The only part of the recent Legco election which cheered me up was the success of Ms Vivian Kong.
This is not because I warmly support her political views. I know nothing of what she thinks, but my rule in these matters is that the vetting and selection of candidates is now so effective that anyone allowed to run can be considered someone I would not wish to vote for.
On the other hand Ms Kong’s gold-winning Olympic efforts tickled the memory because I, too, was once an épéeist.
My career was much shorter and less glorious than hers. I was recruited at short notice by the Lancaster University fencing team because the league in which they played (North Lancashire had a fencing league? I was surprised too) required every team to include one épée person.
I had no relevant experience. Perhaps they thought someone who was used to waving an oar about would be able to handle the épée, which is heavier than the other two sport fencing swords, and has much simpler rules.
I expected to be massacred every week, but in practice it appeared that many of the other teams had a similar shortage of épée specialists, so I did reasonably well apart from the rare occasions when I came across a real épée person who knew what he was doing.
The following year such a person appeared at Lancaster U so I retired to do other things. But fencing can be recommended. I enjoyed the ritual side of it, and for a military historian it is a treat to practise a skill which was cherished by soldiers for centuries.
Ms Kong says she has learnt a great deal from her career as a professional sportsperson. She is a bright spark, has two real degrees and is working on a third. But the track record (if you’ll pardon the phrase in this context) of sporting superstars in politics is not impressive. Huge if rather patchy survey here.
Clearly winning an Olympic medal requires an impressive amount of dedication and toil, typically spread over years. Putting the legendary 10,000 hours in to acquiring one highly specialised skill must teach something. But how much of that is transferable?
It appears that a lot of former sportspeople have reached, and no doubt loyally served their respective communities in, what you might call the foothills of politics. In small countries they may hope for ministerial posts connected with youth or sports. But getting on the podium is much rarer.
There are examples of political gold medal winners, though none of them actually managed an Olympic gold as well. There is Lester Bird, a distinguished cricketer who became prime minister of Antigua and Barbados, or George Weah, who after playing for many of the best football clubs in Europe became president of Liberia.
Combat sports have a mixed record. Khalimaagiin Battulga, a star of Sambo (nor did I; here it is) later became president of Mongolia. The boxing champ who went on to become president of Uganda was the appalling Idi Amin.
Hong Kong citizens hoping for a livelier Legco will note with approval that Ms Kong has at least excelled at something outside of politics, and hope that she does not drop her current day job.
An ominous trend in Hong Kong politics is the rise of the full-time politician who does nothing else, and indeed in some cases has never done anything else.
Looking at the list of Legco candidates, for example, of the 161 hopefuls 28 described themselves only as “district councillor” and 16 offered only “lawmaker”. Some of the jobs offered were also political (NPC member, trade union official) and some of them did not look as if they would take much of the candidate’s time (company director).
More than a third of those actually elected did not have a “day job”: ten district councillors and 23 “lawmakers”. We must suppose that some of the others will decide to give up, or become part-timers, in the professional activities they have declared, once the rather generous remuneration provided for Legco members hits their bank balances. Other pursuits may be difficult to combine with regular meetings. Lam Ming-fung, for example, is a “vessel captain”.
So I suppose that in the end quite a lot of our representatives will be spared any contact with life as it is lived by the average voter. This is perhaps a pity when it seems the average voter was not terribly impressed by them.
One of the interesting consequences of the way the law has worked since 2020 is the arrival in Hong Kong prisons of many inmates rather different from the usual inhabitants. A large influx of young, articulate and educated criminals whose offences are, if not explicitly political, well off the usual sex, violence and greed track has shone light into some neglected corners.
Practices hallowed by decades of history have been challenged, with interesting results.
The latest episode in this series stars Ms Chow Hang-tung, who has been enjoying correctional hospitality since 2021 and is currently awaiting trial on national security charges.
We may note in passing at this point an unintended consequence of the way national security cases work. Those convicted are not eligible for the usual discounts for good behaviour. So they can enjoy attempts to stick it to The Man without the apprehension which keeps conventional prisoners quiet – that The Man will, if provoked, perhaps find ways of sticking it to them.
Ms Chow’s complaint, which was aired in the High Court last week, is that prison clothing policy is discriminatory between the sexes (or if you prefer genders) because male prisoners are allowed to wear shorts in the summer, and female prisoners are not.
The resulting hearing was a good illustration of the way in which legal reasoning and conventions can take us a long way from the messy reality of the real world.
Of course nobody can stand up in court and say that Ms Chow is not really motivated by the minor unpleasantness of being trapped in long trousers through another of Hong Kong’s sweaty summers. She has noticed that the Hong Kong authorities are exploring every legal avenue in their determination to give her a hard time and is retaliating as best she can.
Nor would it be polite for counsel for the government to admit that the ban on shorts defies common sense, and is the legacy of decisions made decades ago when ideas about dress were rather different and sexual discrimination had not been invented. In those days respectable women did not wear shorts in the street while uniformed men had a summer get-up involving shorts.
