Hong Kong news 18 October

Welcome to today's run-through and interpretation of Hong Kong's news, courtesy of the South China Morning Post (SCMP) and The Standard. The SCMP is chosen because it is the top selling English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, and The Standard is chosen because it is free and people stuff it into my hands when I walk around the city.

Protestors in China smash up a Japanese-made car. Image from SCMP.com.

CHINA AND INTERNATIONAL
The Standard led this morning with a story about anti-Japan protests in China, and anti-China protests in Japan. There was a kerfuffle in the sea last week when Japan and China both laid claim to a portion of the water as its own territory, and both nations are now getting pissy with each other, less so in government, and moreso the man in the street. Interestingly, China banned protests in Shenzen and Guangzhou where the Asian Games are scheduled next month. Maintain pretty picture at all times when cameras might be present. Follow Beijing Olympics as example. It will be interesting to see who the USA sides with, with long-time agreements with Japan being tested against a powerful diplomatic Chinese prescence - one the US doesn't want to piss off.

The Chinese (propaganda) press machine has mounted and distributed an attack on the Nobel chaps for picking Liu Xiaobo as winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. The People's Daily said that this year's award strayed from the ideals of the Nobel Peace Prize. As if this year was the problem. Did you see who won it last year for doing diddly-squat?


HONG KONG
The SCMP's main story was that Bishop Tong, Hong Kong's top Catholic leader, admitted yesterday that "sex scandals have rocked the universal church, including the local diocese". Later on the page they said that the Titanic sank, apartheid ended and that the USA invaded Iraq.

The poverty-loaded people gap here in Hong Kong is fairly prevalent, much like South Africa, so there must be some sort of resentment in the other front page story of the SCMP: Hong Kong universities are ofering pay packages of up to HK$200 000 (about R180 000) per month to recruit top professors from around the world. Up until 2004, university workers' pay was linked to those in the civil service, but nowadays universities have more control over their own wage bill, and therefore moreoptions when it comes to recruitment. The demand for extra lecturers is due to the commencement of four-year degrees in two years' time and the deficit of educators required stands at about 1000. I have to read more to find out why the change in the tertiary education system though. Either way, the quality of education should not be compromised by unreasonable budgets, particularly in a staunchly capitalist country like Hong Kong.

Paul Zimmerman, chief executive of Design Hong Kong has publically warned that the glut of property agencies and excessive rents that are too high for brand new businesses is going to kill the spirit of entrepreneurship in this city. The investment required in a new business here is to much, and too risky, he says.

SPORT
Graham Henry has fast-tracked Sonny Bill Williams, a rugby league convert, into the All Blacks squad after only playing five professional rugby union games. The NZ squad's next fixture is against Australia in Hong Kong at the end of the month. Piri Weepu is out of the contest after dislocating his ankle over the weekend.

This has nothing to do wth Hong Kong, but Samuel Eto'o again had to confont racist chants when he scored the only goal of the game as Inter Milan beat Cagliari yesterday. Will this ever end? The game was delayed by a few minutes because of the chants directed at Eto'o. The fans should be told that they may not attend the stadium for 10 games, or something hideous like that. It is absolutely shocking that this still continues after all that Football Against Racism wank. Come on Platini, this is your shit to deal with.

There is zilcho Hong Kong sports news from the weekend except for horce racing which I don't understand.

Hong Kong morning news 12 October

Today's finest from the South China morning post, with added editorial by Simon Williamson.

Today's image lovingly stolen from the Daily Telegraph.

CHINA AND INTERNATIONAL
I start today with the pro-Beijing SMCP’s opinion piece entitled “Did Liu Xiaobo deserve it?”, regarding his Nobel Prize for Peace which he will get to see when he gets out of prison in 11 years time. The opinion page of today’s paper has two articles on it which directly oppose each other. One is a bland highfalutin translation from Kaifang (Open) Magazine by Jin Zhong which says Liu is wonderful because he is pro-political reform and that this award is a golden opportunity for China to begin democratisation. The other column in the page is by Barry Sautman (political scientist and lawyer) and Yan Hairong (anthropologist) who claim that Liu, in statements made in 1988 and 2007, believes that the West is superior to China and therefore is the way that China needs to lean – risking oligarch-like looting of public organisations as industry becomes privatised. The second column maintains that the people of China will not ever choose the system Liu wants for them. Interesting stuff, but real surface and guessy arguments.

