https://www.scmp.com/rss/1459/feed Philip Bowring has been based in Asia for 39 years writing on regional financial and political issues. He has been a columnist for the South China Morning Post since the mid-1990s and for the International Herald Tribune from 1992 to 2011. He also contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, www.asiasentinel.com, a website of which he is a founder, and elsewhere. Prior to 1992 he was with the weekly Far Eastern Economic Review, latterly as editor. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com At this time when there is so much focus on national security issues and more integration with the mainland, two recent events have brought home the historic role of foreigners, good and bad, in the creation of the city. First was that a half-Chinese Hongkonger with the very Irish name of Siobhan Haughey became the first to win two Olympic medals. That in itself was a lesson in how Hong Kong has to some extent avoided the ethno-nationalism that afflicts many places, the mainland included. Second... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3144058/china-turns-inwards-hong-kongs-international-outlook-fades?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3144058/china-turns-inwards-hong-kongs-international-outlook-fades?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Aug 2021 22:30:05 +0000 As the Chinese Communist Party celebrates its centenary, now is a good time to look at the uses and abuses of history. On an immediately topical note, this month 100 years ago saw the first serious outbreak of communal violence between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. Arabs were incensed at Britain being given a League of Nations mandate to rule this former piece of the Ottoman Empire and at Britain’s promise in 1917 to make Palestine a “national home” for the Jewish people. Then, only about 10 per... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3135178/chinas-communist-party-marks-its-centenary-how-will-it-portray-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3135178/chinas-communist-party-marks-its-centenary-how-will-it-portray-its?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 May 2021 21:15:11 +0000 Excuse my focusing partly on a personal topic today, but I just became a grandfather for the first time. At a time when sociologists and politicians love racial silos, I need space for this child of the Eurasian land mass. My grandson is one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter English and two-quarters Kazakh. Kazakhstan lies at the very heart of Eurasia, the meeting place of Turkic, Mongol and Iranian peoples, long ruled by Russia and with ethnic German and Korean minorities deported by Stalin. The... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3130751/where-multiracial-migration-has-taken-hold-people-cant-be-easily?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3130751/where-multiracial-migration-has-taken-hold-people-cant-be-easily?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Apr 2021 22:45:14 +0000 Post hoc ergo propter hoc means if x follows y, then y must be the cause of x. This Latin phrase was drilled into me at the age of 15 as one of the world’s most common and dangerous fallacies. But it seems many people never learn, including those who proclaim themselves to, and demand that others, “follow the science”. It is not, of course, surprising that popular media in search of readers easily stirred into anxiety will headline the fact that a few people in Hong Kong have died after taking... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3125993/amid-covid-19-vaccine-death-rumours-and-blood-clot-fears-anyone?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3125993/amid-covid-19-vaccine-death-rumours-and-blood-clot-fears-anyone?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 21 Mar 2021 01:45:09 +0000 With the Chinese Communist Party celebrating its centenary this year, General Secretary Xi Jinping has urged study of its history, of Marxism and socialism with Chinese characteristics. The president’s focus on  history reminded this writer to visit the Hong Kong Museum of History which has recently reopened. Its earlier incarnation was often described as the best museum in Hong Kong, combining vivid visual displays with a thorough account of history, which was generally regarded as fair and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3123252/hong-kong-museum-history-must-flesh-out-citys-story?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3123252/hong-kong-museum-history-must-flesh-out-citys-story?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Feb 2021 23:00:17 +0000 “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is an oft-used phrase to denote the misuse of statistics, be they wrong or misinterpreted. For the past year, we have been deluged on a daily basis with numbers – Covid-19 cases, deaths and hospitalisations – and then data about the fallout from lockdowns, school closures and attendant unemployment, government debt levels, etc. Scary headlines about the number of deaths can be misleading if they are taken out of a broader context of past and present measures... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3118790/why-hong-kongs-coronavirus-measures-are-out-proportion-risk?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3118790/why-hong-kongs-coronavirus-measures-are-out-proportion-risk?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Jan 2021 22:15:16 +0000 Disturbing though it was, the near closure to the world of the United Kingdom on December 21, a mere 10 days before its exit from the European Union, was symbolic. Some might even call it poetic justice. The UK’s discovery of the mutation and increased velocity of Covid-19 has nothing directly to do with its departure from a group of 27 fellow European nations. However, it was a reminder of how vulnerable the UK now is, even assuming it survives as an entity given Scottish independence... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3115095/britain-stuck-consequences-bungled-brexit-and-coronavirus-response?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3115095/britain-stuck-consequences-bungled-brexit-and-coronavirus-response?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 Dec 2020 14:00:11 +0000 Now that Hong Kong’s legal system is, we are told, in need of reform, it is instructive to read the latest thoughts of President Xi Jinping, which address aspects of the broad issue of the rule of law. They should certainly give leaders, lawyers and the public much to think about, not to mention devising ways of bringing them to fruition. Here is one excerpt from his speech at a two-day meeting of Communist Party leaders this past week on legal governance issues: “It is necessary to strengthen... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3110678/rather-legal-reform-hong-kong-must-first-enforce-laws-protect?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3110678/rather-legal-reform-hong-kong-must-first-enforce-laws-protect?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Nov 2020 02:30:12 +0000 “My country, right or wrong” seems to be the mantra to which Chinese people must adhere whether via indoctrination in schools or by command of the national security law. However, noted the British writer G.K. Chesterton in a 1901 essay, that phrase was “the last thing” that a true patriot would say. Patriotism involved principles and behaviour, not to be conflated with the specific actions of one’s national government. Thus, were the many in Britain who opposed 19th-century imperial expansion... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3106663/what-does-loving-china-mean-communist-party-decides?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3106663/what-does-loving-china-mean-communist-party-decides?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Oct 2020 19:30:07 +0000 There has never been a greater need for proportion and perspective. Daily Covid-19 counts in the absence of other statistics are not just meaningless, they are highly misleading, not least for political leaders and one-track minded scientists. An example: Hong Kong has so far 104 Covid-19 linked deaths. In 2019, it had around 9,000 deaths from pneumonia, a not dissimilar lung infection for which there are partially effective vaccines and medicines. Like Covid-19, it kills mainly the old and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3103021/panic-driven-response-coronavirus-prioritises-some-lives-over?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3103021/panic-driven-response-coronavirus-prioritises-some-lives-over?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Sep 2020 00:45:17 +0000 Apart from not being Donald Trump, the choice of Kamala Harris as Democratic vice-presidential candidate is the best news for a long time in the history of race in the United States. Here is the daughter of a Tamil Indian and a mixed-race Jamaican, both immigrants, married to a man of European Jewish origin. Here is proof positive that immigration and racial mixing can work for America, and an example to other countries (China included) which still identify physical characteristics with... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3098245/kamala-harris-progressive-choice-vice-presidential-candidate?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3098245/kamala-harris-progressive-choice-vice-presidential-candidate?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Aug 2020 19:30:16 +0000 Perspective has always been a challenge for journalism. This is ever more the case as news sources move to instant online feeds. Keeping perspective on Covid-19 is a near impossible task. The daily volumes of unfiltered, often dubious, seldom comparable information about tests, cases, death numbers, vaccine trials, theories of origin, health impacts, age, race and other relative vulnerabilities from a multitude of countries are bewildering. I sympathise with governments which must address... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3093575/are-coronavirus-lockdowns-justified-given-health-economic-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3093575/are-coronavirus-lockdowns-justified-given-health-economic-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Jul 2020 01:00:12 +0000 The world is seeing a dramatic boom in myopia, according to the World Health Organisation. Myopia has, however, already overwhelmed the world’s media and the politicians who respond to it. Otherwise, how could the world be turned upside down by a virus which has so far killed just one-third of the number of those who die annually from tuberculosis – another lung infection, which affects the young as much as the old? How could prevention and treatment of other killer scourges be neglected to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3090669/outside-us-black-lives-matter-movement-devoid-context-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3090669/outside-us-black-lives-matter-movement-devoid-context-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Jun 2020 19:00:10 +0000 It has been a dismal period for news, even setting aside Covid-19 and US President Donald Trump. Indeed, the coronavirus may be a cover for some of the nastiness. Here in Hong Kong, we have the spectacle of police seemingly wanting to punish dissent by attacking and pepper spraying chanters of slogans they find disagreeable. It is hard not to feel that, as after the 1967 riots and until the Independent Commission Against Corruption was formed, loyalty to the government gives officers carte... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3084457/why-german-courts-challenge-eu-more-disturbing-trumps-outrage-or?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3084457/why-german-courts-challenge-eu-more-disturbing-trumps-outrage-or?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 16 May 2020 19:00:11 +0000 “War is too important to be left to the generals,” remarked a prime minister concerned about keeping field commanders from seeking small victories at massive cost. Likewise, leaders today must listen to and question not only the virologists and epidemiologists, but also the economists, unions and employer groups, social workers and ordinary people who have their own risk/reward calculations. Only then can they make decisions on behalf of the societies they govern. The expert views are sometimes... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3080352/fight-against-coronavirus-embroiled-fog-war-poor-becoming?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3080352/fight-against-coronavirus-embroiled-fog-war-poor-becoming?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Apr 2020 01:00:12 +0000 “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Less than 50 years after poet John Donne wrote those words, in 1665 London was struck by the plague. In A Journal of the Plague Year, Daniel Defoe vividly described the cries of the starving, unemployed due to the closure of businesses, and the flight to the countryside of those who could. Today we find countries around... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3077226/road-accidents-are-likely-kill-more-people-coronavirus-world-needs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3077226/road-accidents-are-likely-kill-more-people-coronavirus-world-needs?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Mar 2020 00:30:15 +0000 It may be too early to draw conclusions about the long-term impact of the novel coronavirus. It may prove a passing issue that caused fear and inconvenience out of all proportion to its mortality rate, whether in China or elsewhere. But it has emphasised the importance of transparency, and the need for measured and firm responses. It also poses an additional challenge when free trade and economic globalisation are already facing their biggest challenges in decades. The interruption of supply... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3050531/hong-kongs-government-sleeping-job-coronavirus-adds-challenges?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3050531/hong-kongs-government-sleeping-job-coronavirus-adds-challenges?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Feb 2020 00:30:10 +0000 The Gregorian year and decade are off to an awful start, so let us pray for a better beginning to the Year of the Rat.  The United States’ resort to political assassination in the case of Iran’s major general Qassem Soleimani was an appalling breach of law, convention and common sense. It showed that the world’s most powerful state no longer respects the rules which have governed interstate relations. American exceptionalism has reached a new low and one which invites tit-for-tat retaliation. In... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3046407/under-trump-us-interventionist-policy-towards-middle-east-has?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3046407/under-trump-us-interventionist-policy-towards-middle-east-has?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Jan 2020 19:00:06 +0000 Perspective is a rare quality in journalism, particularly now that Twitter feeds the news and research is confined to googling. So, those English-readers who would like a long perspective on current Hong Kong events should pick up a just-published slim volume titled The Turbulent Times. The author, Viswa Nathan, has been here for most of the last 54 years as a journalist – including fearless editor of the then serious broadsheet The Hong Kong Standard – through the turbulence and turning points... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3042843/china-and-india-britain-and-us-how-nationalists-push-centralisation?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3042843/china-and-india-britain-and-us-how-nationalists-push-centralisation?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Dec 2019 23:30:14 +0000 In 1947, a senior adviser to the British government wrote: “We are not a great power and never will be again. We are a great nation but if we continue to behave like a great power we shall soon cease to be a great nation.” Those words particularly apply to Britain on the cusp of Brexit, but also have relevance for India. They highlight the pretensions of a Britain whose major political parties are both headed by people, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, who in very different ways live on past... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3037866/brexit-beset-britain-and-modis-india-are-plagued-inward-looking?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3037866/brexit-beset-britain-and-modis-india-are-plagued-inward-looking?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Nov 2019 01:00:19 +0000 Philip Bowring Philip Bowring The last law and order crisis in Hong Kong was not during the Cultural Revolution disturbances of 1967. It was a decade later, when the police mutinied, staging mass demonstrations against the Independent Commission Against Corruption for its investigation of institutionalised corruption in the force. The existence of this cancer had been hinted at in an inquiry into the 1966 riots – caused by local grievances, not Beijing – but nothing much happened until the creation of the ICAC. This followed... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3033440/lessons-1970s-hong-kong-danger-unchecked-police-powers-and-how?