State-sponsored Spammers Happy about Deaths from Sandy

A Spammer sponsored by PRC shared news about Sandy on Facebook, saying he was pleased.

The first line reads, "Having a tea and watching this news, I feel very pleased!"

The following lines are quoted lines from the news article about New York subway service being suspended, at least 50 people dead, 22 in New York, and 8 million houses without power.

The comment reads, "The largest metropolitan city in US has a bean curd electric system. I don't think it's natural disasters!"

Shipwreck near Lamma Island

A ship of more than one hundred people, employees of HK Electric and their family and friends, was hit by another ship near Lamma Island and sank tail first. More than 30 people were found dead.

The ship was heading to the firework display in Victoria Harbour commemorating the establishment of PRC when it collided with another ship. The firework, however, went on.

Last Consultation Session of Proposed New Towns in North West New Territories

The last consultation session of the government's planned development in north west New Territories took place afternoon today. The development plan has become a controversial topic because of reports and interviews from the chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, and various related groups. These reports and interviews, published in some newspaper in mainland, mentioned plans for developing several areas close to the boundary between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in order to make it more convenient for people from Shenzhen and other mainlanders to shop, work, send kids to schools, buy properties and live. These areas were dubbed by Leung himself as "special administrative regions in the special administrative region (HKSAR)", which people from the north would be able to enter without visas. This, he mentioned, would be part of a greater plan of merging the two cities of Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

During the consultation session, the secretary of development, Paul Chan Mo-Po, was booed whenever he spoke. When he was asked why he did not revoke the plan facing such a large opposition, he said he did not want to, but when he was asked why he came to the consultation in the first place, he said he wanted to listen to the residents and citizens. When asked about the interviews about Leung's plan, Chan said that the coverage was about "the development of north west New Territories" which was different from "the development of new towns in north west New Territories", the topic of the consultation session today. He had to be guarded by tens of security guards and policemen when he left after the three-hour consultation session.

The consultation period for the development plan ends on 30th September, and will not be extended.

LegCo Election 2012

The election for the Hong Kong Legislative Council took place last Sunday (9th September) and the results are here.

The vote rate this year is higher than that in 2008 but lower than that in 2004. There were 18 "pan-democrats" elected among the the 35 seats in the geographical constituency, compared to 19 out of 30 in 2008. The pan-democrats also hold 6 seats in the traditional functional constituency and 3 seats in "District Council (second)", a new functional constituency where voters all over Hong Kong not eligible to vote in the traditional functional constituency can vote. The pan-democrats thus hold 27 seats in total for the new LegCo.

Hong Kong Actor Forced to Emigrate because of Blood

Gill Mohinderpaul Singh, better known in Hong Kong as 喬寶寶 (kiu bobo), is an Hong Kong born Indian actor. His wife wanted to take care of Gill and their sons in UK and applied for a HKSAR passport. The Immigration Department turned down her application for mysterious "confidential" reasons. This means that Gill's wife cannot go to and fro between UK and Hong Kong easily and the whole family can but move to Scotland altogether, after Gill's contract with the local TV channel expires early next year.

Gill is asking for help on Facebook, saying he wants to stay in Hong Kong. Click here to go to his plea and an early photo of his family.

Bloggers criticize Hong Kong's Basic Law as being racist in favour of people of Chinese descent. For example, babies with "Chinese blood" born in Hong Kong automatically become Hong Kong permanent residents while those with "other bloods" do not. One blogger also contrasted the right of British Nationals (Overseas) (more than 3 million people in Hong Kong are BN(O)) to stand for Parliament elections in UK if they live there, with the fact that permanent residents in Hong Kong without Chinese Nationality cannot stand for LegCo elections.

Bloggers also criticize the Hong Kong Equal Opportunity Commissions for sharing this racism. The EOC once condemned a newspaper advert expressing discontent on "double negatives" (babies whose parents are from mainland and who become HK permenent residents) while ignoring a political group that organized activities discriminating against Filipino maids in Hong Kong.

Reporter Detained for Asking Too Loud

A reporter from Apple Daily was detained after asking Hu Jintao about the 1989 June 4th Massacre. The police said that the he was too loud.
A clip of Al Jazeera on the issue:

Hong Kong's People Ethnic Identity

The Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong (HKU POP) has just released the results of the latest survey on Hong Kong's people ethnic identity. The press release can be found here, and the sample question wordings of the survey can be found here.
HKU POP has been doing similar surveys ever since Hong Kong was handed over to PRC in 1997. One chart, in particular, calls for attention.

Strength of "Chinese citizen" identity (per poll, by age group) (8/1997 - 6/2012)
(Click for a larger image)

This chart by age group shows a sharp drop in how strong young people (18-29 yrs) identify themselves as "Chinese citizen." Robert Chung, Director of HKU POP, observed,

Our latest survey shows that in terms of absolute rating, people’s identification with ‘Hong Kong citizens’ has dropped back a bit compared to 6 months ago, but their identification with ‘Chinese citizens’ has dropped to a 13-year low since the end of 1999. Indepth analysis shows that the rating of those under 30 years of age continues to drop since mid-2009, and plunges to just over 5 points in the past 6 months. This warrants special attention. Moreover, if we use a dichotomy of ‘Hong Kong citizens’ versus ‘Chinese citizens’ to measure Hong Kong people’s ethnic identity, the proportion of people identifying themselves as ‘Hong Kong citizens’ outnumbers that of ‘Chinese citizens’ both in their narrow and broad senses, by about 28 to 38 percentage points. For those under 30 years of age, the gap widens to 60 to 72 percentage points. For the overall sample, the percentages of those identifying themselves as ‘Hong Kong citizens’ both in its narrow and broad senses (including ‘Hong Kong citizens’ or ‘Chinese Hong Kong citizens’) have reached record high since the 1997 handover. Moreover, if we use ‘identity indices’ ranging between 0 and 100 to measure the strengths of people’s identities (the higher the index, the stronger the identity), Hong Kong people’s feeling is the strongest as ‘Hong Kong citizens’, followed by ‘members of the Chinese race’, then ‘Asians’, ‘Chinese citizens’, ‘global citizens’, and finally ‘citizens of the PRC’. All in all, Hong Kong people feel strongest as ‘Hong Kong citizens’, then followed by a number of cultural identities. The feeling of being ‘citizens of the PRC’ is the weakest among all identities tested. As for the reasons behind the ups and downs of these figures, we will leave it to our readers to form their own judgment using the detailed records displayed in our ‘Opinion Daily’.

