James To and a woman whose lost her son in the tragedy. Photo: RTHK
Maggie Ho reports.
Family members and survivors of the Lamma Ferry disaster say they want to appoint a lawyer to scrutinise an internal government report into the 2012 tragedy.
They're not convinced by the government's contention that there's insufficient evidence to prosecute 17 officials for the accident, and want their own lawyer to make an independent assessment.
The victims and their kin had been given access to a redacted version of the report in April, which had suggested that 17 Marine Department officers may be criminally liable for the tragedy.
But on Wednesday night, they were told by the Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen that there isn't enough evidence to lay any charges.
Democratic Party lawmaker James To said they want the government to give a criminal lawyer of their choice access to the full report, to go through all the available evidence.
To insists the bereaved family members do not intend to hire lawyer after lawyer to get a desired result.
“We are not trying to shop around, to have a third one, fourth one or a fifth [lawyer]. We only want to nominate one. From the victims families’ point of view, at least they will be more relieved if their chosen counsel, armed with all the documents and evidence, can advise the Secretary for Justice and the victims’ families of a proper decision,” To said.
Thirty-nine people died when two ferries collided off Lamma Island on National Day three years ago. One captain has been jailed eight years, while the other was given a nine-month term. Two marine department officials -- one of them retired -- have been charged with misconduct and giving a false statement in relation to the disaster.
To no-one’s great surprise, the University of Hong Kong council rejects law professor Johannes Chan’s appointment to pro-vice chancellor. Judging from the leaked account, the veto was carefully scripted: each council member who voted against gave neatly distinct reasons, which taken together left no possible stone unturned. Yet Chan himself and other key figures are reluctant to publicly call this a Chinese Communist Party hijackingof the university’s internal affairs. It’s as if Beijing’s agents had never hacked their HKU email accounts, or mounted a year-long anti-Chan smear campaign, or pressured pro-establishment or vulnerable council members and bystanders to fall into line or be silent.
The Liaison Office’s obsession with ensuring that this one low-to-medium-profile individual must not take this obscure-sounding university post is puzzling. Yes, there’s the kill-chicken-scare-monkeys thing. Obviously, the HKU-Occupy-Benny Tai connection made him a natural target, one that would impress the bosses in Beijing. But it doesn’t fully explain the sheer amount of effort in terms of snooping, propaganda and arm-twisting that went into this. Something deeply personal or pathological known only in the psychology of Stalinism is going on.
And it is bound to be counterproductive. The message is supposed to be: avoid incorrect political movements and ideas, or your career will suffer. Maybe some academics scrambling for research grants or tenure will succumb, unnoticed by the rest of us. Otherwise, this episode can only provoke yet more anti-Beijing sentiment within Hong Kong and suspicion about China abroad. The real message is: yes, we’re thugs.
Council member Rosanna Wong (DameRosanna, sorry), HKU-grad and pre- and post-colonial do-gooder and all-purpose – and generally decent – busybody, said she voted no because she ‘worried that appointing Chan would split the school further’. I think this was her idea of a joke. If she had ‘…expected that rejecting Chan would increase the community’s love for the motherland’, it would have been a bit funnier, perhaps, but nice try.
Typically, Beijing’s local henchmen have a last laugh of their own, by leaving Rosanna and her buddies in their own doo-doo. After listing Johannes Chan’s every failing, they now have to find and approve a pro-vice chancellor who is demonstrably superior and adored by all stakeholders.
On the subject of irony, page 4 of the South China Morning Post describes how the US media highlighted the Pope rather than President Xi Jinping during the recent parallel visits, while the Mainland press pushed nothing but glowing coverage of Xi’s tremendous popularity and impact in the US. And page 12 of the SCMP has, well, nothing but glowing coverage of Xi’s tremendous popularity and impact in the US…
Meanwhile, away from the SCMP, some investigative reporting to read – more Howard Winn on the Zhuhai Bridge ‘moving island’ mystery/screw-up. He reveals that ‘…[insurance] loss adjusters have been appointed, which suggests matters are not as ‘normal’ as the government would have us believe…’
I declare the National ‘love the motherland’ Day midweek mini-weekend open with a challenge: name one thing that is as ‘normal’ as the government would have us believe?
Chinese media revealed the identity of the newly-appointed chief of a Chinese communist secret police force recently, but within hours the news was deleted from all major websites.