The uniformed types have pretty much dropped shorts, but in civilian contexts women now wear them all the time. Ms Chow’s suggestion is nevertheless unwelcome, because it comes from her. Good order and discipline in local prisons is endangered if the Correctional Services Department is coerced into changing a rule by an uppity inmate.
So we can expect to see the government fight this all the way to the Court of Final Appeal, just as it did Leung Kwok-hung’s challenge to prison haircut rules.
One can only sympathise with the legal eagle, senior counsel Mike Lee, in charge of defending the prison uniform rules. Mr Lee argued that the ban on shorts resulted from consideration of a “basket of considerations” arrived at in decades of departmental consideration and experience. This had revealed, according to a CSD psychologist, that there were “inherent differences” between men and women. The women, consequently, did not in the department’s view wish to be allowed to wear shorts.
The saga will no doubt continue. I would respectfully suggest that Mr Lee drop the argument that uniform wearing is an essential part of maintaining “custodial discipline”, because this leaves him open to the question why custodial discipline in male prisons appears to be compatible with allowing shorts as an option.
I was also not impressed by the analogy to school uniform which, in Mr Lee’s view, “fosters a sense of learning” as “education is the prime objective”. Few educators subscribe to this view of uniforms, which are generally defended as concealing differences of wealth among students and fostering esprit de corps.
In any case some of the most successful education systems, like those of Finland and Denmark, do not require school uniforms at all. I note in passing that some of the most successful prison systems do not require uniforms very much either.
Another point I have some difficulty with is the suggestion that the department is defending the rule on long trousers because the prisoners like it. I know and admire quite a lot of correctional people – the department was at one time a hotbed of enthusiasm for the Great Highland Bagpipe – and I acknowledge the idealism and humane sentiments which animate much of the department’s work. But a prison is not a democratic institution and the whole concept of punishment involves NOT giving the prisoners what they want, which in most cases is to go home.
I generally hesitate to say anything about what appears in the Chinese-language press, because it reaches me only second-hand, and in translation. But recent commentaries in Ta Kung Pao have me puzzled.
I do not participate in controversies about China, for or against. Such matters are not very interesting and in any case, as a marooned Brit, none of my business. But I thought I understood how the game was played.
Take the row about Huawei and its exclusion from the business of providing telecom networks in Western countries. What we might call the Trumpeters’ tune is that there is no such thing in China as a private company. Whether or not Huawei wished to tweak its software to facilitate spying, it would have no choice.
But this is a smear peddled only by China haters and stirrers-up of trouble who wish to start a new Cold War. Actually Huawei is free to make its own decisions and would not dream of tricking its customers in this way.
A similar division of views hovers over the Belt and Road scheme. Critics say this is a cunning ruse through which China can extend its ownership and control over vital links in the world trade network.
Not at all, explain the scheme’s defenders. Belt and Road projects are win-win affairs which benefit everyone concerned: both the trading countries at each end of the road and the country which actually contains the port, railway, canal, or whatever. They are a benevolent donation to the common good by the PRC, and the eventual ownership of the items constructed will normally be vested in the country in which they sit.
Then there is the matter of the national security law. When this first appeared many critics (I rather think I may have been one of them) complained that there was a shortage of precise definitions of the new offences created. Not at all, we were assured. The descriptions of the offences were perfectly adequate and nobody who had read them carefully would be in any doubt as to what was intended.
All three of these comfortable thoughts have been thrown into doubt by the Ta Kung Pao leader-writers, who are generally assumed to be privy to the truth as senior Hong Kong government people see it.
The news which stirred all this up was that Hutchisons, generally regarded as a Hong Kong firm though most of its business is elsewhere and its registration is in the Cayman Islands, was selling 40 ports to an American consortium led by BlackRock. Among the ports in question are two next to the Panama Canal, about which President Trump has been complaining bitterly.
Hutchison’s explanation was that this was a purely business decision, basically to get out of the overseas ports business; the group will still own ports in Hong Kong and mainland China. In view of the danger of tariff wars shredding the international trading network this is not an ostentatiously surprising decision.
It did not, though, go down well with Ta Kung Pao. Hutchisons’ move was denounced as a “betrayal of all Chinese people”, an act of “spineless grovelling”. Former Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying asked “Do merchants have no motherland?”
Well no doubt the whole thing would have looked more attractive if President Trump had not so rudely called for changes in the Panama Canal Zone in the first place. On the other hand if Hong Kong companies (we’ll leave the Cayman Islands out of it) are expected to tailor their activities to PRC foreign policy objectives, how can we be expected to believe that mainland firms do not?
As the row rumbled on the deal was stigmatised as sabotaging the Belt and Road initiative. This is not what we used to be told about the Belt and Road at all. Is Ta Kung Pao now of the view that the purpose of the Belt and Road scheme was to ensure that no container could be unloaded anywhere in the world without China’s approval and participation?
And as the writers warmed to their task we came to the inevitable ingredient in any political storm these days, national security. Was the sale of the ports a national security crime?
