In The Aftermath
@ Wed 25 August 2010 3:59 PM HKT by Tom LeggSo while some have been quick to say that racism will rear its ugly head in HK against Filipinos in the aftermath of the Manila Hong Thai tour bus fiasco, I'm not seeing any more racism than normal.
What I am hearing is a discussion of Hong Kong's proper place in Asia. A lot of this revolves around two items: 1) the fact that PI President Aquino failed to answer HK CE Donald Tsang's phone calls and 2) the fact that PI police didn't seem to consider saving the Hong Kong hostages as priority #1. Those saying that Hong Kong deserves more respect in Asia are pointing to the amount of money HKers pump in to SE Asian economies via remittances and tourism. "You should treat your best customers well, and damnit we spend enough to be one of your best customers."
Others are suggesting that Hong Kong is rapidly being seen as just another city in China. This causes me to roll my eyes and wonder who might be to blame for that. Hmmm... Donald Tsang and his merry band of shoe shiners that are forever subservient to Zhongnanhai? After spending 10 years energetically trying to extinguish the HK spirit and convert everyone to be just another Chinese, is it hard to see why the rest of the world might see Hong Kong the same way?
Rewriting The History of The Financial Collapse
@ Mon 23 August 2010 7:42 PM HKT by Tom LeggSo in columns and comments to columns the battle is on to rewrite the history of the financial collapse in the United States and United Kingdom. The columns and comments place the blame for the collapse on the home buyers rather than the financial institutions that provided them the loans.
The rationale for this attempt to rewrite history is simple: if the banks aren't to blame, then it's proper that they were bailed out with home owners left to suffer due to being responsible for the mess. You can see this in columns from folks like Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post to HSBC's Stephen King in the UK's Independent and in the comments to their columns.
Banks were merely filling the demand for loans, as if they were a blameless actor in the financial collapse. The truth though as seen in documents from firms like Washington Mutual tell a much different story. Far from blameless actors with no direct interest in pushing the loans, the profits from simply generating the mortgages combined with the additional revenue from the interest on the loans or the leverage from collateralising the loans was the true driving force in the housing bubble in the U.S.
Now if the banks and investment houses were the driving force for the financial meltdown, then the calls would be for them to suffer the consequences of their actions and face future regulation to prevent another meltdown. Instead home owners should have been actively rescued from the mess created by the financial firms.
What's actually happened is the mass government rescue of firms like Goldman, Sachs and full payouts to holders of certain deals with AIG (like HSBC) in the initial stages of the financial collapse. The theory put forth by the Big Financial apologists at the time is that with government relieving Big Financial's debts, the business loans would resume, the credit crunch would end and the American economy would be humming before the next midterms. Two years on and reality shows that the loans aren't flowing and that the American economy is weighing like the Ancient Mariner's albatross around the necks of the US Democratic Party. But the financial institutions have been rescued and their profits look great and the rest of you can eat Marie Antoinette's cake.
The crumbs of Marie Antoinette's cake have been assembled in the US under the program with the acronym, HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program). Early on in the debate of what path to take towards recovery, the "professional left" pushed for a strong, efficient HAMP and mortgage cramdowns via bankruptcy judges. The theory was to wring the debt out of the system from the ground up and then consumer spending would restart, which would create demand for products and the system would recover. Unfortunately mortgage cramdowns were blocked and HAMP has become a program to smooth out the numbers of foreclosures for banks rather than as a way to reduce consumer debt.
Fundamentally Big Financial and the Obama Administration have been peddling supply-side economics that have been so problematic since the time of Ronald Reagan. The theory that supply will create demand simply doesn't mesh with reality. Instead with high long-term unemployment the demand for products simply hasn't rematerialised and businesses have no reason to hire folks to produce products for which there is no demand. The austerians may see this as an acceptable status quo as they aren't the ones suffering the hardship, since they've already been bailed out of the mess they created.
The austerians speak of having to reduce excessive debt. Excessive government debt. Following this advice is already having disastrous consequences for Ireland and Greece. The real debt that needs to be wrung out of the system is consumer debt in the US (and probably UK). This would require a hit, perhaps a big hit, upon the accounts of the financial institutions and is why no "serious person" in the corporate media is talking about it and the effort is underway to rewrite history of the crisis with the consumers as being responsible for the problems.
Personal Wealth Valued Above Democracy?
