Big Lychee, Various Sectors

What a magnificent line. I imagine it appearing in a 1950s black & white movie. “If they take down Elsie, we’re all doomed!” Perhaps Elsie is a local heroine in a frontier village, facing down the bullying, outlaw bad guys; or maybe she’s a Lassie-style canine valiantly guarding vulnerable young children from evildoers armed with paraquat.

In fact, the phrase in full is, “If they take down Elsie, they also take down the authority of the Basic Law and the central government.” It comes from Lau Nai-keung, mouth-frothing ultra-patriot and scourge of Hong Kong’s ‘dissidents’. He occasionally experiences spasms of lucidity, and has had a couple recently.

His China Daily column last week considered Executive Council member Franklin Lam, currently accused by government detractors of exploiting insider information about new taxes when timing the sale of several of his large collection of properties. Lau points out, as others have, that if Lam had no foreknowledge of the new taxes, his role in the government’s top policymaking body must be marginal.

Of course, it could be that Lam was excluded from discussions on the issue precisely because of his property interests. But this is really about the nature of Exco. It is a big, unwieldy group, and its composition (a DAB member here, a Liberal Party member there, a rural leader there, a businessman there) is the depressingly predictable result of box-ticking. Members are not there to influence policymaking but to share the blame for the subsequent screw-ups.

Lau also says that if Lam needed to raise funds to cover living costs and contingencies, it suggests the man must have had everything locked up in real estate. This might seem imprudent, but then again, we are not talking about some average Joe off the street. (If his recent sales were any guide, the portfolio’s total current valuation could be somewhere around HK$250-300 million – but that’s a big ‘if’.) Lam is part of a gold-plated ‘elite’ that – as Lau suggests – Hongkongers have long been brainwashed into thinking are superior and trustworthy as endorsers of government authority.

Which leads us to the magnificent fist-banging “If they bring down Elsie” outburst. Rather than ranting about the dreaded dissidents, Lau’s target here is the establishment of the aforementioned elites and the meek (unlike Elsie) patriots who cluster awkwardly around them. This is in fact a criticism of a decades-old political structure, which is why Lau dusts off a familiar old friend, the administrative absorption of politics. The old colonial approach of co-opting elites to go along with the bureaucracy’s decisions doesn’t work anymore, Lau says. We need gloves-off politics: open competition, indeed combat, between ideas for all the world to see and judge.

Thus, rather than trot out the usual ‘correct procedures were followed’ claptrap about Lung Mei beach, the administration should see trouble coming, and let the environmentalists fight it out with the landowners/developers/bureaucrats. And ditto with every other development plan, from the desperately needed to the pointless. Thus, rather than duck a debate on gay marriage, the establishment should put the spotlight on the self-appointed defenders of liberty to see what they really think, and let them lead or squirm as required. Thus, rather than blather about the importance of rule of law, the government – especially the truly pro-Beijing elements – should defend former Justice Secretary Elsie Leung. Be consistent and honest, and confirm she is right that the one-party system cannot and does not allow totally unfettered judicial independence in Hong Kong. Instead, Lau notes with disgust, Elsie’s current-day successor makes remarks that conflict with those of Mainland legal officials and local patriotic lawyers and so “encourages mistrust and abuse towards opinions from the mainland and the pro-establishment camp.”

Essentially, Lau is saying ‘let’s fight democracy with democracy’. The pro-communist tyrant in him might envisage a cleansing Cultural Revolution that eradicates alien ideas from Hong Kong forever. The mild-mannered, intellectual, organic-food fan in him – assuming he’s been taking his pills – might actually believe a fair adversarial process would result in the popular will backing his side, not the pro-dems’ (or the tycoons’, or the bureaucrats’, etc).

It would be refreshing to ditch all this tiresome harmony and consensus and the happy, smiling committees of united pen-pushers, bean-counters, rich offspring, grasping developers and grumpy aboriginal granddads, all pretending to love Hong Kong. Cut the pretention and the hypocrisy. Side with Elsie and see if the dissidents really can bring her down, along with all the other dominoes as well. But, unfortunately – surprise, surprise – Beijing won’t allow it.

