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Posts Tagged ‘Hong Kong’

A yacht economy, certainly, but no subsidies for rich men’s toys please

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

That pitter patter of little feet you heard after the policy address came from a herd of hogs heading for the public money trough, which naturally follows the announcement of a new hub. Consider the government’s newfound enthusiasm for the “yacht economy”.

The policy address had barely finished echoing down the corridors of power before a spokesman for the Boating Industry Association was pushing a list of “supporting facilities” which visiting yachts would require and which, it seemed, he expected the government to provide at the taxpayers’ expense.

According to a report in the Standard the association’s chairman, Lawrence Chow, clearly had a longer list in mind but started with “landing facilities, public restrooms and waste collection stations”.

Over this issue hangs a small technical confusion. The government, and the Standard’s headline writer, referred to “anchorages”. Mr Chow referred to “berths”. These are not the same thing.

An anchorage is a place where a yacht can drop an anchor. It needs a lot of water space round it for this and communication with the shore requires another, smaller, boat … or for the really affluent owner a helicopter. This is not a great boost for tourism. Also you would not wish to be on an anchored yacht in a typhoon.

A berth is a place where the yacht can tie up next to a jetty or pier, and its occupants then merely have to step ashore or, if the yacht is really big, walk down a gangplank. This is obviously much more convenient and places which take the “yacht economy” seriously all have facilities of this kind.

Most of the government actions announced so far consist of removing bureaucratic obstacles. Yachts will, for example, no longer be required to have a reserved berth before they arrive. Skippers will be able to take the exam for local waters remotely. And so on.

We have not seen so much detail about how the proposed “five new anchorages” will be produced, but I take it what what this actually means is five new marinas.

Clearly there will have to be some official contribution in the shape of space: a patch of water on which a marina can be built and a patch of land next to it for the necessary “facilities”. There is no reason why the operator of the marina should not provide everything else at its own expense, or indeed pay a reasonable fee for the land and water. After all users of the marina will be paying. Operating a marina is a commercial enterprise.

If visitors require public restrooms and waste collection stations it will be in the interest of the operator to provide them, and the resulting increase in custom will provide a reward.

There are two reasons why the government should be extremely careful to avoid the appearance that it is subsidising this activity. The first is that it would be undignified, indeed obscene, for a government which cannot afford to provide its elderly citizens with a decent pension to use public money to subsidise millionaires’ recreational activities. Or to put it in words of one syllable, rich men’s toys.

The second reason is that it would contrast rather fiercely with the government’s indifference to the possibility that Hong Kong people who are not millionaires might enjoy boating activities. Walking along the edge of Tolo Harbour is a pleasant experience but it is also frustrating. There is sunshine, there is a gentle breeze, there is a large expanse of more or less clean water but … no boats.

Ma On Shan, Taipo and Shatin are large populous towns on the edge of the harbour and the grand total of boating facilities offered to their inhabitants is … zero. There is a Taipo Boat Club but since the construction of the Tolo Harbour Highway it has been exiled to Tai Mei Tuk, which is miles away.

It would be nice to have a “yacht economy”. Could we not have a “dinghy economy” as well?

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Interesting ‘alliance’ seems to comprise a think tank worker with many hats

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on August 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »

An interesting creature has come lumbering across the local landscape. Readers, meet the Quadripartite Alliance for Harmonious Employment Practices. I shall follow the local newspapers reporting sightings of this creature and refer to it in future as the QAHEP.

I first spotted the QAHEP in the print version of the Standard. It was squeezed into the end of an article mainly devoted to increasing unemployment figures. The QAHEP, however, was not interested in unemployment, it was interested in the minimum wage for overseas domestic workers, and wanted it frozen, on the bizarre grounds that this would be fair to civil servants.

The online version of the paper offered a whole article on the QAHEP’s gripes, which included domestic workers taking out loans using their employer’s address – an odd complaint since the system requires them to live there and nowhere else – and “job-hopping”, or what people outside the domestic wage-slave system call moving to a better job.

