Can the planet’s most over-hyped life form save Ocean Park? Do we care?

Ocean Park is losing money, even though it is attracting large numbers of visitors and now has six panda bears. 

I went to Water World a few times back when it existed. But my first (and only) ever visit to Ocean Park was a couple of years ago. Parts of it have a sort of shabby 1980s feel. It doesn’t help that the place is ultimately part of the government bureaucracy. The aquarium is great, like most aquariums, while the rides are pretty lame. It’s small, being in a crowded city that probably should leave this sort of thing to Shenzhen or somewhere. I went soon after Covid, when there were few crowds, but I’d hate to be there when it’s crowded…

…The park saw around 3,140,000 in total attendance from last July to the end of June this year, up from around 2,360,000 in the previous financial year.

The figure is a five-year high, driven by non-local visitors whose numbers more than tripled. The park said visitors from mainland China almost quadrupled, while those from India and the Philippines increased by more than three and five times, respectively.

To put it in perspective, Ocean Park can’t be as mind-numbing as I imagine DisneyLand to be. And Mainlanders, Indians and Filipinos are, according to leading experts, among the world’s most easily amused nationalities. But Ocean Park has nothing really distinctive. The panda bears are worth about 20 seconds of your time. Snails have more zip. 

The Standard has the ominous headline ‘Return of multi-entry visas looms’ warning that Shenzhen and other Mainland residents will be able to visit Hong Kong more frequently. If that fails, we can round them up at gunpoint and force them to come here.

A few links for the weekend…

From Merics…

…middle income and developing countries are also dealing with China’s surging exports, though their responses have received far less attention

…The wide range of measures taken by countries with their own unique mix of economic and political interests towards China shows the growing international concern caused by China’s economic model, subsidies, overcapacity, and surging exports. It also demonstrates key trends of how China does and doesn’t defend its economic interests with different countries – most notably, that Beijing seems willing to incur economic losses from trade defense measures when it believes it still has considerable potential for political wins, but will fight more intensely against economic losses when convinced a country is politically lost to them.

The Straits Times looks at Malay nationalists’ demands that Kuala Lumpur enforces local laws requiring Bahasa signage to be dominant on shopfronts…

Clashes over the use of Chinese on Kuala Lumpur shop signage are the latest racial flashpoint in Malaysia, with a Cabinet minister warning of economic harm if Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s government continues to ban prominent Chinese characters on retail signboards.

Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Tiong King Sing lashed out on Nov 24 at a decision by Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) to enforce a 1982 by-law dictating that any advertisement must have Malay displayed with larger characters than other languages.

“This overboard behaviour not only causes tourists to question the openness and inclusivity of Malaysia, but some international visitors have asked me point-blank whether Malaysia is racist or religiously extreme,” he said, lamenting in a statement that such issues of race and religion can stunt economic growth.

For fans of demographics (more or less) a couple of charts…

Via this thread, bar charts showing that 97% of all talent visa entrants in Hong Kong are from the Mainland. I would be surprised if it was much less. The authorities want to replace the young educated and perhaps somewhat older professional people who have been leaving. Who can they reasonably expect to apply? To the extent policymakers have a choice, what sort of people would they prefer?

And from a business intelligence company via this thread, changes in the number of billionaires in each country in 2023. The number of ultra-rich has grown in most places, but in China and Hong Kong, it has fallen…

(As it has – slightly – in Germany, and in Saudi. Don’t they have any billionaires at all in Japan?)