The half-hour news segment on RTHK Radio 3 this morning seems curiously focused on one part of the world. Following a genuinely important lead story on international recognition of Syrian rebels, attention swiftly turns to a British court that has overturned the extradition of a Jordanian alleged terrorist on human rights grounds. Officials are angry, and the guy’s lawyers happy. Then we are told about someone resigning from the BBC because of some scandal about a story about pedophiles (but not the same as the BBC’s last pedophile thing). Then we get into serious detail about the situation at the BBC. Then we hear that the guy who resigned had a massive payoff and that British politicians are getting worked up about it. Then we hear said politicians intoning in Parliament or somewhere. Then we get an exceedingly lengthy interview with RTHK’s ‘UK correspondent’ Gavin-something telling us even more – and more – about events at his country’s public broadcaster.

Phew. Eventually we move on, and the next story is about how companies like Starbucks and Amazon are mysteriously paying little or no tax on their business operations. In the UK, that is. Hong Kong gets a brief mention while I am brushing my teeth; I think it concerns companies falling victim to email scams. Then it’s back to the only place that really matters, with the announcer reciting at length from that list that never stops coming down the newswires: Manchester 3, Rotherham 2; Chelsea 2, Bolton 1; Arsenal 1, blah-blah blah-blah, with a last-minute free kick that sounds startlingly similar to yesterday’s last-minute free kick. And that’s your half-hour news cycle, culminating with the air pollution index for downtown London. The name of this show? Hong Kong Today.

Is this what they call de-Sinification?

I had tuned in hoping to hear something about Hong Kong Education Secretary Eddie Ng’s announcement that he wants to increase the length of free education for each child from 12 to 15 years – which is a pretty big deal, even if the details are vague (RTHK3 gives it a quick mention online). This means a real increase in recurrent expenditure, highlighting a contrast between CY Leung’s administration and that of his predecessor Donald Tsang. It also implies a redistribution of wealth from the better-off who pay direct taxes to the less well-off who don’t, in our highly unequal city.

Most of all, it suggests a positive attempt at social engineering. That’s an unpopular phrase, like ‘eugenics’, but governments inevitably influence the structure of society actively or inactively. Donald Tsang was involved in ‘social engineering’ by not providing free schooling for little kids. By reversing that state of affairs, CY Leung’s team would offer a possibility for children born into poorer homes to earn more than they otherwise would in adulthood.

Sir Bow-Tie’s first administration did introduce a small-scale voucher scheme for kindergartens. Eddie Ng’s idea looks like a major expansion of that, and so we will unavoidably have arguments over the sums involved. Sources mention HK$16,000 per toddler a year, or some HK$1,300 a month, which doesn’t sound like it will buy much pre-schooling, unless they pack the kids in 100 to a class (and why not – they’re small, right?). Teachers’ unions are also muttering, though apparently unsure whether to welcome or oppose the plan.

Intriguingly, the Standard’s story hints at juicier controversy to come: more affluent parents, a commentator says, ‘do not want the government to intervene’. I’m not sure what this means. But I do know our hyper-ambitious middle-class parents go to enormous lengths to get their precious princes and princesses into the right kindergartens. The elite, exclusive ones full of high-IQ, piano-playing, Mandarin-speaking toddlers destined for Harvard and greatness as highly paid accountants. Could it be that Eddie Ng’s subsidy plans might crack the doors to such establishments open a bit more to the somewhat less wealthy, thus increasing competition for spaces? Maybe there’s another explanation; either way, this new policy will probably remind us that there are always losers as well as winners when you make things fairer.