The organisation had, it said, conducted a survey of 392 employers, 93 per cent of whom had experienced helper debt problems, and 72 per cent had been harassed by debt collection agencies. I am afraid I approach this sort of survey with a certain amount of suspicion: small sample, no information on how they were selected or how the questions were phrased. Was this, one wonders, the entire membership of the QAHEP?

Certainly not. The QEHAP’s full name is the Quadripartite Alliance for Harmonious Employment Practices Limited, and it is a company limited by shares, not a members’ club. I erroneously supposed that it might be an amalgamation of four clubs claiming to represent domestic employers. It is a sign of the times in which we live that we have no room for one independent trade union but four employers’ associations in the same space would be perfectly acceptable.

However there is no sign in the company records of anything like this. The QEHAP did have a previous existence as Organization of Enhance Harmonious International Employment Relationship Limited. Clearly harmony is a preoccupation, and so is long names.

This may be the fault of spokesperson Chrystie Lam. Foraging on the internet one finds Ms Lam engaging in a press conference last year (on helper debt problems already) and described as the founder both of the QEHAP and of the Coalition of Home Service Sustainable Development.

Ms Lam also appeared as spokesperson for the coalition in a press conference in June, in which Sustainable Development, like Harmonious Employment (though the QAHEP was not mentioned), apparently depended on further restrictions on domestic workers. They should not be allowed to borrow money at all in the last six months of their contract, Ms Lam suggested.

Readers may at this point perhaps be thinking that Ms Lam must have had a really bad experience with an overseas domestic helper to be so preoccupied with the (undisputably genuine) problems associated with the arrangement.

But it appears actually that her engagement with the matter is professional. In her journalistic output (of which there is quite a lot) Ms Lam is described as “director of labour and welfare affairs, Chinese Dream Think Tank”.

Chinese Dream is chaired by Kacee Ting Wong, who describes himself for press purposes as “a barrister, part-time researcher of Shenzhen University Hong Kong and Macao Basic Law Research Center, and chairman of the Chinese Dream Think Tank.”

The tank in turn describes itself as “ a non-profit Hong Kong-based organization working with skilled volunteers, experts and professionals who are passionate about telling the China story.”

The direction in which the tank rolls can perhaps be deduced from the fact that recent targets have included George Soros, and Amnesty International. A further clue, perhaps, is this vitriolic (and far too long) piece on the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, published in 2023.

Well Ms Lam, like the rest of us, has the right to freedom of speech. May I respectfully suggest that this would be better exercised if she chose one hat when exercising it and wore the same one all the time? Employment harmony and sustainable development are desirable objectives, but if you are pursuing them on behalf of China Dream you should say so.

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Is writing on toilet walls still a thing?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Without commenting in any way on the merits of the case, the news that a young man had been arrested and charged with writing a seditious message on a toilet wall was … pleasantly nostalgic.

Writing on the walls of public toilet cubicles used to be a widespread hobby and some walls in popular … establishments were virtually covered in writings and drawings. Well prepared graffiti artists had pencils or pens; the rest of us just scratched.

Of course many of the results lacked artistic quality and most of them were obscene. Among the more printable was the almost universal assurance that “Kilroy was here.” A variety of theories are offered about who Kilroy was and why he was commemorated in this way.

I also recall coming across “Clap your hands and jump with joy; I found this wall before Kilroy” to which someone had added “Kilroy built it.”

Public toilets in the more academic parts of Oxford sported graffiti of a more learned kind. Many of them were in Latin; a few in ancient Greek. Some users spent their toilet time composing alphabets: A is for Anabasis, B is for Binomianism, C is for Critical Theory and so on.

Inevitably, academics have swooped. Selection of findings here. Sample discovery: “Females discussed body image more than males did. There was also a difference in focus: females listed their height and weight, whereas males listed their penis size.”