The unusual report took place when Xi Jinping, the Party leader, was in the United States. There are indications that for the last three years he has been marginalizing the secret Party task force, called the 610 Office, which is in charge of the persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice and other groups that the Communist Party considers its enemies.
It’s unclear whether the news of the recent appointment of Fu Zhenghua, the vice minister of public security, will change the institution.
A Secretive Task Force
The 610 Office is a secretive entity with sweeping and vaguely-defined powers, often likened to the Chinese version of the Gestapo, the secret police of Nazi Germany. It was set up by former head of the Party Jiang Zemin on June 10, 1999 (the date from which its name is drawn) with the express purpose of carrying out the persecution of Falun Gong.
A high-level committee (“The Leading Small Group for Handling the Falun Gong Problem”) was also formed to oversee its work, headed up by some of the most powerful men in the country at the time.
“They don’t want this organization at the center of any policy. They don’t want to mention this office in public.”
— Xia Yiyang, Chinese security researcher
Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual practice that teaches the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, and includes slow-moving meditative exercises. It had attracted between 70 and 100 million practitioners in China by 1999, according to official and Falun Gong sources.
Li Dongsheng, former head of the 610 Office, in Beijing, October 2007. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
The campaign against it has been one of the most ferocious security mobilizations in recent Chinese history, involving beatings, mass incarceration, and torture aimed at having Falun Gong adherents renounce their beliefs and pledge loyalty to the Party, according to human rights researchers. Directing that effort has been the 610 Office.
Leadership of the agency had always been shrouded in secrecy. But since Xi Jinping’s ascension to power, two major announcements seemed to indicate that it was being sidelined in the Party structure.
Publicity Shy
When Li Dongsheng, a crony of the former security czar Zhou Yongkang, was purged in December 2013, his title as director of the 610 Office was prominently displayed. Those paying attention knew the Office no longer had a leader.
Liu Linguo assumed the post in January of 2014, though nothing was stated in the media until much later in the year, when it was announced that he had been appointed second-in-command of the Party’s internal investigatory agency, an intensive role that indicated his energies would not be devoted to his 610 work. In May of 2015 the news that Liu was no longer head of the 610 Office was publicized prominently by the major mouthpiece media, including People’s Daily. The successor was not known until now, and it’s unclear when Fu Zhenghua began the job.
Both of these gestures were, strictly speaking, quite unnecessary, says Xia Yiyang, a senior director at the Human Rights Law Foundation, whose work focuses on tracing the operations of China’s security apparatus.
“The reports had political motives. There was no need to expose Li Dongsheng’s title. When that was done, a signal had been sent. After that, Liu Jinguo was kept relatively low key,” he said in a telephone interview.
“It’s a signal that the 610 Office is continuing as a Chinese Communist Party entity persecuting Falun Gong and other religious groups.”
— Sarah Cook, Freedom House
It had appeared for a period earlier this year the 610 Office had no leadership—at least, no new leader was announced. And it seemed the intention of Communist Party leader Xi Jinping to keep it that way, given the manner in which the recent reports were so quickly deleted.
Fu Zhenghua’s new position was reported by the Xinjiang Daily, in an article listing the 69 delegates from Party Central who attended a ceremony celebrating the 60th anniversary of the PRC’s control over the Xinjiang region, populated by the Uyghurs, a Turkic, muslim people.
Reports were then recirculated on mainland web portals, such as Sina, Phoenix, and The Paper—but within hours the news was purged from all of them. And the news did not appear in the authoritative media People’s Daily or Xinhua, reliable bellwethers of central policy.
Whether the initial report was intentional or not is also in question. Xia, the researcher, outlined two possibilities: One, the factional—that those who have a stake in the persecution of Falun Gong, and the future of the 610 Office, saw to it that Fu Zhenghua’s title was publicized. The other is that it was simply an accident.
It was clear, though, that unlike the previous publicity associated with the 610 Office, playing up the agency “is not the intention of the current leadership,” Xia said. “They don’t want this organization at the center of any policy. They don’t want to mention this office in public.”
Optics and propaganda aside, there are both institutional and personnel considerations related to Fu Zhenghua’s appointment.
Fu the Turncoat
Fu’s background is firmly in the camp of Zhou Yongkang, the purged former security boss, and he has over the years been heavily involved in the anti-Falun Gong campaign—for example, in his role as head of the Beijing public security bureau.
