Hong Kong news 27 October

Today, as budgets are limited (we spent the extra money on booze) we rely solely on the South China Morning Post (SCMP), that mouthpiece regurgitating every fleck of spittle emanating from Hu Jintao's imperious mouth.


SPORT
I am doing the sport first today, as there actually is some news, and South Africa features. Now I know stuff all about horse racing, but the newspaper seems to be very happy that a South African jockey, Anton Marcus, is going to be riding in the Cathay Pacific International Jockey's Championship at Happy Valley Racecourse in December. He will be the first South African flag bearing participant in this race, although a chap called Douglas Whyte from South Africa has oft competed here under the Hong Kong flag. It seems from a small editorial on sport page 2 that South Africans have been very successful here, all representing differing nations though. The paper goes on to say that our nation has made a huge contrbution to Hong Kong racing. This is all pretty cool, because Hong Kong is the most horse-racing befok place I have ever been. So it is BIG NEWS!

The Wallabies and the All Blacks are set to lock horns in Hong Kong on Saturday in a Bledisloe Cup match being touted as a mere preparation match before the World Cup next year. There is absolutely no new angle on this whatsoever.

Paul the Octopus went to calamari heaven. Boohoo. I'm so fucking sad.

CHINA AND INTERNATIONAL
Feel for Indonesians. Last week reports surfaced of torture being carried out on random citizens who don't give two shits about politics. Yesterday 113 people were killed by the combination of a 7.5 magnitude earthquake, a tsunami and a volcanic eruption. Interestingly, a friend of mine travelling back from Australia was on a plane which had to make an emergency landing in Jakarta. All African passport holders were forced to remain on the plane while it was being fixed (while the others sauntered nto the airport) for fear of them gaining illegal entry into Indonesia (because of the hordes of South Africans making their way there?!). Give me South Africa any day. At least you can fight off criminals. Good luck beating a volcano with a cricket bat.

There's this blind lawyer who pissed the Chinese government off and him and his whole family have been placed under house arrest. The USA has now decided that this doesn't sit well with them and have instructed their ambassador to go and check out the conditions in which he lives. I expect the Chinese embassy in Washington DC to send a delegation to Gitmo forthwith.

Anti-Japan protests continue in China with the city of Chongqing joining the fray. Basically, China and Japan both reckon they own the same set of islands. A few weeks ago a Japanese vessel arrested the captain of a Chinese vessel within the boundaries of the islands and it caused big diplomatic kak and sparked off protests in both countries. The ones in China seem not to be dying down though with Chengdu, Mianyan, Deyang, Sichuan, Langzhou, Hainan and five others, all having loads of folks marching down the street smashing up Japan-made cars and singing about how much they hate Japan.

China has unleashed a new high-speed railway which will cover the 200km between Shanghai and Hangzhou in about 45 minutes. Although the train has been measured doing 420kph (a world train speed record, from what the SCMP understands), it will operate at around 350kph.

That big-ass French public strike and protest against raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62 seems like it will become law as it was passed - 171 votes to 150 - by the Senate. It will go to the National Assembly next where it is expected to pass there easily. Expect lots of angry French people. No, I mean angrier than normal.

We feature again: South Africa is set to build what will hopefully become the world's biggest solar power plant at a cost of R200 billion. For that amount of money we could build a big enough fucking hotel to house all 50 million of us. As things stand, California is building the biggest one first which should power 750 000 homes, but it is expected that ours will eventually be 5 times the size of theirs. The newspaper alleges that 83% of South African houses have electricity. Really?

Hillary Clinton has added a stop in China to her 2-week Asia visit scheduled sometime soon. I think Hu Jintao might have a family emergency right at that time.

HONG KONG
You may have read recently that Singapore wants to buy the Australian stock exchange or some such shit. Well it's freaked Hong Kong out and now they're planning in trading for an extra hour every day - with the start of the trading day being moved half an hour earlier and another half hour removed from the 2-hour lunch break. The real consternation seems to be whether lunch will go from midday to 1.30pm, or 12.30pm to 2pm. The lives of rich people are just never easy, are they?

A poll by HSBC has identified climate change as the greatest care of Hong Kongers. Odd considering this is the least green city I have ever been to. It's not as though anyone cares enough to even pretend (like they do in Cape Town) to recycle or conserve energy. I'd imagine that HSBC interviewed wealthy people (green policy's largest target market) and not those who have to worry about money or housing or where their next beer is coming from.

23 samples of the plastic wrapping around a Halloween headband have been tested for safety by the HK SAR government. Conclusions thereof indicate that children could suffocate on it. Yes. It took this for them to realise that children can choke on plastic. I swear this is an actual news story.

Check this other cracking headline: "Diet, exercise and regular checkups are the key to staying healthy".

Hong Kong news 15 October

Apologies for the lack of news yesterday, but my one-eyed reporting was compromised by my need to go out for dinner. Never fear: I have covered two days' worth of news today.

Please note the change in the title. My mornings are getting quite busy (due to the extra sleep I am getting) so I'll post the news whenever I feel like it. This is from the South China Morning Post (SCMP), a pro-Beijing English daily. Actually, it's the top selling English newspaper in Hong Kong and is about as objective as The Citizen/Daily Mail.

The Singapore skyline. Image hakked from finmath.uchicago.edu. Thanks folks.

CHINA AND INTERNATIONAL
Singapore's economy laughed off the recession as it grew 18.1% in the first half of this year which is the greatest increase since records began in 1975. How weird that these British colonies are better at British things than the British are...? Banking and economics in this case.

