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Posts Tagged ‘Hong Kong’

Efforts to regulate parking: a fine mess

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on January 3, 2024| Leave a Comment »

One of Hong Kong’s endearing historical oddities is the continuing presence of a First Class section on trains plying the tracks formerly known as the Kowloon Canton Railway.

There were some fears that when the line was extended to Hong Kong Island and the carriages were replaced, leading to longer journeys and shorter trains, the First Class would disappear. No other MTR line has one. But it is still there. I am a regular, though not entirely guilt-free, user.

And so it came to pass, as King James’s committee put it, that I noticed the fixed penalty for traveling First Class, without first doing a little ritual with your Octopus and a “validation” gadget, had risen from $500 to $1,000.

Is that rather a lot? Difficult to say. My anecdotal impression is that most of the people caught by the MTR inspection teams are either in my age group or mainlanders, which suggests that they perhaps misunderstood the requirements of the system rather than were making any serious attempt to cheat. On the other hand they must also have overlooked the copious signage which the MTR provides.

The obvious standard for comparison is the fixed penalties for other offences not under the jurisdiction of the MTR Corporation. But this presents a rather disorderly scene. There is a tendency for fines to be revised upward occasionally in the light of inflation. Also the more recently imposed ones tend to be bigger.

So smoking in a public or prohibited place will cost cost you $1,500, a level set in 2009. Shopkeepers who fail to charge their customers for plastic bags can be charged $2,000, which dates from the same year. Requirements on mask wearing and public gatherings, introduced during COVID, attracted fixed penalties of $5,000.

Various public cleanliness rules have been with us for a long time, but the penalties were updated last year, and now run to $3,000 for littering, spitting, bill sticking and failure to tidy up after your dog, with $6,000 for obstructing a public place or unlawful waste disposal.

The one anomalous area concerns traffic. Fixed penalties for speeding and other minor offences range from $230 to $1,000, though some of them also come with penalty points. Scandalously the cost of a parking ticket is $320, a level which has not changed since 1994.

I am not a huge fan of the Transport Department but this particular anomaly is not their fault. In 2017 the department proposed to raise the fixed penalty to $500. The government’s guaranteed majority in Legco, generally a compliant bunch, kicked up a fuss.

The department modified its suggestion to $400, but the relevant Legco sub-committee still rejected it, on the grounds that the government “should provide more parking spaces first”.

The then Secretary for Transport promised to continue to “discuss with Legco and stakeholders” what to do about this. But since then it seems that Legco and the stakeholders have stood firm in their view that parking should be subjected only to trivial penalties.

In fairness to some of the Legco members it seems they were concerned about commercial vehicles getting tickets during deliveries or overnight parking. On the other hand there seems no obvious reason why the government should be responsible for providing nocturnal accommodation for trucks and vans, whose buyers should have known in the first place that they would need to keep them somewhere.

Anyway the result of the level of fines is lively discussions on websites where car owners gather, about the attractions of parking illegally and paying the fines as they come in, rather than coughing up $6,000 a month, which is the going rate for a parking space in some estates.

I conclude that the MTR’s fine is reasonable, comparatively, while the level of parking fines is a sick joke. It is unacceptable that humble droppers of litter should be fined $3,000, which is a substantial proportion of many people’s pay packets – or two months’ income if you are trying to live on your “fruit money” – while drivers, an affluent bunch in general, are treated with such deference.

Notice also some mind-blowing figures in the budget. The government expects to collect $1.27 billion in parking fines in the current year. This will involve the issuing of no less than 3.9 million tickets, on average a bit more than four for every registered vehicle in Hong Kong. Clearly as a way of deterring illegal parking the whole system is a lamentable failure.

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Survey of Hongkongers’ emigration views reveals a surge in the urge to leave

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Some people at the Chinese University of Hong Kong are still living dangerously. I infer this from an interesting piece of research, reported in a carefully phrased piece in the Standard.