But when it came time for Xi Jinping to eliminate Zhou Yongkang, Fu quickly became turncoat, according to widely-quoted rumours in Hong Kong-based media outlets. This spared him the fate of his previous patron, according to those accounts.
Fu Zhenghua, the new head of the 610 Office, in an undated photograph. (freeweibo.com)
At the same time, Fu, like his immediate but short-lived predecessor Liu Jinguo, was an outsider to the 610 Office system. The other individual under consideration for the post, according to Xia Yiyang, was Chen Zhimin, currently the deputy minister of public security. “The operations of the 610 Office are very specific,” Xia said. “It’s not that anyone can take over and carry out the same policies as an insider.”
The appointment of two successive outsiders to the agency in short order, rather than the promotion of a 610 stalwart that constituted its previous leadership (such as the officials Li Lanqing, Liu Jing, or Li Dongsheng), is also an indication of the attenuation of its institutional clout, Xia indicated.
The broader framework for analysis about the continuing role of the 610 Office is its association with the political program of former leader Jiang Zemin, who has become the chief factional rival to Party leader Xi Jinping since the latter took power in late 2012. All of the senior Party officials to be purged in Xi’s Party rectification campaign were, if not specifically appointed by Jiang, known to be his loyalists.
‘Path Dependence’
But bureaucratic resistance to major changes in the configuration of the sensitive security forces may, for now, be preventing a genuine extension of Xi Jinping’s purge to the 610 Office. Any such change would also likely need to be accompanied by a shift in the policy of persecution of Falun Gong, when then becomes a sensitive and thorny political question.
In a recent journal article in China Quarterly, scholars Caylan Ford and Stephen Noakes use a theory of “path dependence” to explain how, after devoting massive resources in the pursuit of the fruitless persecution of Falun Gong, there has been “sufficient institutionalization of the suppression campaign to make the costs of its reversal or sudden conclusion unacceptably high.”
The appointment of Fu Zhenghua appears to be an expression of this path dependence, analysts say.
There has been “sufficient institutionalization of the suppression campaign to make the costs of its reversal or sudden conclusion unacceptably high.”
“It’s a signal that institutionally the 610 Office is continuing to survive as a Chinese Communist Party entity persecuting Falun Gong and going after other religious and spiritual groups targeted by the Communist Party,” said Sarah Cook, a researcher of China at Freedom House and the co-author of an analysis of the operations of the 610 Office.
While Fu Zhenghua’s appointment may not signal an intent by central authorities to reinvigorate the persecution of Falun Gong, confirming who heads the 610 Office could, at least temporarily, lead to increased persecution at the grassroots level.
“If you had a situation where officials were not sure what the future status was going to be, it gave a little bit more space for uncertainty for local security personnel who didn’t want to implement orders,” Cook said. “Potentially now that space could close. It could be another level of consolidation of the 610 Office.”
It is difficult to secure a human heart for transplantation. The donor is usually brain dead and on life support, and the donor and recipient must share matching blood and tissue types to prevent rejection.
So Jacob Lavee, a heart transplant surgeon at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Aviv University, found it hard to believe when a patient in his hospital department in Israel said that he was due in China in a fortnight, on a specific date, for a heart transplant.
“I looked at him and I said: ‘Do you listen to yourself? How can they schedule a heart transplant ahead of time two weeks?'” Dr. Lavee responded.
That was in 2005. Dr. Lavee recounts the episode in the documentary “Hard to Believe,” the first sustained examination of why the Chinese communist regime’s practice of harvesting the organs of prisoners of conscience—what researchers call a mass murder of at least tens of thousands of victims—is not more widely known.
The documentary, which features interviews with medical professionals, practitioners of the persecuted Chinese spiritual discipline Falun Gong, a United States congressman, and others, is now broadcasting on PBS stations across the country.
The film was released on DVD on Sept. 29, and will be made available digitally for one week only.
The Good Doctor
For some time Dr. Lavee was aware that Israelis frequented China for kidney transplants—but he always presumed that poor Chinese villagers were the donors. This is itself a highly problematic ethical scenario—but humans can live with one kidney.