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3033440/lessons-1970s-hong-kong-danger-unchecked-police-powers-and-how?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Oct 2019 00:30:13 +0000 It may have been too much to imagine that a government which cannot even reform a broken taxi system could have handled a major political issue. But immobility is the hallmark of a system where the entrenched become ever more so and Beijing fears change as dangerous. As the conservative political philosopher Edmund Burke wrote 250 years ago: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation”. So, instead of trusting that Hong Kong people have the common sense to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3025881/carrie-lam-has-bought-time-hong-kong-extradition-bill-withdrawal?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3025881/carrie-lam-has-bought-time-hong-kong-extradition-bill-withdrawal?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Sep 2019 01:30:08 +0000 Understand your enemy. Know your own weakness. To the protesters on Sunday, the central government’s liaison office might have seemed a suitable target, given its constant interference in Hong Kong’s affairs in defiance of the Basic Law. Attacking inanimate objects may seem preferable to attacking people, as happened in Yuen Long. Yet it was a grave error. The liaison office and its plaque are not just symbols of the Communist Party and central government. Because they are also seen as national... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3020102/when-bad-ideas-happen-hong-kong-protesters-and-beijing?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3020102/when-bad-ideas-happen-hong-kong-protesters-and-beijing?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Jul 2019 02:00:11 +0000 Tragedy can be defined as the destruction caused when a person’s better qualities and instincts are so overwhelmed by one weakness as to betray the ideas or people for which he/she had once stood. In which case, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi are currently such tragic figures.  The grim-faced chief executive has almost certainly been following orders but that merely shows that she is more concerned with staying in power than listening... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3014348/aung-san-suu-kyi-carrie-lam-has-let-her-one-weakness-overpower-her?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3014348/aung-san-suu-kyi-carrie-lam-has-let-her-one-weakness-overpower-her?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Jun 2019 00:30:03 +0000 Philip Bowring Philip Bowring Not content with stoking a trade war with China and skirmishes with other partners, US President Donald Trump seems in the mood to threaten real war, this time with Iran. Are the recent reports of tanker sabotage in the Persian Gulf to become another Gulf of Tonkin incident, the contrived crisis which enlarged the Vietnam war by persuading Congress to enable US president Lyndon B. Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3010523/trump-administrations-demonisation-iran-benefits-saudi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3010523/trump-administrations-demonisation-iran-benefits-saudi?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 May 2019 17:00:12 +0000 “Go with the flow” seems the mindset of much of the Hong Kong judiciary, as it largely falls in with the government’s stretching of laws to their limits to punish and hobble its pro-democracy opponents. This is painful but perhaps not surprising, given the obvious determination of Beijing to close the gap between judicial and executive authority. Separation of powers is meaningless if the legislature, from which many of those directly elected in 2016 have been or may now be excluded, is a rubber... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3007744/what-occupy-sentencing-means-hong-kongs-autonomy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3007744/what-occupy-sentencing-means-hong-kongs-autonomy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Apr 2019 03:00:04 +0000 Let us hope that the problems of the MTR Corporation do not reduce reliance on rail as key to urban transport. The MTR’s difficulties stem from two issues: the pressure to fast-track the Sha Tin-Central and express rail lines after a decade-and-a-half of dithering over the former. Secondly, the confusion created by the 2000 listing of the MTR Corporation, making a hermaphrodite out of what should have remained a wholly government-owned system integrated into transport planning.  But the MTR’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3003799/rich-hong-kong-dont-take-public-transport-no-wonder-our?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3003799/rich-hong-kong-dont-take-public-transport-no-wonder-our?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Mar 2019 23:00:05 +0000 President Rodrigo Duterte has suggested that the Philippines change its name. That is not quite as outrageous as many of the president’s other remarks. Indeed, it has often been said that the name, derived from the Spanish king who conquered the islands, undermines the country’s identity and helps perpetuate attitudes born of over 400 years of Spanish and then American rule. It raises wider issues, too, of how far names reflect power, not people.  The Philippines faces the problem of a suitable... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2186300/dutertes-proposal-change-philippines-name-highlights?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2186300/dutertes-proposal-change-philippines-name-highlights?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Feb 2019 02:32:47 +0000 Time is approaching for the financial secretary to unveil his 2019-20 budget for Hong Kong. It will, as usual, appear cautious, probably suggesting a surplus but less than his forecast of HK$46 billion (US$5.9 billion). Let us hope, however, that for once he proves overly optimistic and that, one year from now, there is the prospect of a HK$30 billion deficit.  