Well one rather hopes not. The crimes created by the national security law are secession, subversion, terrorist activities and collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security. Clearly the first three are not relevant, and it is difficult to see how the fourth could be applied to selling a business asset for a realistic price to a foreign buyer. It may be a source of pride and pleasure for Chinese people to know that one of their number is a global presence, but it can hardly be a national security necessity for someone with a Chinese name to own a port on the other side of the Pacific.
A couple of thoughts might soothe. The first is that ownership of two Panama ports does not confer any power at all over the canal, which remains the property of Panama and under the control of the Panama government. The ports are actually outside the canal proper and their main function is to deal with Panama’s own imports and exports. President Trump does not seem to know this, among many things.
The second is that the new American owners will not be under the same pressure or expectations which local patriots would like to exert on Hutchisons. Much has been made of the fact that the chief executive of the buyers, BlackRock, is an old friend of Donald Trump.
Well all these plutocrats go to the same parties, no doubt. But American business is not inhibited by concerns about the national interests of the USA, or indeed anywhere else. Ethical standards have gone down the tubes over the last 50 years. Money trumps morals every time. Ports controlled by American companies will be ruled by pure greed, unsullied by politics. Doesn’t that feel better?
It is nice to know that the Secretary for Security reads Ming Pao. Think of the alternatives. Sadly however the secretary, Chris Tang, often does not appear to enjoy his reading.
The last item to arouse Mr Tang’s ire was an op ed on the latest legal instalment of the Yuen Long incident, by law professor Johannes Chan. “The author, who is a law professor, has once again published a biased article,” Mr Tang complained, “deliberately ignoring the fact that some white-clad people have already been brought to justice, misleading readers with a warped perspective that the court has made an unfair judgment regarding either party, shaking the public’s confidence in the court system, and undermining the rule of law in Hong Kong, which must be condemned.”
Mr Tang went on to say that the afterword, commonly added to opinion pieces these days, saying there was no intention to incite hatred of the government, did not discharge the obligation on the editor to ensure that his publication was “fair, objective and unbiased.”
He concluded “It is hoped that Ming Pao will not continue to be exploited by people with ulterior motives to use this platform to spread confusing remarks, to poison the community, and to create conflicts.”
Now I propose to ignore some of this. Opinion pieces are not supposed to be fair, objective and unbiased. They are expressions of opinion. Moreover if Mr Tang wishes to campaign with any credibility for unbiased media he needs to avoid the impression that he has some unique problem with Ming Pao.
I shall also pass by the bit about white-clad people being brought to justice, which strictly speaking is entirely irrelevant. Injustice to one defendant cannot be balanced by justice to another.
More interesting is Mr Tang’s claim that the offending piece misled readers into the “warped perspective” that the court had made an unfair judgment, and that this had “shaken the public’s confidence in the court system”, thereby undermining the rule of law.
This is, alas, nonsense. The rule of law has never required the public to believe that judges are infallible. In 1793 the then Chief Justice, Lord Kenyon, said that “In the hurry of business, the most able Judges are liable to err.”
More recently we can consider the view of Lord Denning:”We do not fear criticism, nor do we resent it. For there is something far more important at stake. It is no less than freedom of speech itself…Those who comment can deal faithfully with all that is done in a court of justice. They can say that we are mistaken, and our decisions erroneous, whether they are subject to appeal or not.”
Or there is the rather more literary, oft-quoted, opinion of Lord Atkin (more famous as an innovator in business law), which goes in part “The path of criticism is a public way. The wrong-headed are permitted to err therein… Justice is not a cloistered virtue; she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even if outspoken, comments of ordinary men.”
I infer that Mr Tang is offering the courts a protection which they have never sought and do not need. If a judge makes a statement about the law it is open to criticism and comment. Similarly if the judge is sitting alone and has to make findings of fact, they may also be scrutinised. The rule of law is fortified, not weakened, if the activities of the courts can be discussed and debated.
He may also care to consider that freedom of the press is not furthered by threatening words from officials in the law and order industry, and if the government wishes to offer a running commentary on media output this might be better left to the information specialists.
Mr Tang’s repeated insistence that appending “this piece is not intended to inspire hatred of the government,” or words to that effect, is not an effective bar to prosecution, is unnecessary. We all know that. It’s like starting a novel with the usual stuff about “no resemblance to real persons, living or dead”. This will not keep you out of the libel courts if your lead villain is an erratic politician called Ronald Frump.
Mr Tang may be a happier reader if he bears in mind the wise words of the American judge Robert Jackson: “The price of freedom of religion or of speech or of the press is that we must put up with, and even pay for, a good deal of rubbish.”
And if tempted to rush to the defence of some official masterpiece he might also bear in mind another observation from the same judge: “Who does not prefer good to ill report of his work? And if fame — a good public name — is, as Milton said, the “last infirmity of a noble mind”, it is frequently the first infirmity of a mediocre one.”