@ Sun 22 August 2010 10:12 AM HKT by Tom Legg
We'd just mention another bonus of living here rather than in the U.S. -- You can generally drink open beers in public places without harassment, unlike in 43 of America's states. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, it's a key freedom that feels more useful than voting, and better yet... your team always wins.
The key to anti-democratic authoritarian economic development models is the fact that a significant portion of businesspeople don't give a crap about democracy. What they want is very basic: to be rich and hold a socio-economic position above a lower class. Although it's not made explicit, my guess is the joke about your team always winning is in reference to Singapore being a virtual one-party state, Temasek Holdings, even though there are nominal elections.
So while you may be able to drink a beer and stroll along the Riverwalk, just don't criticise the Lee family or downgrade Temasek while you're doing it. Just ask the journalists that formerly worked for the Far Eastern Economic Review. But voting and freedom of speech I guess for some people is just a trifle to toss away in exchange for getting rich and being able to feel superior about it while drinking a beer in public.
Update on Sir Donald's Great Fire-Bowtie-Wall
@ Wed 18 August 2010 9:06 AM HKT by Tom LeggSo let me update this post on the-eleven.com being zapped by the HK government's internet filters.
On Twitter the The HK Govt CIO asked for suggestions about the future of HK's FreeGovWifi. I responded with my minimalist suggestions.
daaitoulaam Transparency about Network Filtering? Doesn't take a flop under the smallest crowd? ♺ @HKGCIO: Thinking about future of Gov WiFi
HKGCIO @daaitoulaam Gov WiFi filters porn everywhere and games in public libraries. On reliability, pl let me know details of probs - we have SLA
daaitoulaam @hkgcio Have you ever known a pr0n net filter that didn't kill legit content? Speaking as an owner of a non-pr0n domain censored by HK gov
HKGCIO @daaitoulaam No filter is perfect. Let me know the details of the domain u think is wrongly blocked on Gov WiFi and I'll get it sorted.
daaitoulaam @HKGCIO I appreciate the offer, but tweeting the HKGCIO for help is not a proper transparent appeals process worthy of HKers.
HKGCIO @daaitoulaam You're right. We'll post info about GovWiFi filtering policy and how to complain. BTW filters maintained by 3rd party not Gov
So there ya go, Hong Kong. My two-bits for freedom and transparency in government and fighting back against government censorship. I should probably follow up with transparency on the provision of the FreeGovWifi (?PCCW as the provider?) and the terms of the SLA though.
Price-Demand Curve
@ Sun 1 August 2010 4:08 PM HKT by Tom LeggIt's quite amusing that in Hong Kong, the only time the HK SAR government and tycoons state that rising prices ever reduces demand for a product is with labour costs. If you're a company that is drowning in red ink and your product is heavily underutilised due to lower-priced competition, the "obvious" path to profitability is by raising your prices. In their economic view of the world, there isn't a chance that might lead to reduced demand and even more red ink. Thank goodness for geniuses like these that all of their businesses are in markets where the HK SAR government heavily regulates competition in to oblivion and can guarantee their cronies sky-high profits.
CCP's Soft Power and The Internet
@ Fri 30 July 2010 4:15 PM HKT by Tom LeggAnother of the big online topics for the insular English language China blogs in the last month and a half has been the CCP's proejction of "soft power". One of the peculiar items about the discussion is the absence of commentary on the CCP's online efforts to project soft power. It goes so far as niubi's commentary on the situation at sinocism.
China’s efforts to build its “soft power” have been in the news over the last few months. So far none of the coverage of the media strategy for soft power has discussed what may be the fatal flaw in the government’s strategy-the media efforts are almost entirely focused on declining media like television, radio and print.
Not only has there been limited emphasis by the Chinese government on using the Internet to further soft power, but there are also major structural and cultural issues that make it extremely difficult for China to push its soft power agenda over the Internet. China has planned the soft power effort as a multi-decade effort, but the lack of effective products for the medium of future generations may doom the government’s efforts.
He analyses the situation from the point of view that Google, Facebook and Twitter are projections of US soft power and that China's lack of such a company hampers their soft power online.
There are no domestic Chinese Internet firms that have a shot at developing the global impact of a Facebook, Google or even Twitter. First, the language barrier is a real issue; maybe the Confucius Institutes will eventually teach decent Chinese to millions, but that will take decades and even then there will still be vastly more people outside of China more capable of reading English than Chinese.
