Governance – a multiple-choice test

Owing to abysmal leadership inflicted upon it by China’s Communist dictatorship, Hong Kong has suffered government collusion with tycoons and their cartels, pushing housing prices and rents sky-high and overloading the city with overseas shoppers and tourists. In response to growing public disquiet, Beijing then broke its earlier promises of democratic reform. That created further unrest, which the authorities countered with police violence, abuse of power, intimidation and smear campaigns. The result is an unprecedentedly divided community. Disturbingly, it is the better-educated, middle-class and younger parts of the population that are the most alienated and angry. How can the administration best solve this situation?

AppreciateHK11. Give the public free access to museums for a limited period (conditions apply)

2. Mesmerize the disgruntled with a command to grasp bounteous wealth and opportunity through exclusive exciting magic One Belt One Road® pixie dust

3. Have a mega-brainwave and offer uppity young activists seats on the government’s hugely effective advisory boards, so they can strut around and look important alongside pillars of the establishment like Bunny Chan, Ronald Arculli and Anthony Wu.

SCMP-CYappeals

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15 Responses to Governance – a multiple-choice test

  1. old git says:

    Advisory Boards are unpaid, on the whole. The honour of membership is reward enough. Civil Servants however, do not attend meetings of these Boards, free. They are paid to do so.

    Appointment to these Boards is by way of condescension, so long as appointees are administratively detected, inspected and disinfected, by being placed on the “Personality Index”, as a prerequisite. Given that the Index’s criteria have never included opponents of the Government, one wonders if a subordinate crisis is unfolding.

  2. Docta G says:

    Bread and circuses but no bread.

  3. Qian Jin says:

    This blog used to be witty and stimulating. Seems that Hemmers has become besotted with blaming all of Hong Kong’s woes onto the Chinese CCP.

    I blame it on Hemock’s girlfriend, Jenny, if she is still around. Remember ? “the girl from Beijing but she’s got an American Passport” ?

    Such a shame he has lost his touch.

  4. PD says:

    4. Offer the females — often the deadliest — a small house in a Country Park enclave with no road access.
    5. Hand out doctorates after 10 months of part-time correspondence courses.

  5. Qian Jin says:

    P.S

    I am only trying to wind you up……………. into writing something funnier like you used to do.

  6. Red Dragon says:

    Qian Jin

    I honestly don’t think you’ll succeed in winding Hemmers up. I think you sometimes wind other people up, but more fool them for falling for your tricks. After all, winding people up is your whole raison d’etre.

    I have observed before that you’re either a dyed in the wool commie foot-soldier (which I doubt) or a reasonably well-educated, white (possibly banana), bourgeois agent provocateur. The timbre of your commentary does strongly suggest the latter, and the fact that you have finally confessed to being a gadfly should, in future, spare the rest of us from taking your observations too seriously.

    It has, indeed, crossed my mind more than once that you might be dear old Hemmers himself, cunningly adding spice to the comments section by playing the role of devil’s advocate.

    Whatever the case (and I’m not going to lose any sleep over it), I very much appreciate your contributions for the very simple reason that, whether you’re the real red McCoy or merely a humble prankster, they reveal what a bunch of benighted arseholes the Chinese commies are.

  7. FunB3 says:

    Qian Jin

    where do you think the blame lies?.

    The CCP gets to pick the team & strategy for Hong Kong & its clearly not working well.

    Like many posters here, I have been in Hong Kong a while & even though most of us can up sticks & leave, there is a genuine concern about where Hong Kong is heading.

    The city has so much to offer but the narrow set of interests is ignoring Hong Kongs strengths & continues to funnel the wealth into the pocket of a few ‘Elite’ families.

    Hong Kong really does deserve better, don’t you agree?

  8. Cassowary says:

    We’ve seen this movie before. It’s the old Politics of Administrative Absorption, otherwise known as “flatter them and keep them busy”. Many advisory boards have included a token pan-democrat in the past. The trick is to spread them out so that they’re always outnumbered by pro-establishment voices on any one committee.

    They tried similar on the Civic Party back when it was new and shiny and seen as a legitimate attempt to form a “ruling party”. They declined to be absorbed, and so relegated themselves to the gadfly role in LegCo, the designated holding pen for irritatingly principled but mostly harmless lawyers.