On the front page of the SCMP there is a story about the heads of the US and Chinese military meeting in Vietnam today and thawing frosty relations. China is getting pissy because the US is sending in more and more of its army into the Asia-Pacific region, and the US is getting whingy because China is making its army bigger and bigger quickly. I did a once-over of the NY Times coverage of the meeting and from the US view, dialogue seemed far more strained.

HONG KONG:
Donald Tsang Yam-kuen is the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (Legco) and he signed an order to build a landfill in a country park. This pissed off the greenies who began protesting and spiralled into a big mess. Now, Legco reckons it can overturn an order signed by Tsang... so because of this excess litter, the Hong Kong government (well, the little pretend government that China lets it have) could conceivably wind up in the equivalent of the Constitutional Court over who in government can do what.

Mystery attackers are giving law firms kak at the moment. A follow up to yesterday’s story about property gone wrong, this kind of thing also makes me smile a bit. Someone spray painted a law firm’s entrance with red spray paint last week, and then last night someone took an axe to the glass door of another firm. Police are looking for suspects. Umm... why don’t you just see who lost cases in the last month?

SPORT:
Bangladesh are pissed off because Hong Kong has excluded them from the legendary and famous Hong Kong Sixes cricket tournament due to be staged next month. This is probably because there isn;t much tourism, relations or money passed between the two countries, but if I learnt anything during the World Cup in South Africa, it was that there were loads more Honduran people who came over than I imagined...

China wants to host the Olympics again, but this time in Guangzhou. Different attitudes totally from Hong Kong which is still debating whether to enter into the race for the 2023 Asia Games.

Hong Kong morning news - 11 October

Please read for a completely unbiased ad objective interpretation of the news emanating from this morning's South China Morning Post:

Unsurprisingly, the big news out here at the moment is the Chinese chap, Liu Xiaobo, who won the Nobel Prize for Peace but rots in a prison cell (you know how dangerous advocating democracy can be, right?). The new controversey, though, is what has happened to his wife, Liu Xia. Some sources say she ran, some say she is being detained at her apartment in Beijing, and some say she's been detained elsewhere. The SCMP quotes Freedom Now, a Washington-based human rights organisation as saying that Liu Xia hasn't been charged with a crime, but she is under house arrest and barred from speaking with friends or to the media.

Every city has its thing that bugs it the most: in Joburg it's crime, in London it's immigration, in Cape Town it's poor people... in Hong Kong it's very much property. 7 million people live in this city that's pretty tiny space-wise. So property, as you can imagine, is hecka expensive, and property dealers are the super rich folks here. But like seriously expensive and kak rich, respectively. So it's always pretty cool when a launch from a rich-ass property company fails somewhat because people won't pay HK$5.7 million (about R5.2 million) for a 401 square foot (37.2square metres) flat - that's R140 000 per square metre. Only two fo the 96 flats were sold. Yee ha!

If you want an example of a property tycoon in this part of the world, a chap called Lau Wong-fat is in kak for failing to disclose all his assets as he now has some involvement with Legco, Hong Kong's kind of parliamentry government board. Well, he accidentally forgot 390 plots of land, bringing his total of land plots and property up to 724, in this city where accommodation is so hard to come by...

137 couples were married yesterday because they wanted the 10-10-10 notable date for some or other reason. (To put that into perspective, though, there were over 10 000 weddings in Shanghai yesterday.) Also, in yesterday's newsaper, McDonalds (at selected branches) will be offering McWeddings. People can rock up, pay cheap, get everyone fed, sort out the nuptuals, and then go home. It's yet another indication that people in Hong Kong seem to take weddings really seriously.

In sport, Hong Kong are looking forward to the Rugby Sevens at the Asian Games in Guangzhou next month, even though they've been drawn in the same group as Japan, the only Asian team to beat them in the last two years. Due to the structure of the tournament, though, the two teams could still meet in the final of the competition.