Will Hong Kong have a PR problem during the handover?
YES I have just come back from a month away and, gosh, it was a surprise to see that Kai Tak wasn't beseiged by people desperate to flee the impending doom which every British newspaper is forecasting. Did you know that we're jittery, panicking citizens living our lives in the lengthening shadow of fear? I read that in three newspapers a couple of weeks ago while I waited for a plane. I had plenty of time for media perusal that particular morning, of course, as four airports, five railway stations and the Underground in London were all closed because of IRA bomb scares.
So I can understand why Ted Thomas, public relations expert, feels it's time to do something. Last week, he announced plans to offset this deluge of negative overseas press. I'm not entirely convinced that vetting and then paying journalists to tell a positive news story upholds the finest tenets of the fourth estate (some paradox, surely?) but I wish him luck. Especially as he's doomed to failure.
Let's look at the facts. There are 6,000 journalists arriving here in June, and that's not counting the ones already in situ filing the gloomy copy their editors want to read. The much-quoted line is that June 30 is the biggest story since the D-Day landings. Tanks, cameras, action - well, you can see the thrilling parallel, and it's even better if this time the baddies are the ones landing on the beaches. Sunshine doesn't sell. Setting suns, however, sinking into blood-red seas as poor unfortunates stand around wailing and rending garments while Britannia sails off, now that's a story.
While I was away, I considered getting a T-shirt printed which said, 'No, I Don't Know What's Going To Happen Either' because people suddenly thought I'd become psychic. I don't know what's going to happen. You don't know. But all those journalists zipping in and out for about 15 minutes will be endowed with uncanny powers of prediction and they will all be saying the same negative things. Journalists have a pack mentality and whether it's the Princess of Wales or the loss of a colony (a word still extensively - and inaccurately - used by the British media), they trot out the current party line as blithely as any cadre in Beijing.
Ted Thomas won't make much difference although I wish he'd pass on the news that we don't speak Japanese here so that no one else asks me how well I speak it. Perhaps he could also try and stem the use of the word 'takeover'. (When a tenant moves out of my flat in London because the lease has ended, is this a heinous takeover?) And I've found that a potted history of the Opium Wars does a great deal to offset weeping over sunsets in the diminishing British Empire.
NO.
I CAN still vividly recall the single piece of career advice my father doled out to me as a spotty, angst-addled teenager contemplating the rotten prospect of having to get a job. 'Son,' he said, 'Do whatever you like. Just don't get into PR.' Dear old dad had by this time spent most of his alleged career trying to make a buck from this most dismal and nebulous science, so he knew of what he spoke. Public Relations (what a cheap euphemism - more like Puerile Deceptions) basically involves sending ludicrous bills to clients who will never pay them after you have wasted half a rain forest trying to change people's minds about subjects they couldn't care less about anyway.
So will Hong Kong have a PR problem during the handover? No. At least, not if we decide it doesn't. Image is, by definition, in the eye of the beholder, and the beholders that count are you and me - the people who actually live and work on this febrile chunk of capitalistic excess. If a few wobbly bottomed Americans decide not to visit because the Daily Mulch's star foreign correspondent has scared them silly with a breathless epistle on our impending demise, why should we care? We should rejoice. It's not a PR disaster. It just means there'll be more seats on the MTR.
No amount of whining and dining by PR types is going to change the fact that most of the slavering pack of foreign journalists about to descend upon us already has an agenda. 'Hong Kong Is Kicking Butt' is not going to get you a splash in the Evening Slander. 'Kong Kong Is Screwed' just might. Even the BBC, that bastion of truth and accuracy, is peddling scripted drama as sober documentary, prodding gin-soaked pensioners to prophesy doom and gloom.
But anyone who cannot work out for themselves that the press tends to beat things up is an imbecile. Should we really be too upset if half a million imbeciles decide not to visit us because they think there is rioting in the streets? I don't think so. Anyone who matters overseas - that is, anyone with money invested in Hong Kong - is going to make sure they know the score. And the score is that confidence is high, business is booming, and the future's so bright we've got to wear shades.
It seems Ted Thomas is the latest self-appointed guardian of our public image, bleating about our 'staggering public relations problem'. Thomas, a PR expert, has based his thesis on a particularly sophisticated research technique known in the industry as the Three Cab Survey. Thomas went to London, Berlin and Paris, and asked a cabbie about Hong Kong's future. Thumbs were directed downwards. Ergo, Hong Kong is facing a humungous PR disaster.
Well, gee whiz, Tedster, I'd say until Berlin's cabbies are running the Stock Exchange you don't need to get too hot and bothered. Let's face it, the only spin doctors Hong Kong needs are washing machine repairmen.
