Who Is Deeping Divisions In Society?
@ Fri 29 January 2010 2:00 PM HKT by Tom LeggDonald Tsang Yam-kuen always speaks about how the pan-Democrats are deepening divisions in society. What he means of course is that they are daring to question the exploitive looting of society to benefit a self-selected elite minority.
As anyone that spends any time here can see, the HK SAR govt's policies are designed to cause deepening divisions in society, but divisions which solely benefit the backers of the government and the CCP[?] on the other side of the border.
Hong Kong store rents may rise by as much as 10 percent this year as retailers benefit from an influx of shoppers from mainland China, Savills Plc said.
Rents in malls with the best locations, such as Times Square in Causeway Bay and IFC Mall in Central, may increase by 5 percent to 10 percent this year, while those at street level, including Canton Road in Tsim Sha Tsui, may climb 10 percent, Simon Smith, Hong Kong-based senior director of research at the property broker, said in a phone interview.
And these numbers are probably on the low-end of estimates.
IFC Mall, connected to the Four Seasons Hotel and Two International Finance Centre, Hong Kong’s second-tallest building, signed record rents in November and anticipates increases of 10 percent to 25 percent this year, said Karim Azar, assistant general manager of IFC Management.
Do you think the average store clerk in any of these shops will receive an increase of 10 to 25% in their salary? How about in that lower range of 5 to 10%? Not happening. Estimates from business groups are suggesting that the companies which are providing raises this year might splurge out for an increase of approx. 3%. So whose policies and actions are causing deepening divisions in society? Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and his Executive Council.
As the HK Real Estate Agents General Association starts to run pro-establisment political marketing, it's clear there is a lot of money at stake if a HK SAR government that was accountable to the people was actually allowed to come in to power.
A mini-digression: Remember how the Central People's Govt held up development of the new Chek Lap Kok airport because they thought the British were wasting away HK's wealth? Funny now that HK's wealth is being looted via high land prices and rents to be shipped to development projects on the mainland, the Central People's Govt isn't complaining about the new High Speed Rail white elephant terminal at Kowloon Station, but instead it's the HK youth complaining about their city's wealth being wasted away.
Second mini-digression: Remember how the NPC[?] Standing Committee ruled that the HK SAR government had to ensure that the number of directly elected and functional constituencies remained equal for the 2012 LegCo[?] elections? I bet you wouldn't be able to imagine that if you saw the HK SAR government's TV commercials supporting their political proposals. It's a shame that blatant misleading propaganda of this sort can't be countered with a firm antidote of truth on the TV airwaves. But political advertising on TV is forbidden to all except the government, because the government doesn't want a rational debate of policy, but simply wants to rule by decree like little emperors with a rubber stamp legislature. Again another deep division in society between those who are acceptable to have a permanent voice on radio and TV and those that would be a threat to reverse the divisions in society enacted by the HK SAR government since the handover.
Final digression and back to the linked article: Remember how the pro-business community constantly rails about higher taxes or more progressive taxes stifling incentives to "create wealth"?
Some jewelers and luxury watchmakers paid IFC Management rents of more than HK$1,500 a square foot last month, bolstered by Christmas sales, he said. These retailers paid rents based on turnover once sales exceeded a certain amount.
In HK the business taxes aren't progressive, but the rents are. So instead of the wealth being diverted back to the general public to help everyone, the taxation is being diverted directly in to the hands of the small group of property developers/business property landlords. And the business community doesn't raise even a peep about these commercial rental agreements stifling incentives to "create more wealth". In other words, the business community's talk about high taxation is just bullshit and should be laughed at rather than taken seriously.
We Have Ways Of Making You NOT Talk
@ Tue 19 January 2010 4:40 PM HKT by Tom LeggCensorship comes in many forms. There are the grand government censors that use control of the media to filter content to the masses. There is also the use of intimidation to try and force people in to silence.
First the HK Police arrested Christina Chan Hau-man in an effort to silence her dissent and to cast a deep chill across the HK youth protesting government efforts to railroad HK society.
Now comes the cover of Oriental Sunday adorned with peeping tom shots of Ms Chan brushing her teeth in her panties and worse. When Donald Tsang Yam-kuen talks about Hong Kong's core values, obviously sexist attempts to ruin a woman's life in order to chill dissent is a core value of the HK SAR government. If Apple Daily pulled the same stunt with photos of Sec of Transportation Cheng in that state of undress on the cover of one of their weekly tabloids, the HK Police would have Jimmy Lai down for coffee before the morning papers hit the presses.
And of course in the world of HK blogs, there's ESWN at the front publishing the cover to further spread the intimidation. Stay classy, Roland Soong. You can always be counted on to spread the agitprop that is too scurrilous for the People's Daily. (Oh noes... maybe I should worry that you'll publish a story about me belonging to a group that's *insert scary mystery radio music* worse than Falun Gong as per ESWN's post about Zhou Yongjun (that also contained huge quantites of openly copyright infringed material).)