Well I don’t suppose that it has anything to do with me, but we now have a response to the idea that planning to veto the government’s budget was not a crime, but a legitimate constitutional recourse outlined in the Basic Law. This comes in a China Daily piece by one Richard Cullen, an adjunct professor (part-time – don’t call us, we’ll call you) in the HKU Faculty of Law. Mr Cullen concedes that the idea that articles 50-52 authorise refusal to pass the budget as a way to secure the resignation of the Chief Executive is “accurate, as far as it goes.” But, he goes on to say, this ignores the “wider contextual considerations”. It is “methodically literal”, and seeks to establish a “legalistic, rarified zone” for interpretation of the law. In my experience “legalistic” is a word used for legal arguments which lead to destinations the user does not like. A “rarified zone”? The law is often described as an artificial system of reasoning intended for the particular purpose of resolving disputes between citizens and between citizens and the state, in which the pursuit of fairness and justice has to compete with the need for predictability and consistency. The interpretation of statutes is a suburb of legal reasoning and has its own rules, in which the “wider contextual considerations” do not feature very much. We must, though, note that Mr Cullen seems to spend more time writing for the China Daily than he does teaching law, and he clearly has no problem avoiding legalistic formal language in his usual output, which comprises rousing denunciations of American foreign policy. His exploration of the context leads to some strange places. Lawyers in the common law system have, he says, often ignored context, with sad results. We then explore the history of labour and factory legislation in the US and UK. This was often, Mr Cullen says, and I agree, drafted with scant realistic consideration of the context. Legislators tended to treat labour relations as a voluntary contract between two equal parties, and ignored the reality that the employer’s need for another worker was usually less pressing than the applicant’s need for a job. Bad law and injustice resulted. But this does not help Mr Cullen’s case with regard to interpretation of the Basic Law at all. The ignorance of context was in the original labour legislation. Judges interpreted it as it came to them. Historically judges have often lamented that the effect of the legislation they were enforcing was unjust in some, or even most cases. But changing it was a matter for parliament, not something to be done in court in the name of “context”. Mr Cullen observes, correctly, that the Basic Law does not authorise the full “Laam gau” programme, and also – less relevantly – that Yash Ghai, writing in 1999, thought the budget veto procedure might be used to resolve disputes over taxation or public spending, not to seek major changes in government policy. This last prediction betrays a curious lack of imagination. After all the budget veto procedure would be a major step into unknowable territory, involving serious hazards for both sides. Legislators first have to risk their seats; the risks to the Chief Executive come later but are as serious. The spectacle of a legislature and executive at loggerheads would be unbecoming. This is the nuclear option of political conflict. It would be surprising if it were used for anything other than major disputes over policy. Mr Cullen thinks that the procedure was not intended to allow a “very powerful indirect means of coercing radical policy changes.” What else could it be for? We then move on to the context in detail, and here I have to say that I begin to wonder if Mr Cullen is a person from whom I would wish to buy a used car. Because he says, “the LegCo was rendered inoperable because of massive, riot-driven vandalism for about three months from July 1, 2019”. And that is not true. In the first place, a legislature cannot be rendered “inoperable” just because its usual meeting place is closed, for whatever reason. A council meeting is not like a heart transplant or a Catholic wedding, which can only take place in a building designed and dedicated for the purpose. In 1789 the French National Assembly famously responded to a Royal eviction by meeting in a tennis court. In 1941 the British House of Commons had its usual home vandalised by the Luftwaffe. Politics continued in alternative venues until the building had been restored, which took until 1950. In the second place, the Legco was not rendered inoperable for three months because it customarily takes a long break in the summer whether its chamber is usable or not. After July 1 the chairman simply cancelled the last meeting of the session and everyone went on holiday. If Mr Cullen is unreliable on the fiddly detail he is not much better on the big picture. The events of 2019 were an “insurrection”, he says, and adds with approval a quote from Henry Litton dubbing it an “insurgency”. This is a gross abuse of language and also rather insensitive. Insurrections and insurgencies involve the use of lethal force to overthrow the regime. It is not a happy experience and usually involves the shedding of much blood, most of it innocent. It is the sort of thing now being endured in Sudan, Burma and San Salvador. Highjacking the word to describe our street scuffles is an insult to the sufferings of people in such places.
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?
The third runway system, the latest expensive adornment to Hong Kong’s international airport, came into full-time operation this month. This should be distinguished from the third runway itself, which opened in 2022.
During the ensuing two years one of the older runways was closed for “maintenance”, which might arouse suspicions that the extra runway was perhaps not urgently needed.
Nevertheless the opening of the new system was greeted with unrestrained joy. “The three-runway system has been hailed as a ‘game-changer’ for the city to enhance its status as an international aviation hub,” reported the Post from the official opening.
A China Daily writer described the new system as “more than a runway; it’s a bridge to new economic vistas that will invigorate the city’s future.”
Certainly it’s more than a runway. It could be regarded as a suitable commemoration for the Capital Works Fund, a curious financial arrangement inherited from the colonial era.