A more civilised habit, in private homes, was to decorate your toilet walls with examples of entertaining newspaper errors of the “Headless body found in topless bar” kind. Many of these came from The Guardian, which was so notorious for the laxity of its proofreading that Private Eye called it The Grauniad

It must be said, however, that in the vast majority of English toilets the graffiti, if there were graffiti, were fairly crude and disgusting. However this was a result of the fact that the toilet cubicle was private. You could do what you liked in there and nobody would know. At my boarding school there were actually crowds in some cubicles at break times, of smokers.

So I am a little concerned at the news that someone has been arrested and charged for defacing a toilet wall. The question is how did they catch him?

I assume … I hope … there is no question of CCTV in the cubicles at Hong Kong China City, where the deplorable deed is alleged to have taken place. I realise we are on camera a lot these days. City Super actually has cheerful notices saying “Smile! You’re on CCTV”. Shoplifting is a serious matter and I yield without complaint the right to televise the avocados.

The toilet is another matter. No doubt writing on the walls is only one of the many ways in which the privacy of the cubicle can be abused, but privacy there should nevertheless be.

Other theories are also a bit worrying. Does Hong Kong China City expect its toilet attendants to inspect a cubicle after each visit to make sure the walls have not been defaced? Or do the national security cops keep an eye on suspected subversives by poking a periscope over the partition from the next cubicle?

No doubt the ensuing trial will be a big attraction to the media and all will be revealed in due course. Meanwhile the story also has a serious side. The suspected scribbler could face seven years in jail if his work is considered seditious.

As a police spokesman memorably put it: “doing with a seditious intention an act or acts that had a seditious intention is a serious offence”. Also it’s a national security offence, so even if your only audience was a toilet wall you don’t get bail.

Kilroy was here, and has moved to Canada.

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So soft resistance is not a legal concept? Why this is a worrying thought

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 4, 2025| 1 Comment »

One does not wish to seem ungrateful, but the enduring mystery of the hour – exactly what do officials mean by “soft resistance” – has not been much clarified by the Secretary for Justice, who offered a definition last week.

Soft resistance, said Paul Lam, has three main elements: making false or misleading statements, expressing them irrationally with emotional bias, and having the intention to create misunderstandings about the Chinese or Hong Kong governments and their policies.

This looks like an extension of the law on subversion, already unmoored from its Common Law attachment to the provocation of violence. If this were the case it would still leave a variety of tricky questions: for example, would sincere belief in the truth of the statement complained of be a defence?

But Mr Lam scotched this notion by adding that “methods of soft resistance may not always be illegal, but that did not mean they did not harm society.” He also said that although the term was hard to define the government would not use it arbitrarily. ”You can say it is a political term,” he mused.

“Not all issues in society should be addressed by legal means. [Legal means] are also not always the most effective way of handling [matters],” Lam said. This brings us to a rather alarming question: what non-legal means is the government proposing to use?

A few reminders: we have repeatedly been assured that freedom of expression continues to be protected in Hong Kong. Both the Basic Law and the National Security Law reiterate the point, often also made by officials.

Anyone who complains about apparent infringements will be referred to the relevant part of the Civil Rights Ordinance, which permits exceptions to protect — put briefly — reputations, public order (including national security) and public decency.

But there is one condition attached to these exceptions: they must be “provided by law”. That means that if a person engages in soft resistance, deplorable though that may be, using methods which are not illegal, then he or she is exercising the right to self-expression and is entitled to Mr Lam’s protection while doing so.

The answer to soft resistance which does not break the law is of course soft repression. This could take the form of counter-arguments, pointing out untruths, denouncing irrational language and correcting misinterpretations of government policies.

This should not be too difficult. The government has a whole department devoted to putting its version of events before the public. RTHK is at its service and most of our surviving media take a pride in doing more than justice to the government line.

The answer to erroneous speech is, or should be, correct speech.

Yet somehow I do not think this was on the mind of the numerous senior officials who thought a 28th anniversary speech was a good opportunity to denounce the evils of soft resistance and promise to extirpate it.