  9. Knownot says:

    The comments on the Advisory Boards by old git and Cassowary remind me of Big Lychee’s post on November 6 about the “Poor Wretch” who sits on a board where he is apparently expected or required to approve the proposal to cover the royal ciphers on post boxes.

    To serve as an advisor is an honour
    But it will not make him proud or rich.
    Poor wretch.

    He speaks, advises; but others still decide
    Elsewhere, high up, hidden, out of reach.
    Poor wretch.

    A bad proposal comes. He can approve it
    Or stay silent. It doesn’t matter which.
    Poor wretch.

  10. Joe Blow says:

    I have discovered a new appreciation for Long Hair.

  11. Nimby says:

    Red Dragon: It was apparent to some for quite some time that Qian Jin rides a folding bike. Avatars, like that bike, can be folded origami style into many interest; Several avatars in the comments section have all ridden in the skull atop that same bike, though not necessarily at the same time.

  12. Nimby says:

    Knownot: That fellows agony is over apparently, the die is cast. The last postbox with the Royal Cipher on Tingkok Road is being covered in hoarding so that no photos can be taken when they chop it off.

    Behind closed doors, behind hoarding, but what ever is done, keep the public ignorant. The real function of inviting the newbies into these shows is to put them into a compromise, from which then their future science can be extorted.

  13. Nimby says:

    Sorry, that last line should read “silence”.
    Buses and tiny phone keyboards are a bad mix.

  14. RSG says:

    I like Qian Jin’s comments! It would be much more boring if everyone agreed, lockstep, with everything Hemlock writes. Such is the nature of free speech… And yes, there is no shortage of irony in offering a platform of free speech to a possible CCP supporte and/or advocate of “enlightened” authoritarianism.

  15. Qian Jin says:

    @Fun3B: “where do you think the blame lies?…….The CCP gets to pick the team & strategy for Hong Kong & it’s clearly not working well ”
    “Yes” to the conclusion: “it’s clearly not working well” but “Not exactly ” to “The CCP gets to pick the team & strategy “. This unfortunately is not the reality. At the last CE “election” the choice of “team” was thrust upon the CCP after the catastrophic and sudden fall from grace of the elite’s next chosen successor. CY was hardly their carefully chosen man but the barrel was getting empty. You also to bear in mind that Beijing’s own leadership was at that time going through a period of radical reform for the better.

    The first post handover CE, if not the world’s smartest politician, was a decent and fair man who had the interests of the majority of Hong Kong at heart. He recognized Hong Kong’s worst social injustice which he targeted right from the start : putting right the lack of affordable housing and the gross inequitable power of developers and landlord tycoons.

    He was defeated not by incompetence, but by the combination of the Asian economic meltdown triggered in Thailand, by the scourge of SARS and finally the wild screams to Beijing of the rich and powerful about “negative equity” and massive debt due their over-indulgent speculation in “ever-rising” property prices. ( Many stupid Western governments have based their failed whole economic policies on this myth) .

    Faced with this barrage of venom from the rich and powerful and coupled with their direct access to the PRC’s “then” politburo, the mistake was made to hand over power to the tycoons’ own puppets, ex-civil servants dressed in their Alexander Olch silk bowties. From here, Hong Kong had only one way to go…….. down with the sleaze of Hong Kong’s home- bred incompetents.

    If Hong Kong would only turn the clock back to 1997 and allow Beijing to SELECT and APPOINT their own choice of a true socialist-capitalist leader, Hong Kong will do better. Not even in the “democratic” West are their leaders ever truly “elected” by the country’s voters.
    @”Hong Kong really does deserve better, don’t you agree?……The city has so much to offer but the narrow set of interests is ignoring Hong Kongs strengths & continues to funnel the wealth into the pocket of a few ‘Elite’ families.Yes and this has to stop.

    YES, I agree and giving Beijing a FREE HAND to pick a CE (“Governor” ) instead of being presented with a meagre choice of second-raters would give Hong Kong a real chance to change track for the better.

    And finally @ RSG ” I like Qian Jin’s comments! It would be much more boring if everyone agreed”

    Thank you. I’m so relieved to hear that at least reader does not put me in the “wu mao” brigade.

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