Google.cn Moved Back?
@ Fri 15 January 2010 1:57 PM HKT by Tom LeggAlmost 4 years ago, I wrote a set of posts on the move of the google.cn domain and routing to hosts on the mainland. So I just rechecked the DNS and routing for the domain in the first time in 4 years given the brouhaha over Google thinking about quitting the PRC. The DNS is the same, but routing seems very different now.
Traffic from HK to google.cn hits the hkix.net peering point and then flows back to the same Google-owned routers and machines as google.it or google.fr or google.com or google.co.uk. Now I don't know the routing for Google's internal network, but when the switch was made 4 years ago, the routes for google.it and google.com were the same, but google.cn's route changed from the rest of the google network. It could be that google.cn is still routed in to servers in the mainland via Google's private internal network and VPN, but if nothing else this is different that when the switch got thrown to move to google.cn to the servers on the mainland 4 years ago.
Desperation Due To Poor Planning
@ Wed 13 January 2010 8:37 AM HKT by Tom LeggOh noes!!!! Scare tactics and ham-fisted pressure from the Executive Branch of the HK SAR government have become the games of the day. First there was the bogus maths to come up with the figure trotted out about millions lost per day if the construction was delayed. Now we've got 3 Executive Councillors telling LegCo[?] to "act responsibly" and they should promptly rubberstamp the government's projects without modification.
ARROGANCE!
One of the big things the Executive Branch of the HK SAR government has prided itself on since I moved here was PLANNING. Since I've moved here, I've been struck by the incredibly poor planning due to arrogance instead of foresight and accommodation and turf wars and compartmentalism rather than interdisciplinary planning.
For example transportation pricing affects at least Hong Kong's two other big issues, education and the elderly. Yet, very very rarely will the Dept of Transportation bother considering these issues when offering transit price modifications. Instead they focus strictly on ensuring that the government's vendors make a healthy profit without regard to the greater impacts on society.
The delays in LegCo and the squabble over democratisation of Hong Kong show that rather than accommodating alternatives and proposed modifications, they'd rather lecture LegCo about being responsible, as if the Executive Councillors are authoritarian parents rather than political equals. ARROGANCE! Sorry guys, despite being appointed to multiple positions across Hong Kong, your government has shown serious failures in judgement time and again.
P.S. As for Chek Lap Kok, from everything I've read, the biggest impediment to its building was from your bosses up in Beijing, who were afraid that the British government was intent on spending away Hong Kong's wealth. So if Beijing was wrong about that, perhaps they're wrong about pretty much everything else as well.
Protectionism Is Showing In The Wind
@ Tue 12 January 2010 7:17 PM HKT by Tom LeggLess than five months after the CCP[?] announced that China is suffering from overcapacity in the wind power sector, which even China Daily admitted was due to protectionist measures.
Much of this progress in forming a complete industrial chain was attributed to the 70-percent localization requirement policy, promulgated by NDRC in 2005.
This required that at least 70 percent of wind power equipment to be produced in China. Wind farms failing to adhere became ineligible for construction approval.
Now that "complete industrial chain" is locked in to place the market is now suitable for the removal of protectionist measures .
China has scrapped restrictions on the use of foreign parts in wind power turbines. The China Business News says the decision means that mainland wind farms no longer have to source at least 70 percent of their turbine parts from the domestic market.
Oh, I forgot as Hu Jintao put it, it's not protectionism when the CCP does it. It's only protectionist when the US, EU or Australia does it.
They Attack From Their Weakest Point: They Oppose All Modifications
@ Sat 9 January 2010 6:27 PM HKT by Tom LeggFacts become irrelevant to them in a debate to sway public opinion. Instead they consult the Karl Rove playbook. Conventional Wisdom says that Rove attacks his opponents' strengths. I call bullshit and say he attacks from his clients' weakest points, like GW Bush, a champagne National Guard unit wash out, trying to lead the nation in a battle of "Biblical proportions".
And with the aide of PR consultants, the HK SAR government goes after the pan-democrats saying that they oppose everything the government proposes. The truth is that the government opposes everything recommended by the pan-democrats, even if it is the logical and best path for Hong Kong, simply because it's been proposed by the pan-democrats, and all good things for Hong Kong can only flow from the brain trust of the HK SAR government and their shoe shiners.
How bad is this tendency to reject outside modifications of their plans? It's not just the pan-democrats the HK SAR government has to defiantly ignore to prove they can get the job done, but it goes all the way to the HK courts. Want to reclaim Victoria Harbour in order to build a road and the courts say no, just say that your plan actually meets all of the courts objections and proceed with the reclamation. Who's going to stop the executive-led government from ignoring court orders? The HK police? They've become so politicised that they had to issue a second absurdly low head count for the January 1st march the morning after, because their initial statement of 4000 was so patently absurd that even the local shoe shiners couldn't defend it.