The Secretary for Culture, Art and Tourism, for example, promised to step up scrutiny before allowing funding or the use of venues for shows. Other issuers of permits of various kinds are apparently putting their shoulders to the wheel. Of late we learn that restaurants can lose their licences, social workers and teachers can be drummed out of their professions. Some people cannot run a bookshop without entertaining a stream of visitors from government departments, citing anonymous complaints about hygiene, fire safety, business regulations or whatever.

We may have a government which, as Mr Lam said, welcomes criticism, but it is not very good at looking like that.

The problem with this sort of thing is that after a while it makes people suspicious. Maybe the venue you wanted to hire really does have an air conditioning problem. Who knows? The Lord moves in mysterious ways and routinely refused to discuss individual cases.

Recently the Inland Revenue Department resumed sending me annual tax returns. In normal times I would put this down to a lucrative one-off freelance gig in 2023 after which the employer very properly filed the usual form reporting how much it paid me. As it happened, though, this sudden renewal of interest in my finances coincided with several stories about news media and individual reporters being asked for large tax payments they did not owe. So an innocent bit of bureaucratic routine looks … fishy.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Pandas are pretty, but do not expect them to solve our financial problems

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on February 7, 2025| Leave a Comment »

It appears, though the numbers published vary a bit, that our government is bleeding money on such a scale that the reserves will be run down in five or six years, placing us in the same boat as all those debt-addicted governments we have been looking down on.

Of course this will not happen. Economies will be made, new sources of income discovered, the real estate racket revived. Or something.

A quick perusal of the pro-government papers suggests that thinking among supporters runs along some ominous lines: tinkering with the $2 travel concession, selling parts of public housing, the MTR and the airport, a new sales tax, automatic car parking penalties administered by artificial intelligence…

Some odd omissions: nobody wants to increase salaries or company tax; few takers for blanket reductions in civil service salaries.

No interest in my two favourites: first abolish the whole “Political appointment” nonsense. There is nothing policy secretaries have to do these days which could not be done by the permanent secretaries of their bureaus, and in most cases done better. Second, put up parking penalties to the same level as those for such trivial offences as spitting on the pavement or travelling in First Class without beeping your Octopus. This would involve multiplying the present parking fine by a factor of three, or six, depending on which current Mickey Mouse offence you were catching up with.

Well these are hard times for a Financial Secretary. Obviously the public coffers would benefit if the economy was prospering, but this is difficult to arrange.

Let me, though, help in the discussions now taking place behind the scenes by eliminating one alleged possibility: the “panda economy”. Some people are putting an awful lot of hope in our rising panda population. One writer said that Hong Kong was enjoying “pandamania”. This sounds suspiciously like pandemonium.

I have nothing against animal tourism. Indeed when travelling I am a sucker for animal experiences of all kinds. I have petted dolphins in San Diego, fed deer in Nara, cuddled koalas and fed kangaroos in Brisbane, charmed a pigeon in Perth and enjoyed a whole flock of sociable doves in Dalian. My most memorable experience in Canada was when I was selected, as the guest who had come furthest, to feed a bear as big as me. This was safer than it sounds: you do it by poking a hose through a chain link fence.

This enthusiasm for animal experiences is probably a result of being brought up in an age when attitudes to such things were different. When I was a kid feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square was a regular treat and vendors had stalls selling split peas for the purpose. This is no longer allowed so Admiral Nelson is no longer up to his knees in pigeon poop.

In those days London zoo offered rides on camels and elephants. Nowadays they only offer donkeys. Other zoos were quite happy to have visitors getting up close to harmless herbivores, which only happened if you had something to offer. Dried pasta was a popular choice. So I fed giraffes, elephants and a variety of variations on the antelope. This sort of thing is no longer allowed.

