedding. He also became Earl of Strathearn and Baron of Carrickfergus. These Royal types need large business cards.

Anyway the fuss about the Duchess stems from some topless pictures, snapped with a lens the size of a bazooka while she was staying in a remote house — according to some accounts a chateau — in France. There is no suggestion that she was doing anything controversial, pornographic or whatever. This has provided an opportunity for Brits to pose self-righteously, for journalists to add to the already excessive mountain of words devoted to the late Princess Di, and for spectators in more boring countries to revel in a “Royal scandal”. And meanwhile the happy couple departed for a world tour, winding up in the Solomon Islands where lots of ladies appear topless and think nothing of it. Indeed the Economist found a news picture in which two breasts (not the Duchess’s) were clearly visible at the welcoming reception.

This all strikes me as a little weird.  I can remember a time when female breasts were rarely seen. Boys who were curious had to seek out the National Geographic magazine, which occasionally covered topless Stone Age tribes, or nudist magazines in strange European languages. When the first bikini hit the beaches the appearance of the naked female navel in public was a sensation.  Times have changed. There is nothing noteworthy about the Duchess sunbathing topless in the South of France. This is what everyone else does down there. In many European cities a sunny day brings out the bosoms in public parks. The media are a riot of naked nipples, although not in Hong Kong, and as for the internet … So what’s the fuss about? All right the lady is a princess but if her bare Bristols are seen in public her husband is not going to turn back into a frog. There has never been a problem with men going topless. Isn’t it time for a bit of equality here?

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People who work on Law Reform Commission panels deserve our gratitude and respect. Poring over the law in search of deficiencies is painstaking, poorly rewarded and often frustrating, because the resulting suggestions too often languish unimplemented.  Having said which, such panels often seem to be in danger of a problem known in anthropological circles as the Firehouse Effect, because it was first identified in studies of American fire fighters. What happens is that a group of people meet over and over again, discuss matters endlessly with each other, and gradually diverge from the mainstream until their conclusions become outlandish, if not outrageous. With all due respect to the panel who have just produced some recommendations on sexual offences, I do think they should perhaps have got out more often. I realise that this particular topic is difficult to float as a theme for casual conversation, but still…

The recommendations, according to Tuesday’s newspapers, are supposed to make the law “gender neutral”. To this end the offence of rape will be extended to include oral and anal penetration as well as the traditional mode. I have two objections to this. The first is that rape is a highly emotive word and it is better to resist its extension as much as possible. No good is done to anyone by the extension of the label (in California) to cases where the woman was eager and willing but had had a few drinks, or its extension (in Sweden) to cases where the woman, having consented once, claims that in a second sitting she was half asleep. I do not suggest that oral or anal penetration without consent should be legal, but if the legislature wishes to make them an offence it should come up with a new label — Unlawful Penetration, or something — not confuse everyone by extending rape into areas it does not now cover.

My second objection is that the law cannot be made gender neutral if biology is not gender neutral. Rape is committed by a man on a woman because that is the only way the equipment works. You cannot put a bolt into a nut unless there is a nut. Being penetrated anally is I am sure extremely unpleasant. I did for a while suffer from a medical problem which required doctors from time to time to explore the passage concerned. Although this was of course with my consent I found it extremely humiliating and painful. I felt emotionally bruised for hours afterwards. But painful though the sensation may be, the fact remains that people do not feel the same way about the anus as they do about the vagina. The vagina is the seat of the Love Goddess, the badge of womanhood and the cradle of new life. The anus is just an exhaust pipe. A man who is anally assaulted is also spared the agony of wondering if he has been impregnated. Consequently, it seems to me, the rape of a woman by a man is rightly considered in a class of its own and the pursuit of gender equality in this particular area is misguided. It also has odd consequences. Having decided to protect male anuses, the panel then had to come to the rescue of female ones. Having taken under its wing, as it were, two of the three orifices usually used for this kind of fun it then felt unable to leave out the third, so the mouth also becomes a potential rape site. I fear the panel has confused “distinctions based on sexual orientation”, which it rightly dislikes, with distinctions based on biology, which are necessary in some places.

