Lau Ming-wai is looking for unconventional ways to reach out to Hong Kong’s disgruntled youngsters after quitting role with property developer Chinese Estates
GARY CHEUNG AND STUART LAU
PUBLISHED : Monday, 11 January, 2016, 1:56am
UPDATED : Monday, 11 January, 2016, 2:00am
Lau Ming-wai is looking for unconventional ways to reach out to Hong Kong’s disgruntled youngsters.
Commission on Youth chairman Lau Ming-wai pulls no punches in reaching out to young people.
He donned shorts, T-shirt and protective sparring gear when he joined 16 youngsters for a tae kwon do training session at Mong Kok Community Hall last Monday.
Lau, who learned the Korean martial art as a primary school pupil, sparred with a female member of Hong Kong’s tae kwon do team.
But the 35-year-old businessman was no match for the girl, who was nearly half his size.
“I got beaten up by the girl and I failed to kick her at all, ” he said.
Lau, who is also chairman of property developer Chinese Estates, took the opportunity during breaks to chat with youngsters at the community hall.
The event was one of Lau’s more unconventional ways of discharging his duty as commission chairman, on top of cutting ribbons and delivering speeches at ceremonies.
The son of property tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung, Lau has attended countless opening and closing ceremonies sponsored by the commission since he took up the post in March.
But he says he needs to do more than just being a ceremonial figurehead.
“When I attend ceremonies, I insist I get at least a 20 to 40-minute slot to chat with some young people and get their feedback on the programme,” he said.
“I’m not in favour of reducing the number of ceremonies because that’s good time when due recognition is given to lots of unsung heroes who organise the events,” he said. “But of course I’d like them to be shortened and kept simple.”
Lau, who wears a G-Shock plastic watch costing about HK$800, is atypical among the scions of tycoons.
He obtained a doctorate in law from King’s College London, and he regularly takes part in triathlons.
Far from treating public posts as honorary, Lau means business with the youth commission, saying he has spent five to six hours per day on youth work since taking the helm of the body.
He resigned as chief executive of Chinese Estates in November but remains company chairman.
“I left my full-time role at the company because after a few months of taking up the commission chairmanship, I realised it could turn into a full-time job,” he said.
“Both the commission chairmanship and [the post as] a youth worker are labour-intensive as it takes time for one-on-one or small-group interaction.”
While he is passionate about his role, there have been times he has been ridiculed for not showing empathy with young people.
In May, he came under fire for suggesting on online platform Goyeah.com that young people should skip holidays to Japan or watch movies less frequently to save HK$3,000 out of a HK$15,000 salary every month.
His suggestion that this was a way to put together a nest egg for a property downpayment was dismissed by some as glib advice from the son of a property tycoon.
“I stand by my earlier comments. Whether you are saving for a holiday, an apartment or a start-up, by definition it requires deferring consumption,” Lau said. “You learn this from Economics 101.
“I am not going to tell people not to eat, or dress less or walk from Tin Shui Wai to Wan Chai. At the end of the day, we live in a society where each person is accountable for his or her actions. Whether you choose to save or not for whatever reason, it’s up to you.
“Having said all that, let’s not ignore or avoid the fact that housing prices are simply not affordable, almost impossible for anyone in the median salary bracket to afford.”
More recently, Lau’s participation in RTHK’s reality show Who Am I: Am I “Dream Girl & Alpha Male”?became the talk of the town when the programme was broadcast on January 2.
During the show, he and Neo Yau Hawk-sau, a 25-year-old actor, stayed behind a curtain and answered questions from 14 women who were tasked with picking their “alpha male” from the pair.
Yau, who made a name for himself starring in the filmShe Remembers, He Forgets, beat Lau by 11 to three votes in the first round of the show.
The women were given another chance to choose after the curtain was raised, and eventually Lau won after five women switched sides. A woman who changed her mind after seeing Lau’s face said Lau’s “package” was better and more mature than Yau’s.
In remarks made in jest, Lau said: “Hong Kong girls are brutal and ruthless.
“But seriously, the reasons I did it were first of all, for fun, and secondly, it was essentially a social experiment which raises a lot of issues that ought to be discussed,” he said.
“In an ideal world – the one before the curtain went up – a lot of people claim they only judge a person by their personality, thoughts and words, and not necessarily by superficial things like appearances, dress or background.
“But when the ‘blind test’ concluded and the curtain was raised, the changes were quite drastic. I was surprised by the final vote – the switch itself and the magnitude of the switch.”
Lau developed an interest in current affairs when he was a schoolboy, saying he started reading the South China Morning Post when he was 10 years old.
During the 2012 chief executive election, he was deputy secretary general for Henry Tang Ying-yen’s campaign, whose bid was derailed by revelations of an illegal basement below his Kowloon Tong home.
But Lau, who says he enjoys public policy research, has no intention of supporting or working with any candidates running in the 2016 Legislative Council or 2017 chief executive elections.
“I am too busy kicking kids in tae kwon do classes. You can’t do that with chief executive or Legco candidates,” Lau joked.
“Seriously, I am short of time. Running a chief executive election campaign is a multi-month exercise which is beyond a full-time job. What would I do with the youth work for this place in the meantime? I don’t see that possibility.”
Lau Ming-wai
Age: 35
Education: PhD in law, King’s College London
Occupation: Chairman of Chinese Estates
Public offices:
Chairman of the Commission on Youth
Deputy chairman of the board of Ocean Park
Member of the Commission on Poverty
Member of the Commission on Strategic Development
Delegate to the Sichuan chapter of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1899810/hong-kongs-youth-commission-chief-comes-out-swinging-citys