The basic idea was that income from land sales could not be depended on, and should accordingly not be relied on to cover the government’s running costs. Instead it should be put in a special pot, to be drawn on only for infrastructure projects which would be one-off bursts of expenditure.
This bit of fiscal puritanism may be compared with the present arrangement under which the proceeds of the sale of bonds (which will have to be repaid some day) are treated as income. But let us leave the financial technicalities aside. Basically we were presented with a government looking at a large pile of money which could only be spent on infrastructure projects.
Call me a cynic if you will, but I would expect that to produce a growing enthusiasm for expensive and elaborate projects, with an increasing likelihood of white elephant production. Bridges, railway lines, reclamation of whole islands … Is this starting to look familiar?
All of these projects will be defended as contributing to Hong Kong’s future prosperity and status as some kind of hub. Let me dispose of two points before we get to the airport itself.
Firstly, as Kuper and Symanski point out, economists firmly believe that people respond to incentives, and economists certainly do. No plan for a sports facility or festival ever comes without a glowing prediction from an economist of the future wealth it will generate for the hapless taxpayers who are invited to pay for it. So it goes also for infrastructure projects.
The third runway can probably claim some sort of record in this area, as it was justified by a prediction of $455 billion in economic benefits … spread over the next 50 years. You can see that far ahead? J.K. Galbraith said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
Secondly let us be wary of a promised “boost for tourism”. If you are a tourist-attractive island which can only be reached by the use of a small and uncomfortable ferry (as the Isle of Sky once was) then building a bridge will attract a lot of the formerly discouraged and will boost tourism (as it did).
If you are a coastal European city with the usual kit – city walls, cathedral, town hall, famous man’s birthplace – and cruise lines are by-passing your pathetic port, then constructing a cruise terminal may bring a new flood of people who used to miss you.
On the other hand if you are getting a million tourists a year, and your airport can handle two million, then upgrading it to a capacity of three million is not going to make the slightest difference. People are not going to visit specially to see the new airport. It is a means to an end.
And this brings us to the impact, or lack of impact, of the new runway. In 2015 an assessment of the situation was produced for planners and legislators. Keeping the airport as it was (Option A) implied a maximum annual capacity of 57 million passengers and 4.4 million tonnes of cargo. Making improvements but not extending them to a third runway (B) could raise this to 77 million passengers and 6.1 million tonnes. Option C – the third runway – would increase capacity to 102 million passengers and 8.9 million tonnes.
How much capacity did we actually use in 2023, the last full year? Ah, 43 million passengers and 4.2 million tonnes. In other words, comfortably within Option A.
The Airport Authority asserts that usage was depressed during COVID and will eventually recover. But is this inevitable, or even likely? Views differ. Since 2015 rival international airports have expanded in Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Passengers on shorter routes from Chinese cities can also consider the express rail link, which opened in 2018.
Spokespeople for the authority say that the airport is already busy again in rush hours. But these are not like land-based rush hours, caused by lots of people going to and from work at the same time. They are caused by airlines, for reasons of their own, all wanting to land and take off at the same time.
Catering to this urge is wasteful. Another way of looking at airport capacity is the number of movements it can handle. Because aircraft, once up, have to be kept two minutes apart there is a fixed ceiling of about 30 movements an hour per runway. Clearly with three runways you can hope to handle 90 movements an hour, which is an improvement.
But here again we seem to be meeting a non-existent need. In 2018, the last year before various interruptions culminating in COVID, the airport handled 427,000 movements. In 2023 it handled 276,000. This year so far we have 298,000. Clearly the figure is still rising, but has a long way to go before it catches up with the number achieved with two runways alone.
Given that the government is now running a huge deficit and is no doubt contemplating something painful in the way of increased taxes and lower benefits, it is quite understandable that the “line to take” is not that they blew $140 billion to provide some extra convenience to airlines.
So roll up for the new epoch, which will either feature massive financial losses or mass tourism. Are we having fun yet?
Civil servants are to get a new set of guidelines next year, according to Security Secretary Chris Tang, which will show them how to safeguard national security in their daily duties.
Announcing this interesting project in Legco, Mr Tang said the exercise would “change the mentality and mindset of our colleagues, to embed the concept of national security in their brains.”
This seems to be asking a lot from a set of guidelines. But the really puzzling bit comes next. The new guidelines will be confidential. I quote from the HKFP report: “It must be confidential. If others know about how we remind our colleagues [to safeguard national security], those endangering national security will try to escape from [being caught],” Tang said in Cantonese.
And at this point Mr Tang really seems to have crossed from optimistic to delusional. According to the government publication Hong Kong the Facts, “As at March 31, 2024, the civil service employed about 173,100 people (excluding judges, judicial officers, officers of the Independent Commission Against Corruption and locally engaged staff working in the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices outside Hong Kong) or about 4.6 per cent of Hong Kong’s labour force.