Certainly you will not be allowed any meaningful interaction with the panda population. Corporate Hong Kong seems to be doing its best to make up for this. My petrol station has provided panda tissues and a panda camping light (?). The local supermarket is offering panda buns – white with black spots. But these efforts are likely to wilt when the public discovers that pandas do not really perform. They sit and chew a bit of bamboo. If you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky they just sit.

So I fear having pandas is not going to inspire any great improvement in local productivity. Judging by their notorious lack of interest in sex it is not going to do much for our distressing reproduction rate either. And the idea that people will come to Hong Kong from miles away to look at a pretty but rather boring bear seems a bit of a stretch.

Also our leaders should be careful what they wish for. The panda may not do much for tourism but it is a potential gift to political satirists. Fat, lethargic and confused about sex: could that be the Hong Kong government?

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Substandard flats are ‘targeted for eradication’ … and their occupants?

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

The government has put out some details about its plan to eliminate substandard miniflats. But a question remains.

According to a newspaper contribution by the relevant minister there are believed to be 110,000 sub-divided flats – where an already miniature flat is further split up for multiple occupation – in Hong Kong.

It is estimated that 220,000 people live in them. This is a suspiciously round number. It appears that it is the consequence of a finding (wild guess?) that the number of people living in each tiny flatlet is on average two.

No doubt this is a difficult area and two seems a plausible number for a very small space. On the other hand before the public housing system really got under way there were similar estimates for the number of people per squatter hut. And they turned out to be much too low.

Never mind. Let us go along with the official numbers. There are 110,000 miniflats accommodating 220,000 people. It is further supposed that about 80,000 of these little homes will be able, with some work, to conform to official standards in the matter of space, windows, plumbing and such like.

The other 30,000 or so will, in the Housing Secretary’s rather chilling phrase, be “targeted for eradication.” She supposes that this will leave 77,000 units still on the market after mandated improvements.

This also seems a bit optimistic. If you are the owner of a sub-divided flat facing a large bill to bring your sub-units up to official standards, there are alternatives. One obvious one is to dismantle the subdivisions and sell or rent the flat in its original intended form. Or you can unload the whole arrangement to some hardened criminal who will regard the remote possibility of a large fine with equanimity.

Still, again, let us go along with the official figures. We now come to the unanswered question. There are 30,000 flats to be “eradicated”. They will be home to 60,000 people. Where are all these people supposed to go?

We have already been told that they will not be going to public housing, unless they arrive at the front of the queue just in time. Officials are apparently worried that there may be a rush to occupy really squalid spaces in the hope that inhabitants will be wafted swiftly into public housing.

Well whatever the merits of that theory, only 40 percent of miniflat dwellers have even applied for public housing. So we have 36,000 people for whom the government apparently has no plans at all.

There is an ironic history here. During the 1980s and 90s the government took a great pride in the number of overseas housing people who came to Hong Kong to look at local public housing efforts and learn from them.

But the big attraction was not the multi-story tower blocks which were then growing like mushrooms all over the New Territories. Lots of places had experimented with public housing in tower blocks, with mixed results.

The big attraction was an innovation called a Temporary Housing Area. The idea behind these places (pic here) was that the government provided a floor and roof for a single-story structure and the occupants put in the walls. Water, showers and toilets were provided centrally and residents cooked on bottled gas.

This was an outstandingly cheap solution and had obvious attractions for places which had more space than we do. Hong Kong being Hong Kong there were recurring reports of local bandits monopolising the wall-building, but apart from that the only drawback was that the area was always only temporarily available. The government had other plans for it, usually but not always for housing.

This was nobody’s idea of paradise but it met a need. The nearest thing to it now seems to be what officials call “transitional housing”. Web site here. It is usually run by NGOs apparently. However only 3,000 units are currently under construction so those 36,000 people will have to wait.

I am sure the government’s intentions in sorting out the sub-divided flat situation are good. It would be nice, though, if the people running housing policy tried harder to look as if they recognised that the occupants are people, whose happiness is the objective of the exercise.