Now back to the studio for the latest riveting in-depth update on a distant land’s public broadcaster’s resignation scandal crisis meltdown thing…

China’s 18th Communist Party congress has included all the predictable ingredients: bans on such improbable threats to social order as pigeons and open taxi windows, a blockage of Google, stunningly boring and vacuous speeches, and Tibetans burning themselves to death. Least surprising of all, and the curtain raiser to the gathering last week, was President Hu Jintao’s clear warning that corruption could lead to the fall of the one-party regime. It sounded like a gloves-off, no-more-kidding-around declaration of resolve to really get to grips with graft. So, of course, did all the previous such warnings.

The conventional view is that China’s political structure is almost designed to create corruption. It is a top-down Leninist system, with no checks and balances, no separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers and no oversight from independent courts or media. Add selective economic reform, with bigger and bigger amounts of wealth up for grabs, and the rise of political/business family dynasties, and you end up with a kleptocracy in which the best connected and most powerful can help themselves to as much as they can.

We usually assume that the political structure creates the corruption. But could it be the other way round? Could it be that it is corruption that is the cause of the structure? One of the other predictable events of the congress was the usual announcement that multi-party democracy and separation of powers were un-Chinese and out of the question. This is tantamount to a refusal to change the current system, and therefore essentially a promise that corruption must and will continue. Atlantic quotes a Mainland social scientist as saying that:

…in the name of “stability” the party has “suppressed the livelihood of the people, suppressed human rights, suppressed the rule of law, suppressed reform,” but it has “not suppressed corruption, nor has it suppressed mining tragedies, nor has it suppressed illegal property demolitions and seizures.”

The suppression can be seen as a means to enable the corruption. It is to serve the needs of the Wen family, the Xi family, the Bo family (once) and their counterparts in state-owned industries and the People’s Liberation Army. These are the people who have created this system – and outsiders are expecting them to change it?

It sounds unlikely. But in the upper reaches of the military, at least one ultra-paranoid thinks they might want to, and is determined to make sure they won’t. Australian journalist John Garnaut (of the excellent Is China Becoming a Mafia State? presentation) has received notes of a speech given by a leading PLA general warning of parallels between the fall of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and the possible fate awaiting China’s ruling class. The officer drew on earlier work on a Western conspiracy to lure China’s up-and-coming princelings studying in the US and elsewhere into accepting dangerous Barbarian ideas about freedom and democracy as ‘universal’ values. The Westerners brainwashed Gaddafi’s son Saif this way, and now they have toppled tyrants in the Arab Spring it’s obviously China’s turn.

In short, people who advocate political reform (and economic, legal and other liberalization) are part of a Western plot to overthrow the regime, and Ferrari-driving princelings returning from Harvard to join the power structure are especially suspect. It is an amazing contradiction. Some figures who (like the PLA commissar) are truest to Marxist or Maoist ‘red’ ideals, and who are most worried about vice and fraud, are fearful that the next generation of people with a material interest in keeping the corrupt system will nonetheless want to change it. The clean-handed idealists want, in effect, to keep the corruption, while the corrupt want to end it. It is paranoia squared. It does not exactly bode well for a decline in graft either as an unfortunate by-product or raison d’etre of one-party rule.

This also gives us an insight into the constant warnings about foreign interference, even in little old Hong Kong and, incredibly, Macau. When Chinese leaders mention hostile foreign forces they are not simply looking for a scapegoat for anti-government sentiment. Nor are they necessarily thinking of specific agencies like the CIA, Taiwan or Neil Haywood. It is the very ideas and concepts of democracy and human rights and rule of law, that are seeping into the country and are foreign and hostile. Paranoia is to these guys’ minds what black dye is to their hair.

The Standard mentions the very muted murmurings that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive CY Leung might be on the way out. What better way to develop the murmurings into a full-fledged rumour than to print a story about an anonymous official denying it? There are also a few whispers going round that would suggest, to put it delicately, that one or two people identified with CY have started to get a bit nervous lest they find themselves on the wrong side of the fence sometime in the future.

