BLACK humour it may be, but Governor Chris Patten and Mao Zedong appear to share a similar understanding of the status of teachers and intellectuals.
Mr Patten's major invention, the nine new functional constituencies which led to the collapse of the through-train for Hong Kong's political structure, put all teachers and intellectuals into the ninth group.
Mao once dubbed the liberal intellectuals and other learned people as the 'stinking ninth category', meaning that such people were always affected by bourgeois ideas.
People from the 'stinking ninth category' were those purged most severely in the mass movements of the Mao era.
In Mao's eye, they were the social outcasts who should be educated by the proletariat.
Of course, Mr Patten will not be purging electors from the ninth new functional constituency, but his election blueprint has in some ways given them lower voting powers than other electors.