Dr. Jacob Lavee. (Screen shot/Hard to Believe)
Heart donations are an entirely different matter. China was known for using organs from executed criminals, but Dr. Lavee noted that the transplant and execution numbers didn’t tally up.
After doing some research into the source of organ donors in China, he stumbled upon a report written by a Canadian human rights lawyer and a former politician, who investigated allegations of organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China—specifically, practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual discipline which has been persecuted in its homeland since 1999.
“The new information makes absolute sense,” Dr. Lavee says in the documentary, having become one of the key players in the narrative through his own efforts to limit Israel’s involvement in the activity.
The documentary explores how and why researchers believe it’s clear that mass harvesting of Falun Gong prisoners takes place in China, and seeks to understand why more attention isn’t being paid to the matter—why it’s so “hard to believe,” in the words of Louisa Greve, a vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, who appears briefly in the film.
Tracing a Blood-soaked Trail
One answer can be found simply in the nature of the alleged crime: that the government of China catalogs and extracts organs from its own citizens in a systematic and brutally efficient manner for sale to wealthy Chinese and transplant tourists.
The victims of this organ harvesting trade include Uyghurs, and maybe even Tibetans, though most extensive harvesting was carried out against Falun Gong.
On July 20, 1999, former Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin launched a sweeping national persecution of Falun Gong, a traditional Chinese meditation exercise that incorporates teachings of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
At once, over 70 million Chinese citizens became targets for brutal torture and grinding forced labor. Nearly 3,900 Falun Gong practitioners have been tortured and beaten to death, and hundreds of thousands more remain in forced detention, according to Falun Gong statistics and human rights researchers.
Allegations that the Chinese regime was profiting from organs harvested from live Falun Gong practitioners surfaced in March 2006 after the wife of a transplant surgeon involved in harvesting, and a Chinese journalist, went public with details of the macabre affair.
Canadians David Matas and David Kilgour looked into the allegations and tried to disprove them. After considering 33 types of possible proof or disproof, including numerous anonymous calls into China, cross-checking of official transplant numbers, and adopting a simple logical rubric, they concluded in the first ever report on organ harvesting in China that the allegations are true. The Kilgour-Matas report estimated over 40,000 Falun Gong practitioners were killed for their organs.
Former Canadian MP David Kilgour (L) and international human rights lawyer David Matas testified on their seven-year investigation into illegal organ harvesting in China at the human rights subcommittee on Feb. 5, 2013. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)
Author Ethan Gutmann witnessed first-hand the suppression of Falun Gong in Beijing in 1999, and started his own investigation into organ harvesting in 2006. In his 2014 book, “The Slaughter,” Gutmann traced the history of the Chinese regime’s organ harvesting practice from the crude 1990s experiments in the Chinese frontier province of Xinjiang, to the organ profiling of live Falun Gong practitioners under the guise of “health checks” in present-day China. Gutmann estimates that about 65,000 Falun Gong were harvested from 2000 to 2008.
This year, the film “Human Harvest” won a prestigious Peabody award for its exploration of the issue, providing perhaps the most prominent acknowledgment of the organ crimes in China to date.
Murder Mystery
The producers of “Hard to Believe” wanted to present a murder mystery-style narrative that invites watchers to ask why a human rights lawyer, or an Israeli doctor, have come to such jarring conclusions about a mass murder for commercial gain, led by the Chinese state, over the last decade.
Gutmann was initially skeptical about whether that route would be the most impactful, but was ultimately persuaded. Director Ken Stone and co-producer Irene Silber were “sincere in asking the question I couldn’t answer during the writing process,” Gutmann told Epoch Times in a telephone interview.
“‘Hard to Believe’ is the first film that spends more time on the investigators themselves, showing that they are essentially reasonable, objective individuals, with no hidden agenda,” Gutmann said. “It’s a thinking man’s film on organ harvesting.”
The Usual Suspects
The trick was to “keep is simple,” Stone told Epoch Times in a telephone interview. “Focus on the people tied to the issue.”
Hard to Believe director Ken Stone. (Courtesy of Kay Rubacek)
“If you tell small stories, interesting stories about the people, it eliminates the issue” of the film coming across as a work of advocacy, added Stone, an Emmy Award-winning director and a former television reporter now based in Minnesota.
