Hong Kong's former home affairs minister coy about post-retirement life
A friend in need is a friend indeed. Tsang Tak-sing, who was abruptly replaced as secretary for home affairs in July, knows it full well.
Tsang, who as a student was jailed for two years for distributing "inflammatory" anti-colonial leaflets during the 1967 riots, joined a dinner hosted by the 67 Synergy Group, an organisation of fellow leftists imprisoned then, on Friday to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
But Tsang, who has avoided the limelight since his resignation, remained coy about post-retirement life when he was approached by All Around Town. A person familiar with Tsang's exit said Beijing and Leung Chun-ying were unhappy with the performance of the former journalist, adding he was not proactive enough on youth work. Beijing officials claimed this was a contributory factor to last year's Occupy protests.
University of Hong Kong education associate professor Li Hui shot to fame recently by suggesting that he is 200 times more influential in academia than the university's former law dean, Johannes Chan Man-mun, who was controversially denied promotion to a pro-vice-chancellor post this week.
Li's argument was based on his survey about "impact factor", an indicator of the average number of citations of articles published in academic journals. Li said his "impact factor" was more than 0.05, while Chan's was just 0.0038.
However, his remarks were quickly dismissed by fellow academics. Institute of Education academic Dr Brian Fong Chi-hang said since the "impact factor" indicates the popularity of journals, Li would need "extraordinary talents to calculate the impact factor of individuals".
Chinese University social scientist Simon Shen Xuhui also said the factor is only for comparing journals in the same field, while Dr Andy Kwan Cheuk-chiu, director of the ACE Centre for Business and Economic Research, wrote yesterday that Li should not "pretend to be knowledgable".
HKU councillor and students' union president Billy Fung Jing-en faced a barrage of criticism recently after he abandoned the council's confidentiality rule and exposed the reasons councillors gave in denying Chan's promotion.
Apart from the pan-democratic heavyweights such as Martin Lee Chu-ming, those who spoke up in support of the third-year student included about 90 former executive committee members of the HKU's Arts Association, the arts faculty students' body, of which Fung served as an external vice-chairman while a freshman. It included Chik Pun-shing, former vice-president of the Professional Teachers' Union and the association's chairman from 1982-83.
They said they "took great pride" in Fung's act as those who denied Chan's appointment showed "total disrespect for procedural justice".