They Don't Want Dialogue!
@ Thu 7 January 2010 6:24 PM HKT by Tom LeggThe establishmentarians always say they don't like radicals and the way forward should be dialogue and open discussion. Yet when faced with an opportunity for discussing a HUGE expenditure of HK taxpayer dollars, what do the establishmentarians say? That discussion would be pointless and a mistake.
Simply put, the establishmentarians in Hong Kong don't want to discuss their plans. They don't want the people to have input in to their plans. They want the people to sit down, shut up and just accept what the HK elite are willing to give them, because Hong Kong's elite know what's best for the Hong Kong people.
So the next time an establishmentarian says stop being radical and that should rely on peaceful, rational dialogue, tell them, NO! YOU DON'T WANT DIALOGUE! YOU WON'T LISTEN! THE ESTABLISHMENT TRIES TO AFFECT A PR-SPIN "BRODERESQUE MODERATE" VOICE, BUT THE UNDERLYING BEHAVIOUR AND PLANNING ARE NEITHER RATIONAL NOR MODERATE.
Chinese Capitalism Means All SOE Investments Are Profitable... Or Else
@ Thu 7 January 2010 12:49 PM HKT by Tom Legg[?]. This leads to the understatement of the year for journalism on business in China.
A legal battle in China would have subjected Morgan Stanley to financial and political risks, lawyers said, making the settlement the most attractive option.
But the agreement could encourage other Chinese companies to take legal action against foreign banks at home as a tactic to escape loss-making contracts, lawyers warned. Global banks are reluctant to fight cases in China, where judges are appointed by local communist leaders who often control large companies in their areas.
I'm so glad that Obama and the rest of the Western world are so near to declaring China a free market economy, because with freedom like this, I'd hate to see what authoritarianism would look like.
Needs More Jingoism
@ Thu 7 January 2010 9:20 AM HKT by Tom LeggMy new tagline for CCP[?] policies is "Needs More Jingoism" (in the vein of Christopher Walken's infamous "Needs More Cowbell" spoof of 70s rock on Saturday Night Live).
When faced with an increasingly disenchanted HK youth, the obvious solution devised by the CCP and their local shoe shiners in places like the Home Affairs Dept is more jingoist indoctrination at an earlier age.
The CCP's first line solution to problems is not to resolve them, but to mitigate the PR problems through information control. Rather than facing the facts that HK has a populace that wants to move away at about the same rate as Iraq. HK has the highest Gini score in the world, which has been steadily growing since at least 1981.
The pro-CCP propaganda before the handover was that the income inequality was a product of British colonialism and that the handover would solve such things, since HK would be in charge of HK's affairs. Instead the same folks who were spewing the anti-colonial diatribes have formed coalitions with the same collaborationist tycoons and the problems have only been exacerbated.
And what is the one thing that these rich tycoons fear most? Full Democracy in HK. So instead you get the usual shills like ESWN and the HK SAR government press office saying that the Gini issue and that growth in income inequality just isn't a big deal. So instead of solutions to the items the youth see as problems, you get PR spin and blather trying to dismiss these as non-issues and that the youth only need more jingoist indoctrination in order to see the light and wisdom of their unelected leaders.
I'm sure I could dig up the fine quotes from the last Constitutional reform farce in HK from the tycoons worried about socialist measures being introduced by democracy, but instead let me point to this interesting article in The Nation by Christopher Hayes from a few weeks ago.
Xu {Kuangdi, former Shanghai mayor and party bigwig} argued that this is all part of the plan: "Let's look at our neighboring Asian countries," he said. "South Korea: its peak developing speed was reached using military rule.... Indonesia was successful during the reign of Suharto but recently it faces stalemate and difficulties." The reason that democracy is an obstacle to economic progress, Xu said, is that "the poor people want to divide the property of the rich people.... If we Chinese copied the directly elected situation today, people will say, 'I want everyone to have a good job.' Someone will say, 'I will divide the property of the rich people to poor people,' and he will be elected. It is useless: parity will not solve the problem of economic development. That is why we are taking a gradual and step-by-step approach in reform. As Mr. Deng said, we will cross the river by touching the stones. We will not get ourselves drowned, and we will cross the river."
The Princelings and CCP Cadres are the new wealthy and they'll be damned if they'll share the spoils with the poor people beyond what it takes to maintain enough stability for the CCP to retain unquestioned authority. And after walking around Shanghai and seeing HK property tycoon company names lining the construction site walls, we know that the CCP doesn't want anything like true democracy getting in the way of the systematic and institutionalised looting of HK's wealth to "develop" the mainland with showcase non-productive assets which richly line the pockets of the CCP's cadres and produce enough overflow to keep the average urban middle class CCTV guest host content.