This is not the hope of either a frustrated pessimist or the holder of a short position on the Hong Kong market. It stems from the need... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2181625/short-budget-deficit-shock-heres-how-ensure-hong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2181625/short-budget-deficit-shock-heres-how-ensure-hong?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 13 Jan 2019 06:00:45 +0000 China should have been able to use the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to its own advantage. Instead, its reaction has again shown an underlying arrogance and ethnocentricity, which is being noticed around Asia and in the West – and which offsets many of the benefits of its “belt and road” and other outward-looking initiatives in trade and diplomacy. Does the United States have a real case for arresting Meng, when it could simply have taken action against Huawei on the grounds that it... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2179023/huawei-fail-why-china-hitting-back-canada?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2179023/huawei-fail-why-china-hitting-back-canada?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Dec 2018 18:01:05 +0000 Forty-three years after the Vietnam war, the history and origins of that tragedy have been retold with the perspective of time by British journalist and historian Max Hastings in Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. Although it was the seminal global event of my early years as a journalist, only now have I come to realise how, from 1963, few of those politicians and generals who led the United States ever deeper into that mire really believed they could win. The fear of being seen, at home and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/world/article/2174671/what-do-vietnam-us-china-trade-war-brexit-and-lantau?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/world/article/2174671/what-do-vietnam-us-china-trade-war-brexit-and-lantau?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Nov 2018 07:00:00 +0000 Hong Kong is between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it is seen overseas and by most residents as a genuinely autonomous region characterised by free trade, free speech, free assembly and the separation of the executive from an independent judiciary. On the other, the government in Beijing and local acolytes regard Hong Kong’s citizens as insufficiently patriotic, prone to exaggerating their rights to autonomy and in need of rapid integration with the rest of China.  Tension between... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2169948/slow-death-hong-kongs-separate-identity-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2169948/slow-death-hong-kongs-separate-identity-china?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 Oct 2018 07:28:32 +0000 Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor proclaims that her policy speech shows toughness and disregard for popularity. Well, two cheers for raising central and eastern harbour tunnel tolls, but why has such a necessary move been delayed for so long? And what is so tough about an impost which affects maybe a quarter of the 8 per cent of Hongkongers who own cars and regularly use the tunnels? What, also, is tough about using taxpayers’ money to subsidise users of the western tunnel, another... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2169356/carrie-lams-policy-plan-boldly-follows-governments?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2169356/carrie-lams-policy-plan-boldly-follows-governments?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Oct 2018 06:30:00 +0000 You “cannot have your cake and eat it”, says the English proverb, dismissing the natural desire to receive a benefit at no cost. It is rife. Take UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s “moderate” Brexiteers, who seem to think they are entitled to 90 per cent of the benefits of membership of the European Union while obeying only 60 per cent of its fundamental rules. They further seem to believe that the UK should be on equal negotiating terms with a group of nations with a combined output five times its... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2166104/hong-kong-prepared-pay-price-undermining-its?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2166104/hong-kong-prepared-pay-price-undermining-its?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Sep 2018 06:00:45 +0000 One man’s independence is another’s sedition. Global maps of national borders are seldom static for long. Empires rise and fall. Constituent communities come to reject being part of a larger entity. One hundred years ago this year, the people of Ireland voted overwhelmingly for the nationalist Sinn Fein. Four years later, Ireland was independent of England for the first time in hundreds of years. Thus began the dissolution of the British empire. August 20 is the 50th anniversary of the Soviet... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2160139/independence-today-history-instructs-dont-take?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2160139/independence-today-history-instructs-dont-take?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Aug 2018 07:30:45 +0000 How should America’s friends respond to Donald Trump’s assault on so much that the nation has stood for over the past 70 years? Embarrassed silence? Wait for the storm to pass? I think not. Speak up and retaliate. If the US no longer believes it needs friends and no longer believes in open trade, there must be some response to make it plain to our American friends, and representatives such as the American Chamber of Commerce, that specific trade grievances are no excuse for policies which may... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2155084/america-has-lost-our-trust-we-must-speak-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/united-states/article/2155084/america-has-lost-our-trust-we-must-speak-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Jul 2018 07:45:15 +0000 Science and Scientology. Algorithms and alchemy. Sometimes it seems our senior bureaucrats, past and present, cannot tell the difference. Pronouncements about the importance of industry, technology and research come thick and fast, as though imprecations to invisible gods.  They could, of course, simply be ignored but, on closer examination, they may reflect the chief executive’s obedience to Beijing’s bidding to speed the dilution of Hong Kong’s sometimes prickly identity and merge it into that... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2149897/hong-kongs-future-lies-beyond-greater-bay-area?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2149897/hong-kongs-future-lies-beyond-greater-bay-area?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2018 04:15:32 +0000 An electoral tsunami swept away Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak, ending 60 years of rule by the United Malays National Organization (Umno). The outcome was welcomed at home as well as abroad – viewed as a democratic system asserting itself against corruption and erosion of the rule of law, and perhaps presaging the decline of race-based politics. Enthusiasm, though, is tempered by questions about the new ruling government – a disparate four-party coalition headed by 92-year-old former Prime... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2147403/can-malaysias-new-government-root-out-corruption-and-ensure?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2147403/can-malaysias-new-government-root-out-corruption-and-ensure?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 May 2018 08:58:14 +0000 When I first arrived in Hong Kong, there was a cricket pitch and club premises in the very heart of the city. Although many senior people in the administration were members, the then governor, Murray MacLehose, recognised that a private club catering to an elite and alien sport occupying such a prime position was aggravating to the majority of citizens. The club was required to decamp to Wong Nei Chung Gap. The central site became Chater Garden.  No such wisdom attaches to the present... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2145585/hong-kong-must-face-down-golf-club-elite-much-more-stake?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2145585/hong-kong-must-face-down-golf-club-elite-much-more-stake?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 12 May 2018 02:15:45 +0000 Before it becomes dangerous to discuss such matters in Hong Kong, it is worth considering ideas of patriotism in the light of history. We are told we must respect the national anthem as a symbol of the nation, not to be dismissed or assigned new lyrics. Yet, the history of China’s current anthem shows that it has been as much a rallying call for the party, and the state, as for the people. Official anthems are a fairly modern invention. France’s La Marseillaise was a bloodthirsty revolutionary,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2141477/chinas-national-anthem-and-territorial-borders-are-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2141477/chinas-national-anthem-and-territorial-borders-are-not?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Apr 2018 01:45:15 +0000 I have written about Hong Kong budgets every year since 1974, and recent ones have left me with a sense of intellectual vacuum. The latest is no exception. It is yet another simplistic bookkeeping exercise with taxes cut here, spending increased there, with barely an attempt to frame these within a coherent fiscal policy linked to economic and social goals. One might have thought that, after so many same-again years, there would be an attempt to look at why overlarge surpluses have become the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2135419/hong-kong-budget-highlights-no-coherent-fiscal-policy-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2135419/hong-kong-budget-highlights-no-coherent-fiscal-policy-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Mar 2018 02:07:59 +0000 Whatever the specific rights and wrongs, Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah’s issues over property and stamp duty are a pointer to fundamental problems with Hong Kong’s administration and its sense of justice. Firstly, it is a reminder that application of the Buildings Ordinance in relation to so-called illegal structures is arbitrary, selective, and open to corruption. Most glaringly, failure to implement the law is almost the norm in the New Territories. The New Territories are also... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2132572/hong-kongs-rule-law-riddled-loopholes-and-arbitrary?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2132572/hong-kongs-rule-law-riddled-loopholes-and-arbitrary?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Feb 2018 01:32:35 +0000 Budget time is coming and it’s an occasion to look at the nexus between home prices, tax policy and income maldistribution in Hong Kong. Usually, these are deemed separate issues and dealt with in the piecemeal fashion of a bureaucrat-led government. The first two issues contribute massively to the third, however. Therefore, the first step must be to ensure that policy does not make things worse. That well-known promoter of populist causes, Sun Hung Kai Properties, suggests that to help new... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2129662/fight-income-inequality-hong-kong-take-property-development?