Of all the stories featured, Stone found the interview with former transplant surgeon Enver Tohti the most compelling. Tohti, a native Uyghur from the west China province of Xinjiang who now drives a bus in London, confessed in recent years to have carried out live organ harvesting in the summer of 1995 on the orders of his immediate superior.
The stories of Ethan Gutmann, Falun Gong practitioners, and Enver Tohti are easily relatable to an American television viewing audience because they are familiar archetypes—the hard-charging, truth-seeking, skeptical journalist, the human rights lawyer, the victims of a brutal persecution, and “Doctor Zero,” the first surgeon they could find who engaged in the practice, Ken Stone explained in a video interview of the producers.
“Part of the story is Epoch Times, Ethan Gutmann’s works, David Matas, Jacob Lavee,” Stone said.
This Newspaper’s Role
Epoch Times was the first news publication to cover the organ harvesting issue when it was made public in March 2005, and has since been closely following developments on the issue.
“Hard to Believe” features interviews with Stephen Gregory, the publisher of the U.S. English-language Epoch Times, an independent newspaper headquartered in New York. It also features Matthew Robertson, an Epoch Times reporter who was awarded the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for his coverage of the organ harvesting in 2013.
“We’ve done stories about a reporter who is writing for a paper that most Americans have never heard of but who has written extensively about this, and has even been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists,” Stone said, in a video interview conducted with the producers of the film.
“The organ harvesting story is the story of Falun Gong,” said Gregory in the documentary. “Falun Gong is the most sensitive issue for the Chinese regime. No one in the mainstream press that have offices inside China are covering it inside China.”
In an interview with Epoch Times, Gregory said: “We reported the organ harvesting allegations first and are the go-to source on the issue of organ harvesting.”
Negotiating the Bends
Like many others, director Ken Stone was skeptical of the Chinese regime’s organ crimes when he first learnt of it from co-producer Irene Silber in early 2014.
After doing some research, however, Stone felt that there was a story worth telling, and decided to start production just when the World Transplant Congress was being held in San Francisco in July 2014.
Kay Rubacek, principal at Swoop Films. (Courtesy of Kay Rubacek)
Being able to attend the Congress—the largest international event in the field of organ transplantation—was a crucial step for the documentary because the producers were able to meet and interview several key persons for the film, said Kay Rubacek, principal at Swoop Films, which distributes the film.
During production, Rubacek was primarily involved in research and securing interviews, and helped to smooth out the production process by acting as the connection between interviewer and interviewee.
Rubacek, for example, was a troubleshooter keeping the lines of communication open between interviewees and producers for weeks, getting reluctant witnesses to agree to participate.
No small amount of work was put into crafting the documentary’s haunting, pulsing, piano-driven theme by Dafydd Cooksey.
“It’s ominous, foreboding, and there’s a tension in the knowledge being revealed,” said Cooksey, who worked on the score for 12-14 hours a day for a month to produce a score worthy of a murder mystery, to Epoch Times. “There is something happening, and here’s proof of it happening.”
Dafydd Cooksey, the documentary’s sound producer. (Courtesy of Dafydd Cooksey)
Cooksey, who also recorded the on-location sound and post-production work, said that the most affecting part of the documentary was from the former surgeon Enver Tohti, who commented on the live organ harvest he participated in.
“As a surgeon, Tohti’s natural instinct is to save lives, but he was told to remove the liver and kidneys of a person who was shot but not dead,” Cooksey said. “What moved me was how years later Tohti showed remorse for doing it: he’d say a prayer for the guy at the mosque or church, or light a candle in a temple.”
Director Ken Stone interviews Enver Tohti, a former organ transplant doctor from the easternmost Chinese province of Xinjiang. (Courtesy of Kay Rubacek)
Rubacek, for example, was a trou
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1835568-documentary-asks-whats-so-hard-to-believe-about-china-harvesting-the-organs-of-living-people/
South China Morning Post - Hong Kong feedToday, 04:36
Judges have been given a pay rise of 4.41 per cent – slightly more generous than the increase received by high-ranking civil servants – amid “persistent difficulties” in recruiting experienced lawyers to senior benches.
Only 37 of the 59 positions at High Court level, comprising the Court of First Instance (CFI) and the Court of Appeal, were filled by March, according to the Standing Committee on Judicial Salaries and Conditions of Service which recommended the latest pay rise.