This opened on what you might call a government-friendly note, announcing an “upsurge of citizens planning to live on the mainland”. This was not quite born out by the ensuing story but of course we must not blame the reporter (Marcus Lam) for that.

His first paragraph put it less strongly: “One in five Hong Kong residents wish to live in the mainland…” Even that may have been pushing it a bit. Later the desire to wander had been diluted to “would like to live in the mainland”, which sounds rather hypothetical. Still, no doubt the original question was in Cantonese anyway.

So, a boost for integration with the Greater Bay Area, exploration of opportunities in the motherland, and other worthy official aspirations, then.

Indeed it is. The number of people with an urge to move north has almost doubled, according to Chinese U’s Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, to 20 per cent. Further paragraphs explored the reasons cited: living costs, poor environment, pricy housing and, for some people, the stressful pace of life in our city.

On the other hand, halfway down the story we came to another interesting titbit, the proportion of the 708 people sampled who reported a “desire” to emigrate, which was 38 per cent, more than nine percentage points up from the figure last year.

Overseas attractions cited: more space, freedom, friends or family members already there, and cheaper living costs. Top dream destinations: UK, Australia, Canada and Taiwan.

The intriguing thing about all this is the surprising way things are moving. Of course the mainland has become a more attractive option as COVID-related travel restrictions fade into the background. The option has also been eagerly pushed as a patriotic choice, good for regional development and career opportunities etc.

Emigration on the other hand has not been encouraged at all, and in many cases involves having your MPF funds stolen. Despite this thousands of people have already done it, and this bunch of ungrateful malcontents are now presumably beyond the reach of Chinese U pollsters.

So it could be considered rather ominous that the number of people dreaming of a semi-detached in Sutton, or some similar distant paradise, is still growing, and now comprises more than a third of the population.

Most of those surveyed thought this was a worrying trend for Hong Kong, and only eight per cent of them had a “positive outlook on the SAR’s long-term development”. However the indefatigable Mr Lam did manage to find an upbeat ending: according to the census people the net population of the city is still increasing by about two per cent a year, with 173,000 incoming migrants easily outnumbering emigrants. One can only hope that all these new arrivals liked what they found.

Really this is a sad story. When Hong Kong was a precarious colony, a third world enclave with high hopes, of course many people thought or dreamed of moving on to somewhere more prosperous.

As those high hopes were realised many people changed their view of the place, and came to see Hong Kong as a city with its own culture and values, in which one might hope to spend a rich and rewarding life, raise kids and participate in a lively community.

In just a few years the picture has changed again. This is now “Happy Hong Kong”, as the official propaganda puts it, where more than half of the population wishes to live somewhere else.

One can sympathise with our leaders, in a way, because it has become very difficult to establish what people think of them. This is, of course, mostly their fault, with news outlets shuttered, inconvenient individuals jailed or exiled, and political positions reserved for government supporters. The chorus of approval is deafening. Are people really happy? It has become very hard to tell.

Indeed, you have to wonder, as the local Red Guards complete their take-over of the Chinese University’s governing council, how long the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies will be allowed to go on conducting surveys which may produce embarrassing results.

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Agnes Chow and the rule of law: pot, kettle, black…

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 7, 2023| 1 Comment »

Our leaders are awfully upset about Ms Agnes Chow. Ms Chow, if you have been abroad for a few days, was a young and charismatic leader of the protest movement when such things were still allowed.

Lately she has been free but on bail awaiting trial on a national security charge. It emerged last week that during this period she was taken by the Nat Sec police on a one-day tour of Shenzhen, featuring visits to a museum about the glories of modern China and to the headquarters of a mainland megafirm. She then penned a letter of confession and apology and, apparently as a reward for this act of contrition, was given back her passport, which she had handed over to the police under her bail conditions.

She then flew to Canada and promptly announced that she had no intention of coming back. Cue expressions of outrage, accusations of dishonesty and scorn for the rule of law, and promises that she will be “a fugitive for the rest of her life”.

The idea that Hong Kong people will be moved to horror and revulsion if somebody stays abroad to avoid a national security trial is a bit of a stretch.