Second, none of the top Chinese Internet firms-Baidu, Tencent, Sina, Sohu, Shanda, Netease-have either the DNA or the credibility to succeed materially in major overseas markets. In most markets they will face the same kinds of difficulties that Western Internet firms face in China. They may gain share, especially in gaming, in parts of the developing world, but not in any significant way that would have a meaningful impact on the overall soft power goals.
Personally I'd say this is rather upside down. The US-based companies aren't a projection of US soft power. Rather they provide a network relatively unencumbered for individuals to project a soft power that can be easily labeled as American or Western liberalism. Twitter didn't use a green-overlay on users' avatars. Google doesn't write the blogs that have long had the Blogger service blocked (on and off) by the Great FireWall.
The focus on print is important online. Google doesn't write news stories. Yahoo doesn't write news stories. The wire services write stories and Ron Fournier at AP provides a clue how important it is to have your guy's story being aggregated in order to drive the conversation.
Beyond the actual news, it's about having a network of people driving the story. Here's ESWN's Roland Soong from two years ago (scroll through to 012).
Of course, they exist. As noted in the post by Rebecca MacKinnon, they exist in China as well as elsewhere in the world [DTL note: the rmack story actually links back to a Paul Denlinger story @ ChinaVortex which makes the assertion of East-West astroturf equality :endnote] (including the 'democratic' countries which enjoy 'freedom of speech' and 'freedom of press'). In the Internet age, any government ('democratic' or otherwise) would do the same thing with their resources. But I believe that their effectiveness in China won't be felt in another two years or so. Why? Because they still have no idea how to harness the power of 280,000 Internet commentators at this time in China. I see no need to have 280,000 Internet commentators to 'guide' public opinion. 'Big' in not necessarily 'better.' The main job can be done more effectively by just a few hundred purposeful Internet commentators.
Does anyone really think a government that's been savvy enough to have previously hired firms like Burson-Marsteller and currently have hired Patton Boggs and DDB Worldwide as US-registered Foreign Agents to burnish their image, would give up on their network of individuals online or the scheme of using astroturfing individuals online that they had two years ago?
The keys to astroturfing are "to not get caught" and "present a coherent marketing message". You obviously want to downplay or obfuscate the connection to the CCP. In fact you'd want your opinion leaders to put distance between themselves and the official online outlets like People's Daily in order to increase the astroturfer's credibility and deniability. So perhaps in English they might push cadre corruption stories that fall in line with official guidance on corruption (but with a pro-CCP slant) which have been banned for online discussion inside the PRC, while assiduously avoiding stories that might reflect badly on single party rule or stories that might question the conventional story arc about the effective leadership of the Party (except for a few uncontrollable bad apples in the Provinces).
Then the question of the CCP projecting soft power online becomes who are the Online Opinion Leaders in the China blogosphere, who consistently push story lines about how Western media always gets China wrong and that China isn't protectionist and that the Party is serious about corruption and that China's internet is a spot for lively unfettered discussions that provide a check on CCP power and that if the Party does anything bad, well all the other kids are doing it too, so don't point any fingers at my Party.
Network Management Apps, Journalism and River Crabs
@ Fri 30 July 2010 1:31 PM HKT by Tom LeggSo the big twitter fest this morning was over news reporting on Google being blocked in the mainland. Google runs an automated network monitoring app that posts results here. Apparently the page has been updated in the last 16 hours or so to include some clarification on the monitoring schedule:
This dashboard receives updates at least once a day, generally in the evening Pacific Time.
Still no clarification on the exact methodology or ASNs being tested. Why is this important? Well network admins have jobs precisely because automated network monitoring apps at best can provide notifications of events which need further investigation. They report on what they're programmed for, in this case whether a service is available or not at the time of monitoring and nothing more.
Let's do a thought experiment. I set up two network monitoring apps: one in the PRC and one in Hong Kong. They are to monitor http service connections to twitter homepage and a designated twitter API url. If only PRC box says twitter is unavailable, does that tell us that twitter is blocked by the Great Firewall? No. It says that for some reason the packets from the PRC failed and that further investigation is required. It could be you've got intermittent failwhales at twitter and the packets from PRC just coincidentally failed. It could be that twitter is blocked by GFW. If the service appears unavailable on both, again it doesn't say that GFW isn't blocking twitter in the PRC. It could be that GFW is blocking twitter and HK faces a failwhale or a trans-Pacific cable cut or other possibilities. Again the network monitoring apps only provide a notice that further investigation in to why is needed and that almost anything is possible.
