Rafael Hui’s $2m Music Collection is “Amateur” A creditor of Rafael Hui Si-yan, the former Chief Secretary who was declared bankrupt by the courts last year, put Hui’s entire collection of 10,955 vinyl records and CDs up for sale last week. Hui told the court earlier that he had spent more than $2 million on them between 2005 and 2010. Ma Chung-chiu, music collector and editor of hi-fi magazine High Fidelity, told Sing Tao Daily that it is an amateur collection , missing some valuable collectibles—such as the Living Stereo series published by US record firm RCA in the 1960s. Ma speculated that the collection would sell for $500,000 at most. Some gems from his collection include an out-of-print record of Cantonese opera “Princess Changping,” which fetches up to $9,800 online. Hui has been convicted of five charges relating to misconduct in public office and bribery in the city’s biggest graft trial, and been sentenced to 7.5 years in jail. Our take: At least it wasn’t maotai. Lau Wong-fat Takes Worst Legislator Title Again Heung Yee Kuk chairman Lau Wong-fat has been named the city’s worst legislator for the second year in a row . According to a report by Catholic Monitors on Legislative Councilors, over the previous year Lau has not filed a single motion or amendment and has hardly voted : he was absent 12 times and failed to vote on bills or motions 116 times. Other poor performers include Leung Ka-lau from the medical constituency and pro-Beijing lawmaker Ho Chun-yin. The institute also found that of 110 rejected bills, 46 were actually backed by half of all lawmakers: they were turned down only because of the functional constituency system , which requires a majority approval in both the publicly elected geographical and “small-circle” functional constituencies. Our take: What does he care? He’s the boss of the New Territories. HK Apparently No Longer China’s Safest City Hong Kong, which was ranked the safest city in China last year, does not even rank in the top 30 now , according to the 2014 China Urban Competitiveness Report, issued by the state-affiliated Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. First place goes to… Taipei. The institute claims that while Occupy affected people’s daily lives and the normal functioning of society, Taiwan’s Sunflower Student Movement did not. In terms of competitiveness, Hong Kong came second after Shanghai, followed by Beijing. In a list evaluating growth potential, however, Hong Kong fell from 11th place last year to 13th. The institute warns that Hong Kong has fallen into a rut and offers nothing new economically. Our take: Wait a second—the safest city in China… isn’t actually in China???