These are matters on which honest people can no doubt disagree. I am not so sure about the panel’s views on photography, which seem to verge on lunacy. Apparently the panel considers it “unsatisfactory” that taking photographs of the view up ladies’ skirts (without their consent, I presume, though this point was not mentioned) was not in itself an offence. People caught in this deplorable hobby were perforce prosecuted for things like loitering. The panel proposes to solve this problem by making taking pictures a form of sexual assault. I’m sorry, but this is really stupid. Assault is a venerable concept and it has always involved some contact with the victim. Assault by looking or photographing is a contradiction. Also although the motive may be sexual the assault is not. Unless the lady concerned is a very liberated dresser the picture shows nothing which you cannot see on any public beach. In fact it is a bit of a puzzle why people take the whole matter so seriously. The “victim” is not only unharmed but usually unconscious of anything happening. The picture does not include her face so there is no question of a “saw you on Youtube” moment coming later. Of course we must discourage this sort of thing but it hardly justifies the enthusiasm of Associate Professor Eric Cheung Tat-ming, of the HKU Law persuasion, who  was reported as rejoicing in the fact that this would be classified as a sexual offence so “offenders’ identities would be available in the sex offenders’ register”. Would they indeed? This is just the sort of thing which gives sexual offenders’ registers a bad name. The purpose of such a register is to enable employers in appropriate categories to exclude from their service people whose record suggests they cannot be trusted to work with children and other vulnerable people. It is not supposed to be a mode of punishment and it is a serious deficiency in such a register if it includes large numbers of people whose identity is not relevant to its purpose. People who like upskirts pictures have a taste which I do not share and people who take such pictures are no gentlemen. But there is no reason to suppose that they are a threat to anyone and no justification for branding them as dangerous. Law professors, on the other hand, need to be leashed, if not muzzled.

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Everyt day we Post readers are treated to a sort of star letter: one reader’s effort which is singled out by getting a two-column headline and a blue background. Monday’s effort, by a Mr CB Lee, picked up a point made in an earlier news story. This stated that nine out of ten problem gamblers who sought help from a Caritas centre for such people were “debt-ridden”. This, said Mr Lee, came as no surprise. Well, I suppose people with a gambling problem tend to have debts, generally speaking. But Mr Lee said the original report did not get to the root of the problem, which was “the abundance of illagal gambling and the aggressive and glitzy marketing by Macau casinos”. Mr Lee concluded that the Caritas report “misses the point and did not really add value to the debate.”

This seemed a mite unkind, so I dug out the original story to see where Caritas had gone wrong. The story quoted a spokesman for Caritas, one Joe Tang Yiu-cho, as saying that “nine out of ten of the gamblers who sought its help were heavily indebted, compared to (note to subs: that should be “compared with”) only three to four out of ten a few years ago”. Mr Tang attributed the change to the appearance of companies willing to make loans quickly and with minimal or no collateral. He also noted that the Jockey Club’s “net margin” — which is what the club calls its profit from gambling — had increased by six per cent in the last financial year.

What are we to make of all this? Clearly Mr Tang is right in supposing that something has changed in his clientele. A jump from 30 per cent to 90 per cent does not look like a random fluctuation. On the other hand Mr Tang’s version of the cause must be considered a speculation. There are other possible explanations, after all. Anyone with a gambling problem is going to run into debt sooner or later, because in the long run the house always wins. Maybe people are waiting until later before seeking help. Or perhaps the public’s perception of what constitutes a problem is changing.

We can, though, I think safely exclude the explanations offered by Mr Lee, which are that gamblers are borrowing from illegal bookies or casinos. They of all people know how slim are their chances of getting their money back. No doubt gamblers can get loans through more traditional channels. I imagine serious gambling addicts are quite ingenious at conning people into financing their habit. But people who lend money have every incentive to be careful.

What really bothered me about Mr Lee’s offering, though, was his complaint about the abundance of illegal gambling and casino ads. Hong Kong does not suffer from an abundance of illegal gambling. It suffers from an abundance of legal gambling. Addicted gamblers do not care who is on the other end of their bets. Every estate has a betting shop. Losing money could not be easier. You can even do the whole thing by phone. Moreover the glitzy advertising by Macau casinoes, wherever it is, is totally outshouted by the free advertising provided by Hong Kong media for the Jockey Club.

In the newspaper which featured Mr Lee’s letter there were no advertisements, glitzy or otherwise, for Macau casinos. There were ads for the usual things: expensive watches, expensive flats, expensive clothes, expensive schools, but not a casino in sight. On the other hand there were two whole pages devoted to horse-racing, the Jockey Club’s traditional way of parting fools from their money, and a further whole page devoted to soccer, the new attraction for eager losers. The television companies are even more generous. Whole race meetings are televised live from nose to tail. Further hours of air time are devoted to advice for punters and post race analysis. News bulletins on the relevant days inform us that “now it’s time to check your Mark Six numbers” as if any viewer who had not bought a ticket in this particular lottery was some kind of freak.

Mr Lee thought that “gaming advertising” should be tightly restricted. Somehow I don’t think the relentless plugging of the Jockey Club was what he had in mind. He lives in Happy Valley. Perhaps he works there too.