Under modern circumstances – or for that matter in ancient ones – the idea of a secret being preserved between more than 170,.000 people is clearly preposterous. A professional spy will laugh at the idea. With so many targets he will expect to have an informant already – motivated in the usual way by ideology, money or sex – who will pass him the guidelines in a matter of days.
The amateurs who just enjoy sticking it to the Man will need a bit longer. But the end result will be the same. We could run a sweepstake on how long it will take before the guidelines are uploaded to some subversive website beyond the reach of the Hong Kong government. What is your money on? One month? Two?
The good news for Mr Tang is that this is unlikely to be a huge help to people who do not care for national security.
His idea seems to be that there is some secret giveaway, known to the Security Branch but not to its assorted enemies, which the well-briefed civil servant can spot in a subversive. If this secret gets out, then the assorted enemies can change their spots, abandon their tell-tales, whatever they are, and so avoid detection.
This sounds very much like the sort of thing which used to go on in European countries when they still believed in witches. Elderly lady living alone? Suspicious. She has a cat? Clearly an emissary from the Dark Lord. She has a broomstick? What more evidence to we need? Send for the witchfinder, who will find the definitive sign: a place where she does not feel pain.
We can all look forward with interest to discovering what the secret giveaway for national security violators might be. A foreign phone? Stays late in the office alone? Arrives early? Wears Pooh Bear tee-shirts at the weekends?
There is a serious side to this, of course. Whatever the concealed Mark of Treason might be, it is not going to be conducive to good morale if everyone in the civil service is constantly casting a suspicious eye over his colleagues.
There will, I fear, be cases in which a sincere mistake is made, leading to unjustified suspicion being cast, and much distress and anxiety to the victim. Alas, there will also probably be cases in which a spurious mistake is made, as a way of putting a spoke in the wheel of some rival candidate for promotion or apres-office sex. If you give everyone a dangerous weapon some people will mishandle it.
I do wonder if someone could perhaps persuade Mr Tang that even in national security matters there can be such a thing as Having Too Much of a Good Thing.
Civil servants are already required to swear allegiance to the government. Their code of conduct now starts with “upholding the constitutional order and national security.” Judicious pruning has removed objectivity and impartiality, so the persecution of independent bookshops and inconvenient political bodies is now unimpeded.
Most civil service jobs have little or no connection to national security, however broadly defined. They have taken the oath and read the code. Surely that should be enough. Or are they also required to love Big Brother?
Sniping at Carrie Lam is a tempting option for legislators and other politicos these days. It allows the critic to appear independent and outspoken without incurring the risks involved in complaining about the current regime.
It is a bit like flogging a dead horse but perhaps more like pulling the tail of a stuffed tiger; it looks good in your selfies without involving any real danger.
So it came about that there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the discovery that Ms Lam’s office, which comes her way on the public tab because one is provided for all former Chief Executives, was costing $9 million a year. Most of this goes on the rent for the office, which is in Pacific Place. Follow-up questions elicited the fact that this arrangement had cost $22 million in two years.
What, cries the well-informed connoisseur of Hong Kong historic architecture, why is Ms Lam not in the building at 28 Kennedy Road, lavishly redecorated and designated for the use of retired chiefs since 2005? Well it’s a long story.
This handsome building is of some age, and is listed as a Grade 1 landmark. It enjoyed a period of modest fame 30 years ago, when it was the Hong Kong home of the Sino-British Joint Liaison Group. The Group was set up under the Sino-British Declaration on Hong Kong’s future in 1985 to settle the finer points of the transition to come, and continued to meet until 1999, two years after the handover.
After this the building seems to have been left empty, as it presented a small problem. It is too big to be a company home, too small to house a government department, and cannot be extensively modified because of its Grade 1 listed status.
In 2005 came a brainwave. Mr Tung Chee-hwa, the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR, had resigned on grounds of ill health. The former Liaison Office’s home would make a nice office in the mid-levels for Mr Tung and his successor ex-Chief Executives.
As the Legco paper put it at the time, rather prematurely because there was only one Former CE at the time:
The Office provides administrative support to Former Chief Executives to perform promotional, protocol-related, or any other activities in relation to their former official role. The activities include receiving visiting dignitaries and delegations, giving local and overseas media interviews, and taking part in speaking engagements. The office shall provide administrative support for scheduling and making arrangements for public and social appointments, handling correspondence and enquiries, and dealing with general administrative duties.
The paper went on to estimate the annual cost of this arrangement at $2.2 million, most of which would go on the wages of three secretarial staff and a driver.
In 2008 the conversion of the building was completed, marked by the issuing of a triumphant video (link here) and a brief opportunity for members of the public to visit and admire the premises. The first floor has two lounges and a meeting room, and on the next floor up are three offices for ex-CEs. These are quite lavish. You could land an aeroplane on the desk supplied, and there is also a coffee table, armchairs and such. Space has not been skimped.
The provision of three offices seemed reasonable at the time. CEs, it was no doubt supposed, would be appointed at about the age of 60. This was a good guess: age on appointment of the crop so far 59, 60, 57, 60, 64. Average: 60.
