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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  • Politics – Hong Kong style

    It must be difficult trying to make the case for the government and the DAB in current circumstances, but there still seem to people willing to do it. Step forward Jasper Tsang and Priscilla Lau!

    This is from the Hong Kong Standard:

    Priscilla Lau Pui-king, a Hong Kong deputy to the National People’s Congress, questioned whether Hong Kong people were mature enough to elect the chief executive and legislative councillors by universal suffrage.

    “The pro-democracy camp won many seats . . . simply because many voters disliked pro-government candidates, rather than supporting the democrats,” she said.

    and from the South China Morning Post

    Lau Pui-king also told the City Forum yesterday that it was too early for Hong Kong to move towards universal suffrage because local political parties were immature and did not truly represent all sections of the community. She also warned that should the government respond to calls for full democracy, it could scare away investors, professionals and the middle class.

    Well, I think that at least one of her points is valid – Hong Kong political parties are a long way from being mature, but that’s a consequence of the political system more than anything else. If/when we have full democracy, the Democratic Party will have served its purpose and will either be transformed into something more relevant or disbanded. The DAB may still survive as the voice of the patriotic working classes.

    I also agree that the Democrats and their allies got votes because people refused to vote DAB, but that happens all over the world. For example, in the UK in 1983 when Margaret Thatcher won a landslide victory, it was hard to find people who would admit voting for the Tories, and opinion pollsters had to change their methods to allow for the fact that people said they would vote Labour but actually voted Tory! Michael Foot was an ineffectual leader and the left-wing of the Labour Party were far too extreme for many natural Labour voters, so they turned to the Tories. The Labour Party eventually figured out that they had to change, and now natural Tory voters support Tony Blair!

    As for voters being immature, I don’t think that’s a very wise thing to say, but there may be an element of truth in it, and again it is a consequence of the political system we have. Give people the power to choose the whole Legislative Council and the Chief Executive and you will force them to think harder about what they want.

    The oddest thing she said was that full democracy could scare away investors, professionals and the middle class. The only thing that would scare people away would be if this is mis-handled, and the encouraging thing so far is that the march on 1 July was peaceful and the reaction to it has been generally level-headed and pragmatic.

    Tsang Yok-sing is now saying that he is in favour of universal suffrage but that he thinks that there should be a nomination committee to approve the candidates for Chief Executive rather than a totally free vote. The Democrats are outraged at this suggestion, but it may be a reasonable compromise on a short-term basis, depending upon how the candidates are chosen. It’s a fact of life that Hong Kong is part of China and that the central government has the final say, so electing a CE who would be unacceptable to Beijing would create a big problem.

  • Asia Weblog awards

    I haven’t yet mentioned the Asia Weblog awards, though I have had the logo (with a link) up for a few days. Like some others, I am not all that keen on the idea of trying to decide which is the “best” out of a very disparate collection of weblogs, but I do think that awards such as this generate some useful publicity for everyone and help to draw attention to some blogs that might otherwise go un-noticed.

    So, many thanks to Phil for taking the initiative to do it. There is obviously quite a lot of work involved in setting it all up and then monitoring the voting.

    I have to say that I fully expect a certain amount of ballot stuffing – apart from the obvious attempts that Phil will catch, it’s fairly easy to ask friends or colleagues to vote for you.

    Simon seems concerned that many blogs are unlikely to get the hits, the links or the notice because they are “slice of life blogs” rather than being just political or just humorous. Yes, but does it matter? If people enjoy the blog they’ll read it, and ideas such as Phil’s ought to draw more attention to all blogs in Asia and everyone will benefit. So, far, Simon seems to be doing well in the voting.

  • Childish politicians

    After my rather pessimistic piece about the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland after the electorate expressed a preference for Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists, a rather more positive view from The Guardian. It seems that although Ian Paisley’s DUP make a very public show of refusing to even acknowledge Sinn Fein, behind the scenes they do actually work together quite effectively.

    I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or horrified by the childish antics of the DUP, which apparently include sitting in a special place in the canteen where they cannot see the Sinn Fein members.