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What a glorious confusion now reigns over the subject of brainwashing! This was an almost unheard of word in Hong Kong two months ago. Now the government stands accused of wishing to brainwash students, the protesters are accused of already being brainwashed by sneaky democrats, religious schools are being accused of brainwashing their pupils. This trend reached its glorious apogee on Saturday when Pierce Lam (whose name, significantly, is almost an anagram of Senile Crap) announced in the letters page of Pravda that most of the population of Hong Kong had been brainwashed by the colonial government. Many of the protesters are too young to have had anything to do with the colonial government so this represents a considerable achievement on someone’s part.

Now let us be clear about one thing. Brainwashing, in the strict sense, was an early invention of our beloved PRC. People with erroneous opinions where locked up together. They were then placed under tremendous pressure to change their views. This came not only from the guards, but also from their fellow prisoners, who could increase their chances of release by developing a fanatical enthusiasm for the correct view. Under these circumstances many people did appear to change their opinions, and for a while exaggerated accounts circulated of the effectiveness of the process. It later emerged that most of the people subjected to brainwashing would revert to their former views – though no doubt with a good deal of caution over expressing them – soon after they emerged from the process. If they managed to escape from the People’s Paradise they tended not only to revert to their previous views but also to be extremely critical of the brainwashing process, which was after all a clear violation both of human rights and the rule of law.

Nobody has been doing, is doing, or wishes to do anything like this is Hong Kong. To that extent all this talk of brainwashing is grossly exaggerated.

Having said which, there is a kernel of scientific truth in the idea that biassed national education will dispose children to believe things which most of us do not accept as true. In the first place, although telling people something does not necessarily lead them to believe it, it does make it easier for them to believe it. This can be demonstrated in simple experiments. Your brain finds it easier to handle concepts with which it is familiar. If you tell people every morning that Big Brother Loves You, a proposition for which there is no other evidence, they will not all believe it. Probably most of them will not believe it. But they will find it easier to believe it, so more people will believe it than would have been the case if the class spent the first five minutes of every lesson reciting the Lords Prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance. Readers can probably confirm this from their own experience. I, for example, was subjected to a good deal of Christian education. This did not, in the end, make me religious. But I do find it easier, having heard the story so often, to believe that God spoke to Moses from a burning bush than to believe, as Mr Mitt Romney does, that the Angel Moroni gave some gold tablets to Joseph Smith in 1823.

Religious schools are I suppose intended to produce believers in the religion concerned. But it is a commonplace observation that this does not always happen. Many people who attend religous schools do not emerge as believers in the religion concerned – or in many cases in any religion. In a sense, if you are a parent who does not believe in that religion than sending your child to the school is a gamble.  Probably it increases the chance that your kid will eventually become a Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist or whichever brand the school purveys. On the other hand this may happen anyway. So let us say that the chances of your kid getting religion increase from 5 per cent to 10 per cent. You may think that is worth it if his chances of getting into university increase from 15 per cent to 30 per cent. After all getting religion is not so bad. Many parents, I think, have an uneasy feeling that ethical education is not their forte and a religious school will be good at this.

Now parents who wish their kids to grow up as fanatical super-patriots can increase the chance of that happening by sending their offspring to Left-wing schools. As with religion there are no doubt many pupils in Left-wing schools who do not pick up the intended message and some who react vigorously against it. You get improved odds, not certainty. The question is not whether this option should be available but whether it should be compulsory.

Teachers (of whom I am still one) will wonder at this point whether their efforts are to be exploited. Behind every lesson is the unstated but deeply felt notion that this stuff is important, useful, and true. Attempts to insert things into the curriculum which lack one or all of these characteristics make us uncomfortable. One wishes to do a good job. That usually means that at the end of the lesson the students believe what they have been told. If honesty requires us to announce at the beginning of the session that the content of this class is a load of politically-motivated twaddle then learning is probably not going to take place. Teachers who reflect on the material they are putting over will realise that much of it is rather arbitrary and local. We teach reading and writing in accordance with the local conventions. Systems for reading and writing vary. Mathematics also has an element of arbitrary local choice in it. We do not have to count in tens, hundreds and thousands, but we do. This was more obvious when I was at school because we still had to learn that there were 12 pennies in a shilling, 16 ounces in a pound, eight furlongs in a mile, and so on. So in a sense the teacher is offering as essential and permanent what is to some extent contingent and local. This is only acceptable if there is a clear consensus in favour of this content as useful and truthful. The trouble with the idea of a “China Model” is that it doesn’t represent a consensus at all … even in China. Teaching children the values we all share is one thing. Teaching them the values that officials would like us to share is another.

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