Sudden rush then silence

After trying to get into the habit of posting thoughts on a daily basis, suddenly, nothing. Did I give up? Nothing of the sort. My connection through one of the many Chaebols in HK mysteriously failed to work after I made a snide remark about its beloved and definitely most patriotic Chairman. It would make good reading and a great conspiracy if it wasn't for the slightly embarrassing fact that I found out somebody (OK me) had accidentally disabled the LAN card whilst mucking around with other stuff. Luckily, this time, I didn't abuse HGC to loudly when they told me the technician couldn't be here until today. Oops.

Labour shortage...

Went and visited a vendors factory in Shenzhen on Friday of last week and was talking with their guys about their workforce. They have a huge industrial compound/toy city with a huge amount of workers and he was complaining that they needed to find another 3,000 workers (they'd been short for several months) but they are unable to attract them because they only pay minimum wages. Apparently all of the workers prefer to go to work in Shanghai rather than Guangzhou province as the prospects are better.

Where else in the world is it possible to talk about being 3,000 workers short and thinking that you might be able to find them within a short period? If all of the workers get RMB400 per month this is only $HKD1,200,000 per month. Isn’t this less than what Canning Fok gets? All the factories in other countries might as well shutdown now, how in the hell can they compete?

Democracy in Hong Kong

Mr Tung appeared two days ago presenting his policy address and said he was sorry and recognised he had done things wrong. He then went on that night to go to a private function rather than answer the questions of the public on radio as is the tradition thus further alienating the people who, were there anything akin to democracy, be his constituents. It's good to see he's learnt his lessons.

I actually mean this sincerely (kind of). In my own twisted mind, the problem with Mr Tung is that he wants to be popular. With this in mind rather than doing things which were in the general public's interest he has been doing things which he thought would make him popular and give legitimacy to his position. The whole debacle that was 85,000 flats per year was caused because everyone complained that Hong Kong housing was unaffordable to the masses. Unfortunately the vocal minority did not represent the large portion of the community that had purchased their houses at high prices and who were then slightly upset to see their property prices tumbling. Nobody discussed to him what would be the effect on banks when they suddenly had large numbers of properties considered to be negative equity. In fact, had they have not been rescued by a global meltdown at the time and the low interest rates that happened as a result of this I have a feeling Hong Kong may had had even bigger problems.

The British, on the other hand, never really paid a lot of attention to what people wanted. They tried to be good rulers and do what was good for the people rather than listening to the various lobby groups. It may be argued, very successfully, that they also paid a lot of attention to ensure that the interests of business groups (particularly British ones) were always well looked after, but this, intentionally or not, had a knock on effect for the HK Economy.

The problem isn't unique to Hong Kong. Australia and the UK have had it at various times and (here's where I'll get into a lot of trouble) Margaret Thatcher and Jeff Kennett (Victoria) were the people that saved the economies that they were responsible for. Politicians with the guts to say I don't care if I get re-elected, I don't care how unpopular I am, there are probelms that need to be fixed for the greater good to make this a better place. What Hong Kong needs isn't Democracy and it's not communism, it's a leader with the balls to make the hard decisions.

If Mr Tung going to his private function (white man's club in Chinese) is in the best interests in Hong Kong, may he upset the general public evermore.

HK Democracy: For the Developers, By the Developers

A friend has recently purchased a flat 'off-the-plan' in Hong Kong. After a significant delay (more than 1 year) the developer has finally handed the property over. Under the contract that he signed, and is standard in Hong Kong, the developer has to complete the property by a certain time otherwise they will penalised at the pervailing interest rate (plus a premium) based on the amount of moneys paid for the period of delay. The contract goes on to say that the 'occupancy permit' shall be deemed as sufficient proof that the property has been completed. In this case, the developer, Cheung Kong, was arguing with the government over some trees that a contractor had cut down and so the government withheld the occupancy permit until they settled the dispute. In the end they got fined a huge amount and my friend wasn't given access to his house for more than a year. Cheung Kong claims that they are not required to compensate him as whilst the occupancy permit is sufficient proof of completion, it is not necessary and the contract does not prohibit the developer producing other evidence of completion.