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Political appointments have become a failed effort to meet discarded objectives

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Did you notice the odd thing about the two latest appointments to the upper ranks of the government? Both the two women appointed to secretarial posts were career civil servants, who were recruited to the Administrative Officer ranks in (coincidentally) 1989.

This is not quite the way these things were supposed to work. Before 2002 all secretaries (that is, heads of bureaus, not word processors) were career civil servants who had worked their way up the bureaucratic pyramid.

In that year the then Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, introduced what was then called the Principal Officials Accountability System, under which heads of bureaus would be appointed, not by the existing promotion mechanism from within the civil service, but instead by him, from outside it.

These people would fill Exco (which roughly corresponds to the Cabinet, in the US system), and would be answerable to the CE who appointed them. They would not be on civil service terms and their appointments would expire at the end of the CE’s term of office.

There was little public discussion before this brainwave was launched on us, so there remains a good deal of ambiguity about what it was intended to achieve. What you might call the “realist” interpretation was that Mr Tung believed the traditional civil service was not responding to his wishes and instructions as enthusiastically as he might wish.

There may have been something in this. Mr Tung’s background as the patriarch of a family shipping company was perhaps a poor preparation for dealing with civil servants who were used to being given a task and then being left to sort out the implementation by themselves.

The “idealist” interpretation was that the new system would subject the administration of Hong Kong to more critical appraisal and monitoring. The new secretaries would be ostensibly political creatures who could deal with Legco, explain the policies they were pursuing in public, and could be dismissed if they erred.

Even in its earliest incarnation this system did not live up to expectations, whether realist or idealistic. Having an obedient Exco did not help Mr Tung’s problems in government, and three years later he resigned with diplomatic health problems.

The new secretaries proved not unlike their predecessors. Even in the first batch there were five civil servants. The government’s relations with Legco became more contentious as it aligned itself explicitly with the DAB and Civic Party against the others.

“Accountability” did not ensue. The CE was reluctant to admit an appointment was a mistake and appointees were reluctant to resign. Secretaries who had committed egregious blunders were hounded from office by public opinion, more or less as they always had been.

In 2008 the system was renamed and extended by the next Chief Executive, Donald Tsang. Under the new “Political Appointments System” the existing secretaries were reinforced with undersecretaries and assistants. Launching the innovation the then Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland stuff said the existing secretaries would continue to study and design government policies in conjunction with the Permanent Secretary (senior mainstream civil servant) of their bureaus. The new deputies would liaise with legislators and provide policy input. The assistants would help bureau chiefs to reach out to the community.

Officials also said the new system would preserve a “permanent, professional and politically neutral civil service”, while nurturing talent which would be needed for the introduction of universal suffrage, then considered a likely future prospect.

The two new layers of appointees, with the associated fleets of drivers and personal secretaries, would cost $60 million a year.

Which brings us to the outstanding question. Now that this scheme has demonstrably failed, and many of the objectives which motivated it have been abandoned, would it not be a good idea to save a lot of money by abandoning the whole thing?

The system has not succeeded in introducing a wave of talented outsiders to the top of the administration. There are now 15 secretaries, of whom nine are career civil servants. Three of the others came from government-funded hospital or school backgrounds and one is an apparatchik of the FTU, the pro-government simulated trade union. There are only two genuine outsiders.

Since we no longer aspire to political pluralism the idea of a politically neutral civil service has become meaningless, and indeed civil servants are no longer expected, according to the latest version of their code, to be impartial and objective. Chief Executives have many problems, but passive resistance from the civil service is clearly not one of them.

The system has not nurtured any conspicuous political talents, and indeed the selectors now appear to prefer to seek candidates for office in the upper ranks of the police. There is no need for an extensive herd of specialists to liaise with Legco, which is expected to do as it is told, as indeed is the general public.

In these straitened times the Political Appointment System is, at best, an unaffordable luxury. At worst, an expensive attempt to put lipstick on a political pig?

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