Beijing will spend 4 trillion yuang (which is about 4.1 trillion ronts) over five years across key industries: energy, materials, IT, biology and new medicine, aerospace, marine, manufacturing and hi-tech services. How cool would it be if China joined the space race?

The dollar weakend to its lowest level in recent times yesterday, including dropping to 81 Japanese yen. The Hong Kong Dollar is pegged to the US Dollar so the debate as to whether it should be unpegged is raging again, although HK CEO, Donald Tsang says that it is a lifeline (or some such shitty analogy) and that the currencies will remain pegged.

HONG KONG
Chief Executive, Donald Tsang Yam Kuen (basically the president of Hong Kong) gave his penultimate policy address on Thursday. Hong Kong's biggest social problem is housing. Poor people cannot afford to live here because the huge demand for houses, and the trickling supply of them forces the prices sky high. Tsang proposed two initiatives to help people with housing. The first being a rent-to-buy where purchasers rent a property for a fixed term and then decide to buy it - the rent they've paid counts as money spent towards buying the house. The second initiative is to make 20 000 property units available every year to keep the property prices at an acceptable level. Critics believe that neither of these initiatives will work, and as this is the "We love the Chinese Government" English mouthpiece, the SCMP has quoted every critic it can find. At length.

A cab driver was arrested for taking advantage of drunk people who wound up in his taxi in the early hours of the morning. A stiff sentence - 32 months in prison - for stealing from 10 different passengers (wallets and phones and things) while they lay passed out in his car is reflective of the fact that I am not going to flout the law here.

Property magnate and government employee, Lau Wong-fat, the Hong Kong government's Peter Mandelson, a man who's crookedness seems to be reported on every day, has received the backing of Donald Tsang, the HK CEO. Lau Wong-fat probablty owns Tsang's house.

Donald Tsang has promised to table a bill regulating working hours. In yesterday's paper, a woman didn't qualify for a public transport discount because she worked less than 72 hours per week... so there are people that work more than that. Seriaas. It pays to be on the correct side of colonialism, doesn't it?

50%-60% of Hong Kong's waste is recycled. I find this very hard to believe. But the greenies don't even think that's high enough as South Korea allegedly recycles 90% of its waste.

An anonymous threat grounded 14 Cathay Pacific flights (13 passenger, 1 cargo) yesterday. It was later found to be a hoax. I hope they catch this anonymous caller and castrate him (or de-tit her). There is nothing more infuriating. Well, an actual bomb I suppose...

SPORT
China will be sending over 1500 participants to the Asian Games in Guangzhou next month. Insanity.

There is absolutely no sport news regarding Hong Kong. It's all Liverpool, baseball, Chinese basketball... so you'll have to wait I'm afraid. I think the Hong Kong Sixes cricket squads have been announced though, so let me see what I can dig up. Keep an eye on twitter.

Hong Kong morning news - 7 October

Brought to you by the South China Morning Post (SCMP) and The Standard.

Bias alert: The SCMP is pro-Beijing and The Standard is kind of a pro-China nationalist paper, but it's a crap tabloid so you can't really tell.

This chap is Xie Zhenhua, National Development and Reform Commission deputy chief. The one who said the stuff in the first news item. Image from SCMP.

China shat all over the USA regarding climate change and told it to pull its socks up. According to the SCMP, Beijing has reformed its own policies in progressive fashion, and also only produces a quarter of the carbon emissions per capita of the USA. That being said, China has about four times the population of the US so the per capita argument works well for Beijing. Mother Nature though... well she doesn't give a shit how much pollution there is per person. She's into totals, I'd imagine.

On the front page of every paper I have bought since our arrival in Hong Kong has detailed the new social care health plan being touted in Hong Kong. Much like the troublesome too-positive effects that the NHS has on Britain, Hong Kong's excellent and affordable healthcare means that an ageing population is not dying, and is becoming a real strain on public health finance. The details of the new healthcare plan seem to be to get middle-upper to upper class folks to get off social care and into reduced medical aid packages, but the details still all seem to be pretty fuzzy.

Hong Kong does not have import taxes on beer and wine (although looking at the prices you'd never think so) but has a 100% tax on spirits. Some chap called Thomas Bohrer thinks this is grossly unfair and is on a mission to change it. So here's waiting for a "fairer" tax affecting the price of wine and beer... betcha...

The greenies are fighting Legco (Hong Kong's parliament) about expanding a landfill into a country park, and the bunny-huggers seem to have won as the government has declared that it won't begin dumping in the new zone until January 2012 (it was due to begin next month). I can't see why Legco has delayed this. SCMP reckons it's to win more support for the landfill, but whoever in their right mind thinks that they can win support for a landfill? Has it ever been done before?

A security guard appeared in court yesterday for accidentally shooting his gun into the roof of a shopping centre last Sunday. This is only notable because his name is Play Boy Choy Chi-wai.

The University of Hong Kong expects 6.2% GDP growth this year, up from the 5% it predicted earlier.

Angela Merkel has told Wen Jiabao that Germany will do everything in its power to have the EU recognise China as a market economy, but there are restrictions which have to be fulfilled, including China removing the much condemned policy of toying with its currency value. China overtook Germany as the world's number one exporter last year. Wen Jiabao is off to visit Italy next where Berlusconi is sure to do some sucking up.

Interestingly, and this was in the paper a few days ago, Singapore and Hong Kong are going to be replaced by Shanghai and Shenzen as the world's first and third busiest shipping ports respectively. Singapore is going to be knocked into second place by Shanghai and Hong Kong is due to drop into fourth as Shenzen carries on climbing.

The Standard informs us that a 97-year old woman was bitten on the toe by a rat - the 7th such attack this year. Eeeek! What an amazing piece of news.