So even if you assumed that Google's PRC availability page was real time, it would be a huge leap of faith/ignorance to rush off and print a news report that says the PRC is blocking Google again. And looking at the various reports, I'm going to single out Reuters' report for praise, though the headline with "Google says China Web Search fully blocked" is poor due to the fact Google didn't say any such thing.
It was unclear whether access had been blocked by the Chinese government or if it was a temporary service disruption. A Google spokesman said he did not have any immediate information on change in service availability.
The NY Times has a Google spokesperson clarifying that the page isn't real time. This means there is no way to verify the network monitoring app's report of complete blockage since network monitoring is temporal. Google probably was unavailable from the checking IPs for unexplained reasons for the short time that day's monitoring was being conducted. Being available in the morning doesn't make the data from the network monitoring app any less true (even if Google walks back from reporting a full blockage).
The only ones that seemed intent on hyping the event were English-language China bloggers who were quick to claim Western media got the China story wrong again because Google was available when they woke up Beijing time and the AP who wrote "It's the latest twist in a high-profile showdown over Internet censorship pitting Google against China's communist government" and that they saw the event as "what initially looked like a dramatic development" as if news stories need to be pumped up like an episode of Desperate Housewives or some Wrestlemania jawing.
Sulzberger, The NY Times and The CIA
@ Mon 26 July 2010 4:23 PM HKT by Tom LeggIt always makes me laugh when ignoramuses refer to the NY Times as a liberal newspaper. The NY Times has for the longest time been an establishment stalwart, more of a critical player in the secret government than most contemporaries would imagine.
As the story of the day is the NY Times acting as an emissary for the White House concerning the publishing of classified documents on Wikileaks from the US military, I thought it's be nice to repoint our faithful readers to this moldy oldy from Rolling Stone magazine from 1977 under the byline of Carl Bernstein.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
...
During the 1976 investigation of the CIA by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Senator Frank Church, the dimensions of the Agency’s involvement with the press became apparent to several members of the panel, as well as to two or three investigators on the staff. But top officials of the CIA, including former directors William Colby and George Bush, persuaded the committee to restrict its inquiry into the matter and to deliberately misrepresent the actual scope of the activities in its final report.
That would be future President George HW Bush, father of President George W Bush.
The article also notes that among newspaper executives and the CIA the connections were primarily social with the notable exception being the Sulzberger's signing secrecy agreements with the Agency.
You can follow Greg Mitchell's updated press reviews and links at The Nation. We'll see how much difference there is between reports from The New York Times, which focuses primarily on the Pakistani ISI connections to the Taleban and The Guardian's primary focus on US/NATO/UK military and mercenary killing of civilians. Also it will be interesting to see whether there will be a discussion in the media of the NY Times acting as an intermediary once again on behalf of the US Executive Branch.
A Confluence of Pride in Greed
@ Sat 17 July 2010 11:56 AM HKT by Tom LeggSo as the debate raged in Taiwan over the signing of ECFA with the mainland, the DPP pointed to the bust that is HK's CEPA. Even Hong Kong's Oriental Daily went forward with an article describing the HK SAR government's negotiations with the mainland as a failure for 10 years. But Donald Tsang Yam-kuen responded that CEPA was a success, because it allowed for the Individual Visit Scheme from the mainland. The need to link the two scheme is a fairly clear example of how large a failure the negotiations have been by Donald Tsang and his predecessor.
But the HK SAR government in general trumpets frequently and loudly the benefits of mainland tourists coming to HK. They always talk about how much money they pump in to the local economy via tourist spending. This sets the primary goal of the program from the VERY TOP of the HK SAR government.
Early this morning (LegCo was still debating when I went to sleep around 2am), LegCo passed HK's first minimum wage law. The vote was 45-1. The one vote against the minimum wage was from the Tourism Functional Constituency representative. Currently many Hong Kong tour guides are not paid a wage by their employers, but make money solely from kickbacks (the industry calls them "commissions") from retailers where the tour guide herds her group. I've been proclaiming this as a sore spot of HK's tourism industry for well over 3 years on this blog (do a search for "kickback"). The lack of a set wage combined with the kickbacks places all incentives squarely on getting mainland tourists to spend, spend, spend. This dovetails precisely with the goals stated for the program as noted above by the Chief Executive himself.