If there’s something vaguely familiar about all this, it could be from mid-2000 when our local tycoons were mounting a ‘dump Tung Chee-hwa’ campaign. It’s not that they were going round publicly demanding that the luckless first Chief Executive step down; it’s that they weren’t saying the opposite. This telling lack of endorsement led Chinese government officials to summon all our favourite property developers and other plutocrats to a hall in Beijing, where then-President Jiang Zemin gave them a severe talking to. If you see Li Ka-shing, the Kwoks, Lee Shau-kee and the rest all sheepishly boarding a chartered Dragonair flight in the coming months, history will be repeating itself.

The situation is worse this time around because it’s so personal. The tycoons didn’t hate the crop-haired one; they were angry that property prices had collapsed before they had managed to sell all their overpriced half-built apartments to the suckers. But they seriously loathe CY.

Back in the 1990s, US President Bill Clinton’s wife Hilary blamed the accusations and scandals surrounding her husband on a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’. Some of his problems, like the Monica Lewinsky episode, were purely of his own doing. Other controversies, like the tiresome Whitewater affair, looked exaggerated by detractors. And some were blatant smears, like the idea that the Clintons murdered former advisor Vince Foster. (And don’t forget the cattle futures thing: the Arkansas version of an unauthorized trellis.) No conspiracy is necessary: if enough people hate you and they have this much ammunition, they will declare war.

It’s similar with CY. Short-lived Development Secretary CK Mak has been charged with claiming civil service housing perks decades ago. A genuine, if traditionally ignored, offence. His successor Paul Chan’s family was found to be renting out subdivided slums. Not an offence. CY and everyone else you can name has or had unauthorized building works in their homes. Not remotely noteworthy until the Henry Tang vs CY Leung race turned vicious at the beginning of 2012 and everyone exposed everyone else’s illegal structures. Executive Council member Franklin Lam sold a small slice of his property portfolio a bit before new government property taxes – of which he was unaware – were introduced, and he offered the real estate agent extra commission. Nothing more than unfortunate timing.

CY should feel entitled to stand up and declare that a vast property-developer conspiracy is at work. As with the Clintons, no actual plot has been necessary; poor judgment and bad luck have played into his enemies’ hands. But you need to fight fire with fire. “Look,” he should say, “we all know there is a smear campaign going on against my administration. We all know which newspapers are involved. We all know who owns these newspapers. And we all know who those owners’ friends are, and who they backed in the election last March, and which industries they are in. These are people who feel entitled to privileges, and they are angry that this new government does not share their priorities – because we are trying to help the grassroots [blah, blah, blah].” But that would be politics; we have to have harmony and consensus.

As indeed we shall over the next couple of days, as I now declare the weekend open.

Certain news stories crop up over and over. A young bearded Belgian guy cycling around the world has reached the Tsimshatsui waterfront. The Japanese have invented a human-looking robot that polishes salarymen’s golf clubs. Some unhinged loser in the US has walked into a public place and shot a load of innocent bystanders. This week’s Indonesian ferry disaster was off [insert name of island].

In Hong Kong, someone has had it up to here with barking, defecating animals, decided to do something about it, and the local anthropomorphic community is now weeping as if over deceased children. For some reason, this story – normally a South China Morning Post standby on a slow day – appears in China Daily. Maybe the propagandists want to take our minds off the embarrassing juxtaposition of a democratic Presidential election in the US and the secret rituals ushering in a new leadership in Beijing. (It is the SCMP that goes all arcane-Mainland on us, solemnly reporting that “General Liu Yuan, the political commissar of the People’s Liberation Army’s General Logistics Department, has failed to retain his membership of the presidium of the Communist Party’s national congress.” What can we say? Poor old General Liu.)

The ‘silent serial-killer’ action takes place on Lamma, and the victims are dispatched with the herbicide paraquat. One of the bereaved comments: “Maybe it is someone who doesn’t like … the mess [dogs] leave.” But maybe that’s what the perpetrator wants you to think. Maybe he is really one of the millions who adore dog shit smeared all over the place. Another, who doesn’t seem to get the hint, has lost three canines. One supporter of the rights of dogs to rule over men reluctantly concedes that the beasts can be a ‘nuisance’ and “roam free and … make a mess everywhere and run across people’s vegetables, ruining their produce,” but blames irresponsible owners.