  • What I learned today

    One interesting aspect of publishing a weblog is finding out how many people are reading it, and how they found out about it. Unsurprisingly, most of my “traffic” comes from links on other Hong Kong weblogs, and a few posts that mention comments I have made. Shaky has linked to two of my posts, and the “Aussie Wine” still gets a few hits every day as a direct result! I have only just figured out how to do it, but I can now link to other people’s posts rather than just hoping that they will notice what I have written.

    The other main source of traffic is search engines, principally Google. The interesting thing here is that you get to see the search term that was entered, so I now know that if you type “Hong Kong car tax” into Google, my short piece about Anthony Leung will be on the first page!

    It has been known for people to deliberately try to get their sites high up in the Google rankings, and in the last few weeks the search algorithm has been changed to try and make this more difficult. One of the most common techiques was simply to mention certain keywords repeatedly, and apparently this is no longer so effective. Someone should tell Phil, because he is trying this technique in an attempt to get more traffic! Still, if it works, maybe someone will click on some of the other Hong Kong blogs as well.

  • Misconceptions about China

    When Conrad told us that an opinion piece by another blogger was ‘required reading’, I naturally followed his instructions. Then I found that the comments from prominent bloggers Phil, Richard and Simon were that it was a “Magnificent post”, “Great analysis” and “excellent”. Wow!

    Conrad felt that it was not appropriate to take extracts from this post “because you need to read it all”. My advice would be slightly different – by all means read it, but you need to understand the flaws in the argument that Andres Gentry is advancing.

    We start with a question from Willy Wo-Lap Lam, sacked as China correspondent by the SCMP and now working for CNN: “will Hu Jintao do to George W. Bush on Taiwan what Deng Xiaoping did to Margaret Thatcher on Hong Kong?” (by which he means that China is strong enough to ignore foreign concerns). Andres argues that Hong Kong was a special case because although Britain could theoretically have hung on to Hong Kong island and the Kowloon Peninsula, it would not be viable without the New Territories (for which Britain’s lease ran out on 30 June 1997). So Britain’s negotiating position was weak, and yet Thatcher still had the last laugh because the Basic Law safeguards Hong Kong, and limits what China can do right up until 2047.

    Well, I happen to believe that the British government did a fairly poor job of negotiating the handover. Initially they thought that perhaps China might either forget about it (!!) and leave things unchanged, or allow the British to carry on running the place after the expiry of the lease. When they discovered that Deng Xiaoping was determined to make Hong Kong part of China, they weren’t really prepared for the negotiation process. Ultimately, China got most of what it wanted, and probably more than they could have expected. The safeguards enshrined in the Basic Law were necessary if foreigners (and foreign investment) were not to be scared away from Hong Kong. Deng didn’t want to lose all the things that made Hong Kong successful – in fact he wanted the rest of China to be more like Hong Kong.

    Andres says that Britain’s position was weak because the lease on the New Territories ran out on 30 June 1997. Legally Britain could have handed over the New Territories but retained Hong Kong island and the part of Kowloon up as far as Boundary Street, but that would not have made any sense and so they needed to negotiate with China. The strength of Britain’s position was that it was negotiating on behalf of the Hong Kong people – if too many of them lost confidence and emigrated, the handover would be a pyrrhic victory and Deng would have failed. So a successful outcome for China was one that left them with control but which was also acceptable to Hong Kong people, and that was what they got.

    Andres then returns to the subject of Taiwan, and says:

    So, everyone should be straight on this at least: because the Taiwanese people do not accept Mainland domination, no Mainland party or army will be able to successfully coerce them to join China.

    I don’t quite buy this argument. Taiwan people are Chinese, and in recent years we have seen increasingly close economic integration between China and both Hong Kong and Taiwan. If the circumstances were right, Taiwan could very well become an autonomous region of China. Of course it won’t happen today or tomorrow, or next year or the year after, but if “One country, Two systems” works in Hong Kong then why shouldn’t it work for Taiwan?

    This, of course, is why Tung Chee-Hwa was given a hard time last week in Beijing. He was supposed to be a popular leader who would listen to Hong Kong people and give them what they wanted, whilst at the same time marginalising the Democrats. Instead, his bungling has strengthened the Democrats and raised awkward questions about the future direction of Hong Kong.

    My reading of the situation is that people in Hong Kong do still feel patriotic (towards China) and have much more respect for central leaders such as Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao than they do for Tung. The most obvious way of expressing displeasure with Tung is to vote against the DAB and for the Democrats, but I think it’s a mistake to interpret this as necessarily a desire for democracy, as Andre does:

    Hong Kong, which is a part of China, continues to give Beijing all sorts of trouble for the simple reason that its citizens want to choose their own government.

