Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writing (mainly) about Hong Kong

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Month: Dec 2003

  • Two views on Taiwan

    The SCMP had two opinion pieces on Taiwan today. One is quite a sensible piece entitled ‘Patience is a virtue’, which argues that the “Taiwan problem” will resolve itself over time as the economies of Taiwan and China become even more closely linked and the government of China becomes more liberal. The problem is keeping…

  • Round-up

    I think I will have to treat Ron with more respect. He reveals that he has a car with both Hong Kong and PRC plates. As far as I am aware, dual plates are only made available to the owners of businesses that have significant operations in China, so Ron must be a big cheese.…

  • Electing the Chief Excecutive

    Just a quick follow-up to what I wrote on Monday on Tsang Yok-sing’s suggestion that a nomination committee should choose the candidates for the next Chief Executive election (with the electorate then able to vote on which of the candidates should get the job). Thursday’s SCMP has a piece from Frank Ching saying that this…

  • China’s diplomacy

    An interesting piece in the comment section of yesterday’s SCMP (that’s not something I say very often) from Robert Keatley, one of many ex-editors of the paper who are knocking around. He contrasts the rather poor image that George Bush has around the world with the good impression that Wen Jiabao and other Chinese leaders…

  • CD Piracy

    Phil has commented on Hans Ebert’s letter in yesterday’s South China Morning Post. I thought this was a typically self-serving music biz response. After raising valid (but familiar) questions about the Harbour Fest fiasco, Mr Ebert goes on to suggest that the government would be better off spending HK$100m fighting piracy of CDs, DVDs and…

  • Quotas (again)

    There’s an excellent article in this week’s Business Week called “The Folly Of Slapping Quotas On China” which sets out the argument against quotas. It is by Laura D’Andrea Tyson from the London Business School, and she argues that the United States benefits from cheap imports and the main losers are other countries that export…

  • The real economy

    Jake van der Kamp is back, and today he cautions against reading too much into the retail sales figures. It is a standard fallback for newspapers to print stories about economic statistics without caring whether they are significant or not. House prices are one favourite in Hong Kong, and retail sales are another. Recently we…

  • Hold the Front Page

    A pleasant surprise this morning when I read the SCMP on my way to work: Phil’s Asia weblog awards get a good write-up on the front page of the technology section. The amazing thing is that the piece seems to contain no obvious distortion or misunderstanding – Neil Taylor obviously spoke to Phil, listened, understood,…

  • 3G news

    An unsurprising development in the world of 3G mobile phones. Now, let me think – what persuaded people to pay a lot of money for laser disc players, video recorders, DVD players, satellite TV, Internet access (etc., etc.) when they were first available (and therefore expensive)? Some things never change!

  • On a scale of 1 to 5

    Whilst I was sitting here this morning trying to work, someone called me from the Far Eastern Economic Review asking if I could spare a few minutes to answer some questions. What they wanted to know was why I am no longer subscribing to their magazine. Simple answer – it’s boring, and even the articles…