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Jake Van Der Kamp

'People elected me because I can speak my own mind, not toe a particular party line.'
Anson Chan Fang On-sang
December 4
It has taken Anson less than two days from her election victory to forget both how she came to run for office and whose crucial support she had. I knew I was right not to vote for her.
Listen, Anson, you ran for that Legislative Council seat because you were invited to do so by a coalition of pro-democracy parties whose causes you agreed to represent. You would not otherwise have had a sufficient constituency to be elected.
You are thus now beholden to those pro-democracy parties and you are obliged to toe their party line rather than speak your own mind. That's the way party democracy works; you speak your own mind when formulating the party line but once you agree to it, you agree to agree.
Stop trying to wriggle out of your obligations.
'I think it is fair to say however that both sides recognise that whilst the MORC [Memorandum of Regulatory Co-operation] is helpful, more needs to be done particularly in terms of co-operation in enforcement.'
Martin Wheatley,
Securities and Futures Commission
You have to make what you can of rare concessions to the facts. They are mighty rare indeed from the SFC but at least its chief executive had the decency in a speech he made in London on Monday to devote one sentence to admitting that his writ does not run  on the mainland.
He had a good deal more to say, of course, about how good it is for mainland companies that they can list in Hong Kong because they then benefit from Hong Kong corporate governance standards enforced by the SFC.
Yes, they certainly benefit. The investment world believes that they comply with Hong Kong standards while they themselves know that those standards can only be enforced on mainland companies if the China Securities Regulatory Commission agrees in each case to enforce them on the SFC's behalf.
And the fact is that the CSRC has no incentive to enforce them. It undermines its own direct empire by doing anything for Hong Kong and it agrees to a show of co-operation with Hong Kong only under duress from Beijing.
The result is that we in Hong Kong misrepresent our corporate governance standards to the world. We say they apply to mainland listings when, in hard reality, they do not.
I wonder if foreign investors can hold any of our regulators liable for this misrepresentation. I certainly don't think Mr Wheatley can absolve himself of it by a single pussy-footing one-sentence concession to the facts.
'But for Hong Kong to stay ahead, we look to you, our business leaders, in the daily running of your businesses, in the boardroom, in relating to investors, to not only do what is within the strict parameters of the law but also what is ethically right and ultimately good for your business.'
Chan Ka-keung
Financial Services Secretary
Just listen to that righteousness oozing off the podium and wafting through the room on Tuesday at the (draw a deep breath) Chamber of HK Listed Companies  fifth anniversary gala dinner cum Inaugural HK Corporate Governance Excellence Awards presentation. Whew!
Our financial services secretary is an academic, of course, and so you have to expect this sort of talk from him.
But, as is so often the case in academia, certain crucial questions are never asked, leave alone answered.
For one, could you tell us, Sir, what your definition of 'ethically right' happens to be? I understand the strict parameters of the law. All I ask is that you give us your parameters for 'ethically right'. If you ask business leaders to observe these on a daily basis, surely you must be able to tell us what they are.
My difficulty, you see, is that if everyone agrees that these ethically right standards are right and proper, good for business and should be adopted by every businessman, then why don't we adopt them into the strict parameters of the law? I mean, if we are to have rules, shouldn't we standardise them and write them down?
And if that's not possible in this case because ethics is a bit of a woolly concept, then what are you doing in a letter-of-the-law government job, Professor Chan, instead of officially setting up shop as an Ayatollah to harangue us on what God wants from us?
Perhaps I can rephrase your question for you in the proper Hong Kong context, however, and the answer too.
Question: Is the ethics of business the business of ethics?
Answer: May I have the envelope, please?



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South China Sea

Anson Chan beholden this time to toe the party line

Anson Chan