    [..]

    Last July the people of Hong Kong protested to the tune of 500,000 people in favor of universal suffrage. It is now December and Beijing has still to formulate a clear strategy beyond propping up Tung Chee-hwa through preferential business deals.

    I’m still not convinced that universal suffrage is as important to the people of Hong Kong as most westerners believe, and I know that the march on 1 July was primarily about the Article 23 legislation and a protest against Tung’s government.

    When Mr Tung went to Beijing this week, the headline in the SCMP after his meeting with the central leaders was “Listen to the people, Hu advises Tung”. Saturday’s SCMP reports that Guangdong’s leaders are well-regarded in Beijing because they are “adroit and ambitious politicians”. In other words, even if there is no democratic process, the leaders need to behave as if there was one and make themselves popular.

    With living standards having improved so dramatically under Communist Party rule, who would bet against them winning free elections if they were brave enough to stage them? Yes, I know it’s not going to happen anytime soon, and the absence of democracy is one of the biggest problems with China as far as many in the west are concerned. However, the way that the political system actually works in practice in most democracies (for example in the United States, where the population is almost equally split between those who think George W Bush is a strong decisive leader and those who think that he is an idiot) makes the case for democracy less than compelling.

    I realise that many people will feel that there is no need to make the case for democracy because it is the only legitimate system of government, but I think it is very instructive to consider how you would persuade an ordinary person in China that an election and a change of government every 4 or 5 years would have made their life any better. Could a democratic government really have done a better job of transforming China over the last few years?

    If you believe that democracy is absolutely essential then I suppose it follows that China could well break up as some of the regions use the democratic process to assert their independence, which is the final point Andres makes. I don’t propose to discuss that in detail, but what if the Chinese people really are content with a strong government that delivers economic growth and improving living standards? What if the people of Taiwan (and Hong Kong) see their Chinese nationality as more important than anything else, and feel proud to be part of a successful China? Are they wrong?

  • Free trade?

    An interesting piece about the irony of the USA getting upset with China for being too good at capitalism.

  • Jingle Bells

    With thanks to Simon, who has time to trawl the net and find this stuff.

    This brings back memories for me. A long time ago, after leaving college and before I knew what I wanted to do (or more accurately, after I had failed to get a job doing what I wanted to do), I spent a while working in a large department store. I think I started this job around September, and originally it was supposed to be just for the Christmas period, though in fact I stayed for a couple of years.

    This department store played muzak all year round, and the interesting thing was that after a while my brain was able to filter it out and I hardly noticed it at all. Then they switched to the Christmas muzak, and because it was different I could hear it again!! So although the employers’ spokesman in this story seems to think that a wider selection of music is the solution, I believe the opposite is true. Actually, what I find most irritating is when songs such as Imagine are turned into muzak and played endlessly – somehow I can’t switch off when something like that comes on.

  • Mask

    Every now and then I see someone wearing a mask out on on the street or in a shopping centre. Obviously this is a reminder of the SARS outbreak when almost everyone in Hong Kong (apart from a few stubborn gweilos) wore masks. At the time I thought it was a complete over-reaction given that the risks of catching SARS from travelling on public transport was tiny and the risk of catching it when walking in the street must have been almost non-existent. I suppose it was understandable, but the effect was to make the problem seem worse than it was. Plus there was a lot of evidence that most masks weren’t terribly effective.

    So my first reaction on seeing someone walking along the street wearing a mask is to wonder why are they doing it. Are they worried about catching something, or are they being very considerate and trying not to spread their germs to other people? Would it make any difference if people with colds did wear paper masks, or is it just a waste of time?

  • Snake’s off

    Now that it’s officially cold, a traditional dish is snake soup. However, this report (from AP) suggests that it may not be so readily available this year.

    Actually, I quite like snake soup. I know some people are squeamish about eating snakes, but as long as you can’t see the damn things I don’t mind.

  • I think he’s still upset about the rugby

    Simon has some good knockabout stuff on the achievements of Britain and Australia over the years. Also provides some insight into what people at a certain large international financial institution spend their time doing.