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Jake Van Der Kamp

'Where ideas fly and businesses grow'

Science Park advertising blurb

And where pigs have wings, which is what you must assume that they have if you see them fly (beware all ye who stand below).

But it cannot be too difficult for pigs to fly. If Science Park can do it, why can't pigs? And Science Park has certainly encountered no great difficulty. In fact, it has now opened its Phase 2 for leasing with a special leasing hotline (yes, folks, no less than a real true hotline) direct to its leasing office on the eighth floor of the 'Bio-Informatics Centre' (does anyone have a Technobabble dictionary handy? I seem to have lost mine).

Yes, this pig of a government project has taken flight. Here we have a city that has pretty near to a zero record of ever having done anything viable in hi-tech but that suddenly decided under the hi-tech genius of Mr Tung Chee-hwa (remember him?) to become a big noise in hi-tech by pouring concrete for some fancy-looking buildings.

Don't tell me  you're mystified about how  one leads to the other. There is a simple way of going from poured concrete to hi-tech wizardry in one easy step.

What you do is look for tenants who are willing to put words like 'informatics' or 'diagnostics' or just plain 'technologies' into their company names and you then offer them space in these fancy new buildings at rents of less than a third of what that space might be worth on the open market, plus give them rent-free periods, serviced apartments and other deeply discounted perks.

And you know what? The tenants will come. Bit by bit you will actually fill up Phase 1, particularly if you don't worry too much about the difference between fact and fiction in their names and businesses or the lack of any return at all on our investment.

Soon you'll be ready to open Phase 2. As I say, pigs can fly, even a porker like Science Park.

But let me tell you another story about Science Park.

Seven years ago, while it was still earthbound, Science Park made a great whoopee-doo about having signed up the 'world's leading IC developer', Solomon Systech,  for 32,000 square feet of space.

'... joins World-Class Electronics Cluster at Hong Kong Science Park as Major Tenant' said the government press release.

'This is an endorsement for the strategic values of Science Park as it endeavours to establish Hong Kong as an innovation technology hub in Asia,' said Science Park chairman Victor Lo. You get the picture, flap-flap-flap, wings starting to grow out of hams.

And then on Tuesday, I opened the newspaper to read that Solomon Systech has registered an 85 per cent slump in second-half earnings because of a severe slowdown in demand. Sale prices were also down. The company is selling more low-end products.

But was this announcement accompanied by a government press release consoling the major tenant of Hong Kong's world-class electronics cluster on the unfortunate diminution of profitability? Did Mr Lo find endorsement of anything in this? Could I see any reference to the earlier hoopla about this wonderful company?

Now you may say that I cannot really blame Solomon Systech's misfortunes on Science Park. All Science Park did was subsidise this foreign company (they are mostly foreign at Science Park) by granting it ultra-low rents in needlessly extravagant buildings erected on scarce and valuable public land that could have been put to better uses.

True, but I am not quite so sure that there is no link. The best way of ensuring corporate success is the same in every industry - let the contenders fight it out on the open market for who is the best and may the best one win. The best one usually does when things are done this way and the hi-tech industry is no exception.

But bureaucrats don't understand this. They like hi-tech because it appeals to their sense of industrial fashion. They have never had to work under the whip of that fierce slavemaster, a profit and loss account, and thus have never had an opportunity to make the surprising discovery that what is the best in profitability is almost always the best on every other count, too.

They talk of 'seed money' and 'critical mass' and other metaphors that may apply to agriculture or nuclear physics but not to business. The result of all this ignorant talk is that they attract experts on extracting money from witless bureaucrats, in other words, wolves who don't care much about the future of the disguise they have used once that disguise has served their purpose.

I don't say this describes Solomon Systech. I don't know the company well enough and it may just be a casual casualty of how things so frequently go wrong when governments subsidise industry.

But I have had enough familiarity with these matters to expect a high casualty rate from a misconceived government initiative like Science Park. Although pigs can be made to fly, those below still do best to beware of the fallout.



Monitor