After receiving the flat he has found significant number of defects, I think somewhere in the vacinity of 20 text pages. Apparently, according to the inspector he contracted with, his is one of the better flats in the complex so you can understand the quality of the 'completed' flats is extremely questionable. There are some people who are having to have their kitchens pulled out, others who have had to have all the flooring taken out to fix pipes and so on and so forth. My friend, since receiving his flat has been waiting, and arguing with them to fix repairs for a further six months. The developer has only just completed his flat and judging by the occupany rate around him, there is still a lot of work going on. That is to say there are people who's flats are still not suitable a year and a half on and the developer feels they have a strong case that they don't have to pay them a cent. The only option to these owners is to take them to court either by themselves or as a group. Cheung Kong, as a cash rich organisation is more than capable of dragging the case on for an extended period until the owners run out of money or interest. They have the lawyers on the payroll so it costs them almost nothing if they don't lose.

I've taken a long time to get to my point, but the thing that strikes me most about this is the lack of legislation to protect home owners. Surely, where home owners have a limited number of vendors to chose from, the government needs to implement some policies to protect home owners. Instead of paying all the money to CK, perhaps the government should keep a bond equal to, let say, 30% of the amount. This would give developers the motivation to quickly complete the job and get it to the owners as quickly as possible. If there is a dispute over the quality of the work done, then this money should be frozen and a tribunal or similar arbitration body should be called in to action. They can have experts on the payroll who can determine if the claim is not valid and, if necessary, get workmen in to fix it and deduct this amount from the bond. When everyone is satisfied, the balance gets given to the developer.

I'm sure this sort of system is widespread and operating successfully in many countries. Why won't it happen here? Because the government isn't elected and so there is no motivation to do anything to harm Beijing's friends in Hong Kong. Especially not the ever patriotic Mr Li Ka Shing.

Copyright pirates in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong government is considering legislation to make the possession of copyright material in Hong Kong illegal but one has to wonder why we are doing this. In fact, why do we bother helping overseas intellectual property holders rights at all?

Instead of wasting police (and custom's) time and spending tax payers money protecting Hollywood and Microsoft's bottom lines why not put it into poverty alleviation schemes and other things that directly help our community. Let's face it there really isn't a movie, fashion or software industry to speak of in Hong Kong that needs protecting. If you like, we can keep it illegal so that the BSA, Hollywood, LV and friends can still enforce their copyrights but a cut of any amount they recover a cut should go to pay for court costs etc. and it should be brought as a private prosecution.

By giving companies and individuals access to the latest software tools we might even give them the ability to compete unfairly against overseas markets and help to build industries which aren't only reliant upon Hong Kong as the window to China. Something which we desperately need. Yes the Americans will get upset but so what?

If we don't publicise the change too much they might not even notice.

Hang on, this might be China's current policy...hope it's not copyright, I'd hate for them to sue me.

Sorry, just thought I'd see if I could get some comments happening.

Racism in Hong Kong....

A group of managers at work were having a meeting today and they were discussing the fact that an ethnic Indian colleague had recently got transferred to another department and somebody joked that the guys previous manager had 'mo cha yung'. This can sound like saying the manager 'no *#!@# use' or 'no Indian to use ' but the word for Indian, 'cha', is considered highly derogatory and yet it made all the local managers in the room laugh. The Indian colleague heard about it and was suitably incensed.

The story in itself is not untypical and it;s not the first time I have heard it. In colloquial Cantonese there are apparently only one type of people, Chinese. Others are

Westerners - Gwei Lo
Indians - A Cha
Filipina - A Bun
African - Hat Gwei etc.

There are correct phrases in Chinese such as 'sai yan' for 'Western person' but these are invariably not used. Yet, if you ask most locals they will tell you they are not racist. That westerners call themselves ‘Gweilo’ is no different to a African-American calling themselves a ‘nigger’. They take ownership of the word and take the power away from it as a racist tool but ‘Cha’ like ‘Nigger’ is just simply not considered acceptable to the South Asian community in Hong Kong. I was at a seminar recently and when asked to characterise Australians the first response out of their mouths was they are racist. When I suggested this was more true of Chinese this was met with absolute credulity. How could I possibly say such a thing?

From my experience of Australians there are racists. The difference between Australians and people in Hong Kong though is that Australians, like Brits and Americans, are invariable self critical. It is considered socially and legally wrong to behave in a racist manner and racists are invariably condemned by the community at large. In Hong Kong on the other-hand most don’t even realise that by referring to people in a derogatory manner and making them out to not be people they are being racist. The Hong Kong government says there is no problem with racism in Hong Kong and yet many Indians and Filipino frequently have trouble finding rental accommodation because Chinese landlords won’t rent to them. Even I have had landlords back out when they see I am a Westerner telling the agent that they don’t want to rent to a Westerner.

The first step is educating people so they realise the problem exists. If the government is not even prepared to take this one on behalf of the community at large then racism is a problem that will never be solved.