Let’s do an experiment. Take one of these irresponsible owners and feed him enough paraquat to kill him. Then stand back and see if the dog continues to bark, go poo-poo and wreck people’s property. If, as I suspect, it does, the ‘blame the owner’ theory can be laid to rest. It is the dog that is the problem. This is what dogs are and it is what they do.

Humans do not walk around leaving excrement and urine on the sidewalk. They do not frighten small children. They do not make sharp, repetitive, ear-splitting noises in the apartment just above yours at all hours. So why has someone brought a life form that does do these things into our midst? Dog owners who insist on living among non-dog-owners are imposing upon everyone else. Humans do not have a duty to accommodate the noise and mess. Most people suffer in silence, but eventually someone will snap. They have a right to defend their vegetables, not to mention their sanity. The answer is: either dog owners should live well apart from quiet and clean society (or organize an all-doggy condo), or do as the rest of us do and get by without a furry, yappy pack animal leaping excitedly around all the time and being one of the family.

I am sure Bowen Road residents are demanding extra police patrols as we speak.

Come back Lau Nai-keung, all is forgiven – yes, that is a tasteful skull and crossbones China Daily have put its eye…

Has Hong Kong reached its tipping point as a world centre? The New York Times correspondent suggests the city is now “too crowded and expensive for its own good.”

The case for the defence would be this. One: people have been saying this sort of thing for years. Two: parts of the article are debatable. For example, the shortage of office and school places is especially pronounced in Hong Kong Island, and there are alternatives elsewhere; the ‘full-to-bursting’ airport is a result of low landing fees and thus inefficient runway usage. Third: is the article’s premise even logical? If Hong Kong is past its prime, why are the rents still zooming up? Conversely, aren’t London and New York approaching their tipping points too, as their property prices rise? Could it be that in fact all these cities are taking another step up the productivity/value-added ladder, pushing less profitable activities out to the suburbs or the Shenzhens and New Jerseys? The defence rests its case, and we note how boring and sensible it is.

The case for the prosecution would be much more fun, because it would all come down to this: it’s all Donald Tsang’s fault. Hong Kong’s last Chief Executive, it is now becoming clear, was a far bigger disaster for this city than his hapless predecessor Tung Chee-hwa ever was. Hong Kong is reaching bursting – thus maybe tipping – point because Tsang did three unforgivable things.

First, he deliberately starved the city of land supply, and made no effort to encourage developers to build in accordance with the local population’s needs. Thus we now have a serious shortage of affordable homes, eye-watering rents, blocks of empty luxury apartments and insufficient office space.

Second, he compounded this deliberate shortage by allowing a massive influx of Mainland visitors and money-launderers. This is a Beijing policy, but as Chief Executive he could (surely) have requested that the liberalization of travel permits be more gradual, given the lopsided nature of 1.3 billion people vs a 400-square-mile city. With a shortage of space, the influx simply displaced existing economic activity, further pushing rents up and concentrating the economy in fewer hands.

Third, Sir Bow-Tie lavished outrageous sums of money on pointless infrastructure projects like the Zhuhai Bridge and the high-speed rail to that suburb of Guangzhou we can never remember the name of. As well as wasting our land and money, these schemes are now putting serious strains on supplies of construction personnel and materials for worthwhile developments. With the bills now coming due, they also threaten to put the government’s budget into deficit for a while. That’s not a problem given the vast reserves, but deficit spending during an already over-heated time like this is what economists call ‘pro-cyclical’, or as the rest of us would put it, ‘stupid’.

The rights and wrongs of the New York Times article don’t really matter. We are being crushed on the sidewalks and trains, choked by rents and prices, squeezed out of schools and hospitals, and we need a scapegoat – no, a real, live perpetrator – and now we have one.