Less happily, the planners seem to have assumed that CEs would generally serve the maximum two permitted terms. This would mean the former CE would be on average 70 when retiring. Turning to the relevant Census and Statistics tables we see that a 70-year-old man (CEs are usually men) can on average look forward to another 17 years of life. Under these circumstances – appointment at 60 and ten years in office – when a new CE takes over his predecessor will have 17 years ahead of him, his predecessor in turn will be seven years from the Pearly Gates, and his predecessor in turn will no longer be with us. Three offices will be quite sufficient. On average one will be empty.
Several things went wrong with this prediction. The first is that the expectation of life tables include people who reach 70 already sick and senile. CE candidates are, we hope, picked from the ranks of the fit and frisky. They are likely to be healthier than the aged population in general.
The second problem is the well-established scientific fact that people with prestige do seem to derive some medical advantage from it. Politicians who become ministers live longer, on average, than those who remain mere MPs. Senior civil servants live longer than junior ones, actors who win Oscars last longer than those who do not, and so on. Being at the top of the pecking order is good for your health.
So the provision of three offices may already have been a bit optimistic. What really sabotaged the scheme, though, was the failure of successive Chief Executives to serve a second term. Tung Che-hwa resigned two years and a few months after being elected to a second term. His successor, Donald Tsang, served the remainder of Mr Tung’s second term and was elected to a full term of his own. It was then ruled that he had had the maximum two goes already. The next two CEs both served just one term each.
The current CE, John Lee, will be 69 at the end of his first term, which may appear to him, or to the selectors, to be more than enough. We shall see. But the shortage of desk space for former CEs is probably not going to go away anyway. Leung Chun-ying was the youngest CE so far and Carrie Lam, being female, may well go on for ever.
But there is, at present, no room for Ms Lam in the historic building, leading to the leasing of a substitute in Pacific Place. This can hardly have been the cheapest option.
What is to be done? One legislator suggested that the provision of a free office and associated goodies should be confined to the most recent three CEs, others being presumably left to fend for themselves. This has something to be said for it: do we really want 80plus-year-old dinosaurs meeting visitors, giving media interviews, or making public speeches?
Well I don’t know. People last better than they used to. Speaking as someone who will shortly pass the same landmark I don’t think 80 is that old.
What do they do in other places? There is a problem here. The Chief Executive is not a head of state. In some jurisdictions he would be considered scarcely a Governor. Unsympathetic observers might describe the job as little more than a mayorship.
Diligent searching, however, reveals no examples of places which provide offices for ex-mayors, or even for ex-governors. Google users will be entertained by numerous updates from a Nigerian province where the governor indignantly denies reports that his predecessor has set up an office in the gubernatorial palace.
So, while acknowledging that we are not really comparing like with like here, the arrangement for UK ex-prime ministers is that they can claim up to £120,000 for “office costs and secretarial costs arising from their special position in public life.” As you will see from the table John Major (now 81) is still in business. No claims have been received from Boris (too disorganised?) or Rishi (too rich?) but Liz Truss, famous for her lettuce-length term of office, has already started collecting. So, up to about HK$1.1 million a year.
Much information is available about former US presidents, who are, at least to me, surprisingly numerous. According to the table here in the last 25 years the US has supported eight former presidents of whom five are still with us. This involved a total of 109 ex-president/years for a total of US$125 million, or US$1.1 million per president/year, which would be about HK$8 million in round figures. But this includes the president’s pension, travel and other expenses, which occupies about half of the total, so the figure for office and other amenities would be about HK$4 million.
So by international standards the originally projected figure of $2.2 million a year was generous, the expenditure of $11 million a year on Ms Lam was extravagant. But of course these sums are chicken feed by government spending standards; legislators should have more urgent things to looks at.
I do wonder, though, if former CEs really need a personal secretary and a clerical assistant each. In these digital days we can all type. Are these two people really busy, or are they like the two women standing behind the emperor’s throne in a Chinese opera: not doing anything but an important badge of rank?
I also have some difficulty with the Administration Office’s report that in her two years as an ex-CE Ms Lam has “attended 700 functions”. With all due respect for Ms Lam’s Stakhanovite work ethic, that is almost a function a day. Many of us find that the mention of Ms Lam brings back unhappy memories, some of which were not her fault (COVID) and some of which were. But 350 functions a year? One can only feel terror and pity.
Lord Sumption, a retired British Judge and formerly one of our token foreigners on the Court of Final Appeal, was roundly denounced by the usual government spokesman when he marked his retirement from the CFA with an article in the Financial Times, complaining that the rule of law could no longer be relied on in Hong Kong.
“The rule of law is profoundly compromised in any area about which the government feels strongly,” his Lordship wrote. And this brings us to recent developments in the case of Mr Kinson Cheung King-sang. Before we get to the developments, though, some background.
