Podcast One: The Pulse - Part Two (a) | 2011-06-17
Is China Eavesdropping on Drivers?
If you regularly cross the border into mainland China and have a dual license plate, you’ll have been given a device to place in your vehicle. They supposedly speed cross-border processing. But some local lorry drivers, not to mention smugglers, have begun to get suspicious. Do they relay more than your vehicle statistics?
In 1989, Jiang Zemin famously quoted a proverb, "The well water does not interfere with the river water," to explain that Chinese government should not be interfering in Hong Kong politics and vice versa.
As evidence of vote rigging in the recent district council elections grows to ever more alarming proportions, Next Magazine has revealed something of a smoking gun, minutes from a meeting of the Hong Kong CPPCC Provincial Members association asking its members to influence the elections in any way they could.
So how’s that separation of well water and river water going?
With us in the studio are Willy Lam, Chip Tsao, and Hugo Restall.
The coming Sunday has been designated by the United Nations as the International Day of Happiness. This week, the UN revealed that Hong Kong is slipping down the happiness charts in the annual World Happiness Report. 156 countries and territories were surveyed. Hong Kong slipped to 75th place. It was 42nd in 2012.
There are pressures on everyone, but particularly – it seems – on children. The spike in student suicides since this academic year started last September has many parents extremely worried.
Stanford University Professor Larry Diamond has spent decades researching democratic development around the world. He’s been seeing signs of a global recession of democracy over the past ten years, and that’s not just about the political ascent of Donald Trump. Contributing factors include the erosion of rule of law, the dominance of autocrats, corruption, and declining democratic effectiveness and strategies. However he believes though that democrats should not lose faith, as: “Democracy may be receding somewhat in practice, but it is still globally ascendant in peoples’ values and aspirations.” Professor Diamond was visiting Hong Kong this week. We went to talk to him.
Over three days this week, legislators have been debating a motion of thanks on the Policy Address. Or rather, they were supposed to have been doing so. Much of the debate was taken up with the issue of soaring property prices, a subject on which the Address only momentarily touched.
Last week the Chief Executive announced that Hong Kong was steaming ahead to becoming an international educational hub.
In the meantime, many Hong Kong students are facing great difficulties finding places at local universities.
Are we getting our priorities right?
We’re less than a month into 2019 and Hong Kong is already being hit with health and social care crises. The health care system is under siege, with staff in public hospitals working at breaking point as the wards overflow with patients affected by the current flu season. Meanwhile, the population is ageing. Elderly poverty has increased. And the wealth gap between rich and poor is the widest it’s been in 45 years.
When the government decided to give a special $4,000 cash payment the arrangement was chaotic, bureaucratic, even by government standards and seemingly oblivious of the fact that these days online systems are widely available for this sort of thing. And before that there was the announcement of raising the age of eligibility for elderly social security assistance from 60 to 65. This sparked wall to wall opposition in Legco and a partial government back down, but the row continues.
Officials from Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Guangzhou, Zhongshan, Zhuhai and Macau have outlined a controversial series of development projects entitled “The Action Plan for the Bay Area of the Pearl River Estuary”. Its aim is, say its proponents, to improve the region’s quality of life. It could affect close to 25 million across the region.This month, Hong Kong ended its three-week public consultation this month, but it’s been so low-key you may not have noticed.The plan’s been criticized as being full of bureaucratic buzzwords, and much less full of information that will allow better comprehension. A mainland-led research team conducted the study. Hong Kong legislators were not consulted
Last Sunday, people in Kowloon West cast their votes for the second time this year to send their geographical constituency representative to the Legislative Council. The elections were to fill seats left vacant when the government ousted elected legislators Yau Wai-ching and Lau Siu Lai. The seats, previously held by localists, are now taken by DAB’s Vincent Cheng and pro-government candidate Yan Chan. Since 2016, nine people have been barred from running for election after returning officers had decided they did not intend to uphold the Basic Law. The pan-democrats are now outnumbered in the legislature and have not regained their former veto power.
Jane Goodall was 26 when she travelled from England to what is now Tanzania in July 1960. Since then her 50 years of research on primates and wildlife conservation has transformed human’s understanding of chimpanzees and their environment. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, a global and environment conservation organization that now has offices in more than twenty-five countries. And in 1991, she also set up Roots & Shoots to educate young people about conservation and get them involved in it. That’s now operating in 100 countries. At 84, Jane Goodall is not slowing down. She is constantly travelling speaking, advocating and raising public awareness. She was in Hong Kong three weeks ago. Our producer Yvonne Tong went to talk to her.
The idea behind the New Territories Small House Policy was that indigenous villagers would be able to build houses for themselves when needed. Some have been found guilty of abusing that policy by selling their rights to developers. The Heung Yee Kuk is up in arms about this while the government seems rather reluctant to defend the law.
But first, the political storm at the University of Hong Kong continues, and reached a crisis point last week, when the new chairman of the governing council Arthur Li, held his first meeting. His emails have been hacked, although there’s been no prosecution, pro-Beijing newspapers have attacked him, detractors – including Mr Li - have questioned his academic credentials and even his personality … this week, in rather calmer circumstances, I spoke to Johannes Chan.
The nomination period for the chief executive election ended on Wednesday. John Tsang and Woo Kwok-hing both gathered enough nominations, 165 and 180 respectively, while Beijing’s rumoured favourite contender Carrie Lam had 580. Regina Ip did not however secure enough nominations to enter the race and she’s here to reflect on what happened and maybe what will happen next.
Next Wednesday marks the end of an eight week exhibition at the City Gallery, displaying aspects of the controversial Hong Kong Palace Museum to be erected in the West Kowloon Cultural District. The exhibition coincides with a series of official of consultation sessions on the project. Not only is the scope of the public consultation limited, the sessions have been held behind closed doors only involving limited participation. Last week, at a Legco subcommittee meeting legislators had plenty of questions to ask both the government and the cultural district authority about its future financing.