Why I started tonight....

I saw Simon's thoughts on the ESF today and this is something that has been bugging me for a while. I though I could enter a comment or finally start to write on my own site.

Having had a daughter at ESF before I know first hand about the quality of at least one school and can tell you that it compares favourably with the schools that I've seen and been to. The standard is very good. My daughter, after one year, has now transfered to a local school because we want her to be able to speak Cantonese. What I miss most is the lack of pressure on the kids to learn. Learning is done in a fun manner, there is little homework and the kids have no exams). Daughter#1 now has lots (perhaps 10) tests in some form per week at her new local and has just done her first set of very high pressure exams. She also has to learn Cantonese (no easy thing given she'd almost forgotten everything and only has one parent, my locally born wife, who can teach her to write).

As somebody that pays a not inconsiderable amount of tax I believe I am entitled to having the government contribute to the education of my kids. I do not mind paying extra for a higher quality education but don't believe I should be funding other kids but getting nothing in return. With this in mind the 'voucher system' mentioned in the [everyone says it] unlinkable SCMP strikes me as an ideal situation. This is the same system as in Australia and I believe many other countries now. The government pays 80% of the cost of them directly teaching the kids so they are saving money and the parents are happy. Nobody loses. The problem is that this was cut from international schools some time ago and there is no logical reason why they should not have the benefit of the same system. I'm sure if there are parents who can afford to pay a HKD200,000 non-refundable debenture per kid, they are paying a lot more tax than me and therefore at least as elegible for the vounchers as I am. By this logic the government will then have to increase the amount they are paying out however as at the moment they are not paying for international schools. Has the administration shot itself in the foot again?

Why not just cancel the subvention? If they were to do this and many of the parent seriously transfer the kids out of the ESF into the local school where would they go? The government is obliged by law to provide education for all HK residents. All the local schools I've talked to (all EMI schools) insist the kid must speak Catonese. According to my daughters school it is compulsory for primary school kids to take Cantonese - this is exactly why the ESF schools were created. The kids are not supposed to be competent in Cantonese. OK this is a fudge in many cases as lots of local kids go there but that's the theory and is true (based on my daughters school) in 80% of cases. Priority goes to these kids as a matter of policy. What would the cost be if the schools were required to provide remedial and Cantonese as a Second Language classes. Again the cost of educating kids to the government would increase greatly.

If the ESF is wasteful what should be done? The government, as a group paying money should have a supervising role in the ESF. They need to make sure that my money is being spent wisely. If efficiency gains are made, the ESF as a non-profit making body should reduce fees to the parents, not to the government. They are already saving on the education of these kids, why should any further savings go back into the public purse? This would make this quality of education available to more parents. If there is a significant shift from public to ESF type schools (as the fees go down) and/or a demand for the same style of education in Cantonese, this will infact save the government even more money (remember they are only paying 80% of the cost of educating the kids in State schools) and the Administration may actually end up with some kids who can think out of the box joing the community. Remember, the ESF is not only English as a medium of instruction, it is a completely different style of education to local schools. I note with interest that almost no mention has been made in the Chinese press, particularly by Professor Mak (Chairwoman of the ESF) of the fact that the ESF saves the government money. They only see the amount it 'costs' and the average salaries reported (which do seem high).

So why all the noise? The people that go to ESF schools are a clearly visible minority and the government, because of the size of the ESF can say how much money they think could be saved and the people think, wow that's a lot. Most of the locals I know think that all foreigners working here are on 'expatriate terms' ($1M/day I believe for a fresh graduate) and so can obviously afford to pay the fees without stilling money from the public purse. The size of the ESF parent's group is therefore small and unlikely to be able to rouse public sympathy. In short, a soft target. It's a group which the government can use to draw attention away from an essentially directionless administration. Let's be honest. It's been almost two years that this has been being discussed. If the problem was as pressing and as significant as they keep making out it would have been dealt with. They keep on stretching it out and delaying it. Seems to reach fever point everytime other issues die down and helps to give the press something to sell papers with.

Welcome - About me

I am originally from Manchester although I've spent a long time in Melbourne (Australia) before coming to Hong Kong and have been here for eight years. I have worked for many different companies however at the moment I am in the toy industry. As I am on local terms my family and I live in a modest place with our Indonesian maid in Island East (hence the name).

The blog is probably just going to become a place for me to vent my thoughts on living in Hong Kong, the news of the day or whatever. You'll probably quickly guess that I don't have a clue what I am doing so any thoughts or suggestions will be more than welcome.