Mr Cheung was the chairman of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union, back in the days when students were allowed such things. The union’s committee, in an ill-advised moment, passed a motion expressing sympathy for a man who had attacked a policeman and then killed himself.
The motion was rescinded the following day, but this was not enough to head off a major reaction in pro-government circles and several students, including Mr Cheung, were arrested. Three people were eventually charged: the proposer and seconder of the errant motion, and Mr Cheung because he chaired the meeting. When I was a student union chairman I was expected to be neutral when chairing meetings, so this looks a bit odd. But they’re not hot on democratic conventions in pro-government circles.
The three chosen ones were charged initially with encouraging terrorism, an offence under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law. After negotiations this charge was replaced with “incitement to wounding with intent”, an obscure but ancient and respectable limb of the Common Law. The three defendants then pleaded guilty. This enshrined an interesting legal notion, that the union’s motion had “incited” an act which had already happened when it was passed, and whose perpetrator was dead. Well, lawyers understand these things.
We must note at this point that Hong Kong now has in effect two legal systems. One of them, which we may call option A, is the traditional one, based roughly on the notion that, as the legendary jurist Blackstone put it, “it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent one suffer.”
The other one, option B, is for national security cases only, and dispenses with precautions – some of which go back to Blackstone’s time (1723-1780) – intended to reduce innocent suffering. Getting our ten guilty men behind bars gets a higher priority.
So the defendant no longer has the right to be brought promptly before a magistrate, the right to bail, the right to a jury in serious cases, the right to a judge not selected by the prosecution, or the right to the counsel of his choice. Reading national security cases one sometimes wonders if the presumption of innocence has been eroded a bit as well.
Another feature of option B is a limitation on the right of a convicted prisoner to participate in early release arrangements for prisoners who behave themselves in jail. This was not part of the gift from Beijing; it was a local inspiration incorporated in the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. Inmates may be released early only if the Commissioner for Correctional Services is satisfied that such release will not endanger national security.
So here we have Mr Cheung, so far subject to option A, under which he was sentenced to two years in prison. He then appealed on the grounds that the sentence was too severe. The Court of Appeal agreed, replacing his two-year sentence with one of 15 months. The interesting consequence of this was that, assuming the usual discount for good behaviour, he was now eligible for release. The law works slowly these days.
But nothing happened. Mr Cheung was not released. He then applied to a High Court judge to order his release. At the first hearing the judge was sufficiently impressed to consider releasing him on bail pending full discussion of the matter, but was talked out of it by counsel for the government.
The following day a magical transition had occurred: Mr Cheung’s legal ordeal had been moved from option A to option B. The Commissioner for Correctional Services, apparently a fast worker, had accordingly considered whether Mr Cheung’s release would endanger national security, and decided it would.
The magical transition took the form of a decision of the National Security Committee, a gathering of government security bigwigs including an “adviser” who represents our landlord. The NSC had ruled that Cheung’s offence “involved national security” and that his early release would be “contrary to the interests of national security.”
Senior Counsel Mike Lui, representing the government, said “The development since the adjournment yesterday has been nothing short of momentous,” with which one can only agree.
The National Security Committee was set up under the National Security Law, which outlines its powers and duties as follows:
The duties of the National Security Committee are to analyze and assess developments in relation to the safeguarding of national security in the HKSAR, make work plans, formulate policies, advance the development of the legal system and enforcement mechanisms, and coordinate major work and significant operations.
Call me a legal pedant, but I do not see anything there which suggests that the National Security Committee has a role in adjudicating on individual cases, or that it would be proper for the NSC to issue detailed instructions to a judge hearing a case. The local Nat Sec law, on the other hand, says that:
The courts are to adjudicate cases concerning national security independently in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Basic Law and the HK National Security law, free from any interference.
I infer that the judge in this case had the cart the wrong end of the horse when she said that “No jurisdiction [in Hong Kong], including the Judiciary, shall interfere with the decision made by the [national security committee]. His detention is fully lawful.” Did it not occur to the learned judge at all that the NSC might be exceeding its powers, or are we now so cowed that the idea of a government body exceeding its powers has become meaningless?
In jurisdictions which enjoy the rule of law it is out of order for essentially political or administrative bodies to jog the elbow of judges actually adjudicating cases. The committee, or the legislature, may change the rules, but in the meantime defendants and convicts are entitled to know what rules apply to them. This case is a grotesque parody of the rule of law, the more unpalatable because the government seems to be motivated entirely by the spiteful inclination to nullify the Court of Appeal’s decision and keep Mr Cheung behind bars for as long as possible.
After all the implications for national security are trivial: Mr Cheung will be free in November anyway. I also note that the judge who granted Mr Cheung pre-trial bail (over-ruling a magistrate who had refused it) did not seem to think that Mr Cheung was a great threat to national security.
I met a lot of student union chairmen when I was one. Two of the creepier specimens eventually became government ministers. Nobody became a revolutionary. I am sure Mr Cheung will in due course become a respectable member of society … with, perhaps, some highly critical views of the Hong Kong legal system.
tim's experiment 