Why did Donald Tsang do it? What was his motive for committing this despicable and malicious crime of cramming Hong Kong into a pressure cooker and turning the heat right up? Who benefited from each of his sins? With land supply it was developers; with Mainlanders it was landlords (developers); with infrastructure it was construction interests (developers plus some civil engineers). Here is another question. To whose homes (I am reliably informed) did Donald Tsang in office often go late at night to play cards, being allowed to win? No prizes for guessing. (I don’t know which ones.)

The obedient masochists of the CY Leung administration refrain from pointing the finger at the instigator of their and our problems, and refuse even to defend themselves as pro-Donald tycoons, media and stooges beat them up over their latest little contrived scandal in the form of Franklin Lam. Instead, we are surely owed a Gu Xilai-style show trial.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong displays its pragmatism, realism, grit and perhaps sense of satire for all the world to see by announcing its favourite brand (and, I shouldn’t wonder, maybe one day its only one).

“This is the last time anyone will try to do this…” If Mitt Romney wins the election today, he will be the last US president imposed on the rest of the population by white males. From this point onwards, a candidate who fails to get the support of at least a reasonable segment or two of the country’s women/non-white/non-Anglo voters loses, assuming a two-way race.

Mitt’s Mormonism didn’t become an issue. All fair-minded people will of course welcome this, but as a lover of entertainment I have to say: disappointed! Spoilsport evangelical preacher Billy Graham recently removed the Latter Day Saints from his list of cults and said all that matters is a candidate’s position on “the sanctity of marriage as between one man and one woman; the sanctity of life; and yes, the protection of God’s beloved nation Israel.”

All religions must be started by charlatans or lunatics, but the relative newness of Mormonism accentuates its ‘fakeness’ and apparent strangeness. It would have been relatively easy for fundamentalist detractors (secretly funded in my fantasy by Obama sympathizers) to skewer Romney theologically as non-Christian. However, the theoretical ‘weirdness’ of Mormonism is counterbalanced by what it produces in practice: almost absurdly clean, hard-working, law-abiding, educated people who are more American than most other Americans. Only the radical atheists are creeped out by the sub-Mohammedan back story and the special relationship between Jesus and Missouri, and for all we know, under a Romney administration the famous LDS underwear will catch on among Baptists and Presbyterians.

Not much else would hugely change, despite all the clash of values and visions in the debates and ads. Mitt has been a bit of closet liberal at times, and it’s not like circumstances leave the nation’s leader with a lot of choices. That probably goes for the China/Asian security front as well.

My hunch is that we will not find out. A 10.00am glance at Google News suggests that Obama sympathizers are tentatively forecasting victory, while Romney-ites are saying it’s too close to call. With a lot of early voting over the weeks, and a last-minute play of the Bruce Springsteen card, it suggests a clear win for Obama in the Electoral College. If so, the Tea Party types, hyper-conservatives and crypto-racists will be even angrier than four years ago. The Kenyan socialist got back in, and the demographics will never be the same again.

  Good news…

…for students of the curious quasi-legalized illegal parking phenomenon in Central and other crowded spots: I spied a traffic cop giving a ticket to one of those big lumpy black vans, and then walk a few yards off to do a same to another one. This is a rare sight.

I have been told that the cops and traffic wardens largely tolerate illegal parking by private cars because, if not stationary, the drivers will simply go round and round in circuits waiting for their ultra-important bosses to emerge from whatever buildings they are in – and the traffic jams would be even worse. In a lot of cities, the trend is towards actively managing traffic by charging a hefty toll to enter urban areas or simply blocking streets off so vehicles just can’t go there. In Hong Kong, the traffic manages the city; whatever it wants to do, we all have to go along with.

In the next photo I hope to take from the walkway over Connaught Road, the cop drags the driver out of the car and pistol-whips the guy into the path of an oncoming 20-ton truck.

A tie: that’s the outcome judging from page 5 of today’s Standard. Protesters