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2129662/fight-income-inequality-hong-kong-take-property-development?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Jan 2018 01:01:55 +0000 It is fine to regard independence talk in Hong Kong as silly and counterproductive. But one of the roots of this aberration lies in the lack of any fixed notion of what defines a Hongkonger. This is not a theoretical puzzle, it goes to the heart of whether and how a Hongkonger has an official, fixed identity. This issue most often surfaces in sports: who is and is not allowed to represent Hong Kong at international events. The practice is clearly very mixed, with each sport having its own rules,... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2123424/china-should-beware-dangers-race-based-nationalism?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2123424/china-should-beware-dangers-race-based-nationalism?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Dec 2017 03:02:20 +0000 China has good reason to gloat over the decline of American influence and prestige in East Asia since the election of Donald Trump. But gloating can be dangerous, as the US itself has found since the collapse of the Soviet Union impelled it to global overreach. Firstly though, non-Americans stand open-mouthed at contradictions of Trump’s Asian tour and the US role at the Apec and Asean summits, and related meetings in Da Nang and Manila. At times, Trump appeared far more interested in following... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2120327/trumps-asia-tour-reinforced-americas-declining-influence?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2120327/trumps-asia-tour-reinforced-americas-declining-influence?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 18 Nov 2017 01:01:55 +0000 President Xi Jinping has a grand plan to make China a fully modern and exemplary society and the world’s leading state. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has 200-plus new initiatives which aim to...? For sure, Lam’s policy address made for many days of happy headlines. Doubtless, many of the initiatives are worthy, addressing public concerns and alleviating problems in health care, welfare, education and housing. But not one of them takes a radical look at what are widely... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2117241/unlike-xi-jinping-carrie-lam-fails-deliver-when-it-matters?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2117241/unlike-xi-jinping-carrie-lam-fails-deliver-when-it-matters?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Oct 2017 01:18:57 +0000 Self-obsession has been the dominating theme of US policy since the September 11 terrorist attacks, with self-pity leading to self-defeating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now President Donald Trump has personalised self-obsession with wild threats to North Korea, Iran, China trade and other easy rhetorical targets. It is the reverse of the national interest he purports to represent. Self-obsession, not national interests, is evident in Trump’s promoting of North Korea to the top of the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2112370/trumps-america-communist-china-contempt-history-rise?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2112370/trumps-america-communist-china-contempt-history-rise?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Sep 2017 02:33:52 +0000 Hurrah! Hong Kong is one step further towards matching Singapore’s standard of judicial independence. The punishment should not be designed to fit the crime but to teach lessons, and enable the teacher to demonstrate resolve to the headmaster. Hence, a wise appeals court agreed this week with the government. It replaced soft community service with substantial jail terms for 13 activists and three student leaders involved in separate 2014 protests. The sophistication and cost of the judicial... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2107319/go-directly-jail-how-hong-kong-courts-are-teaching-lesson?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2107319/go-directly-jail-how-hong-kong-courts-are-teaching-lesson?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 19 Aug 2017 01:00:15 +0000 Oh for the day when one will not have to think about Donald Trump and the damage he is doing to the US, Asia and the world in general. Last month, the US president was busy creating more chaos in the Middle East, by backing Saudi Arabia – the biggest single source of Islamic extremism – in the campaign against Qatar launched by its hot-headed young crown prince. Now North Korea is proving fertile ground for counterproductive policies. Watch: Trump touching glowing globe draws Marvel... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2102649/why-trump-presidency-may-seem-joke-poses-grave-dangers-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2102649/why-trump-presidency-may-seem-joke-poses-grave-dangers-world?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Jul 2017 03:45:33 +0000 Chief executive-elect Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor faces a daunting task convincing the public that she is a leader for Hong Kong, and not merely a superbureaucrat who faithfully executes the policies of the bigwigs in Beijing and the liaison office apparatchiks. But it can be done. It requires just one attribute: boldness. Let us never hear from her lips the word “consensus”, the classic escape for politicians and civil servants for whom change is too hard or too upsetting for their friends. In... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2097586/how-carrie-lam-can-boldly-lead-change-hong-kong-needs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2097586/how-carrie-lam-can-boldly-lead-change-hong-kong-needs?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 10 Jun 2017 02:33:39 +0000