The policy of getting mainland tourists to spend, spend, spend also dovetails nicely with a unique feature of HK, which is retail leases paying a commission of retail sales to the property owner beyond the base rent. This helps the cash flows of the primary commercial property owners, who also happen to be HK's tycoon property developers, during those periods when property sales are slow.
So as the video of Ah Zhen blazes across mainland television screens, I can only ask that mainlanders point at the National People's Congress for intruding in HK politics and propping up HK's functional consituency seats. The stranglehold on HK power by those that take supreme pride in being greedy ensures that common people will only be treated as ATMs to pump out even more money in to the greedy pockets of both HK tycoons and the CCP. Until that stranglehold is broken there will be no change and despite the complaints spanning more than 3 years, you'll hear that Ah Zhen was an isolated incident and then it'll be back to business as usual. Care for a little melamine in your milk tea while we wait?
The Face Of True Evil Is Often Quite Polite
@ Wed 14 July 2010 11:59 AM HKT by Tom LeggWhen faced with crowds of the hungry that worked hard but didn't make enough to afford food and shelter, what would Jesus do? He'd obviously say that we'd make sure that the views of their employers would be properly accounted for to ensure that none of them might have to suffer a loss in profits.
When faced with crowds of the sick and disabled wishing to be healed, what would Jesus do? He'd obviously tell them he was unable to handle the workload of healing them all, so he'd offer them a partial subsidy to go see some other for-profit healer.
What? Jesus wouldn't do those things? No, but a overtly pious little man who falls back on pompous versions of childhood taunts would. Of course what would you expect from a little man who claims victory for something that could only be accomplished by completely bypassing his powerless position.
Donald Tsang Yam-kuen's responses in LegCo yesterday showed that he was the master of policy initiatives that were nothing but hand waving. When faced with the obvious fact that his housing policies have resulted in repeatedly blatant gaming of the system by his tycoon buddies due to its lack of transparency, he responded by saying that Hong Kong would have to wait and see whether the current rules about transparency didn't work. Sorry, Bow-tie, we've seen that your rules are a failure and your response shows that you have no real power to rein in the institutionalised corruption here.
When faced with obvious signs that his policies have not slowed the surge in property prices, despite claims to the opposite made to LegCo by his Secretaries within the last two months, he offers the minimum of fig leaves concerning possible subsidies towards the Home Ownership Scheme. Any word on pushing the ICAC to consider pre-land auction negotiations between bidders as a form of corruption? Any word on an actual expansion of land offerings beyond more luxury homes being built? I can look out my windows and see two of the plots on the Government's rosters that weren't triggered. Why not? Because the government's policy of high land prices can't be reversed, because Donald Tsang has no power to rein in the institutionalised corruption in Hong Kong.
When faced with issues of a balanced economic development, he promised to revisit his failed transit subsidy program of a few years back. Why do we have to revisit it? 1) Because the policy was so massively undervalued as to make it an immediate failure, which ensured that it wouldn't actually register on the budget due to a lack of people using the failed program. 2) Economic development under Donald Tsang has continued to be so lopsided, that folks in the New Territories are still forced to commute to find jobs within stumbling distance of the renovated with taxpayer money Executive mansion.
When faced with issues of providing adequate health care for Hong Kong, he promised to provide subsidies for the elderly with chronic health problems to visit private doctors. But exactly like the travel subsidy program it is so massively undervalued, that it's a guaranteed failure out of the gate. And since almost no one will actually use the health subsidies, it ensures that the implemented program will not be a drain on the public finances of Hong Kong.
So we see a hand waving charlatan, who proclaims policy initiatives designed as immediate failures and proclaims that we'll have to wait and see whether the emperor has no clothes, when everyone else can see it plain as day in real time. And if I were the LSD, instead of throwing prop pieces of silver at Donald Tsang, I'd just inform the radical Tsang Yok-sing that you have no questions for this powerless charlatan and that you're insulted that the Chair would fail to allow the honourable members of LegCo to question the real power behind the curtains instead of this bow-tied bozo.