Anyway the multiple channels condemnation has not entirely dispelled the suspicion that the national security people – as opposed to our political leaders, who have little control over them – may not have been entirely surprised or unhappy with this turn of events. Ms Chow would perhaps be a lesser problem for them as a traumatised exile in Toronto than she would be as a popular martyr in a Hong Kong women’s prison.

The strange thing about the official response was the frequency with which the “rule of law” was mentioned. Because what happened to Ms Chow does seem rather unusual by the standards of places where the rule of law is taken seriously.

I am puzzled by the assurance from government apologist and senior lawyer Ronny Tong that there is nothing to see here because bail conditions are routinely a matter for negotiation between defendants and policemen. I can see there may be room for some give and take when the bail is from the police, not a court, but compulsory tours outside the jurisdiction? Written confessions?

Those of us who fear that we may in future need the information will wonder how this actually works. Do the Nat Sec police appear suddenly at your home and whisk you off to the mainland for a bit of brain washing?

Or does the avuncular station sergeant to whom you have to report every week phrase it as an offer: “How would you feel about a free one-day trip to Shenzhen? Of course we’d have to give you your passport back for a while…”

Then there is the letter of contrition and confession. Is this done on police premises and is your presence there voluntary? Is advice offered: “I don’t think ‘misguided’ quite fits the bill; let us use ‘despicable’”?

What, one wonders, was really the purpose of the whole exercise? Chief Executive John Lee’s version is that the police were trying to “show leniency”. But that hardly seems to explain the compulsory tourism, which included, according to Ms Chow, an awful lot of photography. And what use was to be made of the letter?

Actually I am not too concerned about the tourism aspect, as long as the tourist is allowed to return to Hong Kong at the end of it. But if we are going to boast about our enthusiasm for the rule of law then negotiated confessions, with rewards offered – like access to a passport and, in effect, an escape route – should not be on the menu.

Haggling with the accused over her police bail terms is one thing. Eliciting a signed confession is quite another. While this important piece of authorship was in progress, could Ms Chow consult her lawyer? Was a lawyer present at all? Was she given the usual warning about self-incrimination?

If our leaders wish to preserve what they perceive to be Hong Kong’s international reputation as a haven of the Rule of Law, this requires more than ensuring that overseas business bods can get a fair shake in civil disputes with mainland companies. It also requires diligence in the protection of the rights of citizens accused of criminal offences.

Leaving aside the – shall we say unconventional – features of the national security law, further attention might usefully be bestowed on the matters of pre-trial publicity, the right to legal advice, and speed. Consider Judge Andrew Chan, who recently told 47 defendants, most of whom have already been in custody for three years, that to deliver a verdict at the end of their trial he and his colleagues would need “three to four months”, with “no guarantees” that it would not be longer. This is carrying judicial contempt for the value of other people’s time too far. Try harder.

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The “reform” in your pocket

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 23, 2015| 1 Comment »

Whatever you think of the government’s proposed “reform” of the electoral system it is surely depressing to contemplate the barrage of propaganda, argument and lies to which we shall be subjected in coming weeks.

The question to “pocket” or not to “pocket” is one to which there is no single answer. The argument boils down to different predictions of the future. If we do A then X will occurr, if we do B then Y will happen. Or vice versa. But the future is essentially unknowable. Even the predictions of experts, research has shown, do little better than chance. Clearly people are choosing particular predictions for reasons of their own. Careful considerations of fact and logic have nothing to do with it. Many of the predictions insulate themselves from close scrutiny by hiding in metaphors. So Carrie Lam says Hong Kong is “at a crossroads” and could fall into a “political time warp”. Whatever that means.