This also stirs up quite some voices on the internet. Wan Chin suggested adding three further questions to the survey:

1. If CCP or PRC falls, will you identify yourself as a Chinese citizen?
2. If ROC regains control over mainland China, will you identify yourself as a Chinese citizen?
3. If people from mainland China are willing to be colonized by Hong Kong after a referendum, will you identify yourself as a Hong Kong citizen or a China citizen?

It remains to see further reactions from different people in Hong Kong and China.

Heritage Alert regarding the Threated Demolition of the West Wing

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and its International Scientific Committee on Twentieth-century heritage (ISC20H) have released a Heritage Alert on the imminent demolition of the West Wing of Central Government Offices. This is the second alert ever since ISC20C was established in 2005. This press release can be found here. For more information concerning the conservation of the Government Hill, please visit this site of our Government Hill - Hong Kong.

Report Removed to Guarantee Demolition

The Antiquities Advisory Board will discuss tomorrow the listing of the Government Hill. The Antiquities and Monuments Office, however, removed an expert report on the Central Government Offices, saying it did not understand what the report was and would not put it forward for the board discussion even if there was such a report.

Louis Lor, an architect and one of the experts, said he was very disppointed about the disappearance of the report, which mentions that the Government Hill and the Central Government Offices "cannot be dismembered." He insisted that there should not be any grading for the Hill because it is unquestionably Hong Kong's most important monument.

No. 18 Lower Albert Road, Hong Kong
By Albert Cotton, from Wikimedia Commons

The report shows a rare instance of double grading, the experts said as per the Antiquities and Monuments Office's request: grade 1 for the whole office complex and grades 1, 2 and 3 for the Main, East and West Wings respectively. It is suspected this was due to pressures from the government, who still insists on demolishing the West Wing.

Public Letter by Architect Urges Listing for West Wing

Ronald Phillips, the co-architect for the City Hall, recently publicized a letter to the Secretary of Development and the chair of the Antiquities Advisory Board.

Letter from Ronald Phillips to Carrie Lam, Bernard Chan (AAB) re CGO West Wing
29 April 2012
To whom it may concern......

As some one who witnessed close hand the well considered design and development of the CGO West Wing by an architect colleague in the Architectural office of the PWD in the1950/60’s, I wish to be one of those who makes a strong case for its Listing.

As the co-architect for the City Hall my credentials are, I feel, valid and having just returned from Hong Kong and seen for myself the changes which have taken place in the urban area in the past ten years, there is in my opinion, a need to stand back and take stock.

At the time of the City Hall a good deal of thought went into encouraging an urban city centre for pedestrians to freely enjoy. This was by seeing the new building as part of Statue Square, the Star Ferry Pier, Queen’s Pier and the cenotaph. The sense of enclosure, on a fairly grand scale, was achieved by the surrounding buildings, ie The Supreme Court, Hong Kong Club, Mandarin Hotel, Queens Building and the major banks. In the main part the reprovision of all these buildings over the past 50 years together with the road under passes, some measure of a sense of an urban Centre has been retained, but alas it has lost its dynamic with the relocation of the Star Ferry pier, and a good deal of thought and planning needs to be undertaken to recover this.

You may ask what is the connection between this and the West Wing of the Central Government Offices? Well I see the removal of that building to replace it with yet another skyscraper as a further erosion of that pedestrian dynamic which is in such short supply in Hong Kong. The existing development formed by the East and West wings is of a human scale and one of the few remaining complexes in the central district that can boast of having such a quality. The green pedestrian access from Battery Path to and around St. John’s Cathedral en route to Hong Kong Park would be completely over shadowed, if not completely destroyed, by a high rise building. Its overall effect upon the environs of Government House and the Botanical Gardens would be a disaster.

I have said on previous occasions that the only constant in life is change and society has to move on or go into decline, but society also needs to respect and learn from its history, however, to the matter in hand. To replace a well designed building which responded to its original brief whilst architecturally and environmentally achieving all the attributes which I have outlined I consider would be completely wrong and I strongly urge that it be given Listed status.

R.J.Phillips MA, RIBA

Development Takes the West Wing Down

Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Secretary of Development, said yesterday that she would not stop the plan for the demolition of the West Wing of Central Government Offices, even if the assessment report by the Antiquities Advisory Board should give it a high grade and suggest keeping it.

West Wing, Hong Kong Central Government Offices

The old Central Government Offices are situated on the Government Hill in Central, the political centre of Hong Kong since its earliest days. Many are worried that the West Wing will be demolished to give place for new commercial buildings. The integrity of the original city plan will then be destroyed and the fine line between administration and commerce will be obscured.

First Mail

I am going to write about things happening in Hong Kong in English. I believe there are a lot of people out there who want to know more about Hong Kong but cannot read a character of Chinese. I hope this blog will help them.
As I am not a native speaker of English, I may sometimes sound strange (My teacher told me I sounded like an old lady). Also I'm quite a newb to the art of weblogging, so please bear with me and comment so I can improve.