It is distressing to find academics, who as seekers after knowledge should be aware of its limits, playing this game. And even more distressing to find them lending the spurious gloss of learning to fallacies popular among the local disciples of despotism. Consider the argument, seriously advanced by two of the op-ed page prostitutes last week, that if it can be shown that a majority of the public supports the government plan, then all legislators have a democratic obligation to vote for it. The usual objection to this comes from Edmund Burke: “Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” I am not a great fan of Mr Burke. But it is surely true that the first obligation of a legislator is to do the right thing for Hong Kong, whether that is currently popular or not. Actually this argument is based on a fallacy, because it is far from clear that a majority of Hong Kong people want the reform to pass. Both sides have managed to run polls indicating support for their views. The question implies the answer. Nobody is going to say “no” to universal suffrage or “yes” to fixed elections. But these words describe the same thing.

A more fundamental objection is that the drafters of the Basic Law could easily have devised a system in which all legislators needed the support of a majority, and could then have been expected to vote in the weathercock way which Lam fans now urge. But the Basic Law deliberately sought to have a Legco in which a wide variety of interests and views were represented. Clearly a system with real estate and banking functional constituencies was not intended to reflect the public’s views in a simple majoritarian way. Why should it do so now? Moreover the requirement that a change in the electoral arrangement requires a two-thirds majority in the chamber clearly implies a more demanding objective than majority support in the community. If a “super-majority” of this kind is required we must suppose that the law drafters had in mind a requirement that a proposed change should not just be acceptable to 51 per cent of the population, but should be widely and generally supported. If large numbers of elected members are prepared to vote against it then that requirement has not been met. It is ironic that the people who are most adamant about the need for changes to conform to the Basic Law are most contemptuous of its provisions in their efforts to get the changes approved. The electoral system was designed, we are often assured, to ensure the representation of many groups and interests. Those who despise sham elections are a substantial group. The system works!

Actually there is a fundamental hypocrisy in the argument that legislators should follow public opinion, because the people offering this do not apply it elsewhere. If legislators were mere implementers of the popular will they would long since, to take a simple example, have voted C.Y. Leung out of office. Mr Leung’s lack of popularity is so well-known that some supporters of the government reforms use his prospects of reelection as a threat. If we keep the present system we will have Lufsig again! I have not seen any criticism of legislators on this score from the people now urging the democratic need for a vote which goes with the public will. It is an argument of convenience, wielded when the polls go one way and dropped when they go the other. Those offering it do not even accept the obvious corollary that if the polls fail to show a clear majority for the “reforms” then all conscientious councillors should vote against them.

Another argument we are going to hear too much of is that the government’s proposals are “a compromise”. This is a word which has a long history in this context. all of it depressing. A compromise is a situation in which two people with different ideas or purposes make some roughly equal sacrifice to reach agreement. So if I offer you $20,000 for your car and you demand $40,000 then an agreement to pay something in the region of $30,000 can be regarded as a compromise. As far as political reform is concerned many compromises have been offered. Some people, having seen one compromise rejected, have offered another one. The one thing which all these suggestions have in common is that they have been rejected. Some were rejected on the grounds that they would violate the Chinese constitution, implausibly depicted as a virgin for whom this would be a new experience. Some were rejected on the grounds that they violated the Basic Law. Some were rejected on the grounds that pro-government legislators were no longer in the mood after Occupy Central. Some were rejected on the bizarre basis that they had not been greeted with great enthusiasm by the pan-democrats.

So there has been no compromise. The consultations were as bogus as the envisaged elections. Nothing was changed. There have been no concessions. Mr Leung may be right in supposing that there is no prospect of concessions in the future. Certainly there have been none so far. So the people who are still calling for compromise are out of time. Compromise is not on the menu. What you are asking for is surrender.

Finally a word for those unfortunate Post reporters whose task it is to find anonymous supporters for the government line. I understand people might not wish to have their names attached to this, but please keep the vague characterisations plausible. We were told the other day that the upcoming plan had been endorsed by a “top diplomat in Hong Kong”. Bullshit. There are no top diplomats in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is not a capital and does not have embassies. Consuls-general have limited functions and diplomacy is not among them. Being a consul-general is an honourable pursuit and no doubt some of the younger ones will go on to higher things but they are not, during their time here, top diplomats.

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