“The number of eligible candidates found suitable for appointment was much smaller than the available vacancies,” the committee said in a report. It cited “clear evidence [of] persistent recruitment difficulties at the CFI level”.
Only barristers and solicitors with over 10 years’ practice can join the High Court, although normally only lawyers with much more experience are hired.
A drop in pay would be one major consideration, as experienced lawyers could be earning 10 times more than a judge, according to a person familiar with remuneration matters.
Under the revised pay scale, the starting monthly salary for a High Court judge would be HK$255,752.
Apart from salaries, the increasingly complex nature of cases handled in the High Court could be a deterrent, as the judiciary told the committee that new developments in law, such as the introduction of the Competition Ordinance, had led to heavy workloads.
The pay rise, backdated to April 1, was announced yesterday as the Chief Executive in Council accepted the committee’s recommendation. It exceeds the 3.96 per cent rise for civil servants in the upper salary band and above.
An elderly man who sells traditional Chinese desserts on the side of Choi Hung Road has seen a generous outpour of support from the public after getting fined HKD6,000 for illegal hawking earlier this month.
The man could not afford to pay it all at once, and asked if he could pay it in monthly instalments of HKD500, but the judge refused.
A kind-hearted Hongkonger by the name of Benson Tsang then decided to rally his friends to raise money to “buy dessert” from the old man, reportsApple Daily. Tsang stressed that this was not a donation, but a purchase, and he only accepted cash donations from his friends and family, initially raising HKD6,000 – enough to cover the fine.
When netizens insisted that they also wanted to help, Tsang finally accepted gift vouchers and supermarket cash coupons worth up to HKD100 from strangers.
One of Tsang’s friends threw in HKD3,000 for the elderly man to get an old dental problem fixed, making the total amount raised about HKD32,950 from roughly 300 people.
They plan to buy a massive amount of dessert from the old man with the funds left over after covering the fine and the costs of the dental operation, about HKD23,950. The bowls and bowls of sugary goodness, which come in at just HKD12 a pop, will be handed out to the needy in Sham Shui Po and other poor areas.
Tsang is confident the old man is happy with the funds raised. “At least, he won’t have to worry just to buy some bread,” Tsang said.
Excuse us while we cry into our bowl of dessert, we think there's something in our eye...
Yesterday afternoon a red minibus driver and a taxi driver were arrested after getting into a fistfight on Waterloo Road in Yau Ma Tei, reportsApple Daily.
The minibus driver, a 58-year-old man surnamed Liu, was reportedly ticked off about a taxi driver, a 39-year-old man surnamed Ho, blocking the road while waiting for passengers in front of Kwong Wah Hospital.
The minibus and taxi drivers started to exchange blows, and one of the minibus passengers – a man who is actually the minibus driver’s ex-colleague – decided to step in and defend his friend.
The cabbie called the police, who arrived on the scene and separated the three.
The two drivers were arrested on suspicion of fighting in a public place.
Hong Kong is looking at a "new normal" economic growth rate of 2-4 percent, about half the pace at which it grew in 2011, as its export-dependent economy grapples with a slowdown in China and elsewhere, Financial Secretary John Tsang told Reuters.
The former British colony is facing huge challenges at a time when its retail, tourism and export sectors are slowing and China's economy is heading for its weakest growth in 25 years.
"We are looking at a new normal, at the current level, at about 2-4 percent. That is not our normal growth in the past. We've had double digits as well," Tsang said today. "As we get bigger... our growth rate will naturally reduce."
Hong Kong's economy grew 2.8 percent in the second quarter this year, far below the heady rates of nearly eight percent seen in the first quarter of 2011. The government forecasts growth for 2015 at between 2-3 percent, although some investment banks are less optimistic.
Trade has been the main pillar of support for the local economy, contributing to more than a quarter of the city's GDP over the past three decades, but Hong Kong is now looking at other sources of growth such as domestic consumption.
"I have been making a lot of fiscal concessions... and that basically puts more money in people's hands so they consume more and that on average has contributed one percent of growth to GDP," said Tsang, who has held his current role since July 2007.
PEG TO STAY
The Hong Kong dollar peg, in place since 1983, has come under strain in recent weeks due to renewed demand for the local currency in the wake of China's yuan devaluation, forcing the city's central bank to intervene to defend the peg.
While some economists have suggested that Hong Kong could consider pegging its currency to the Chinese renminbi CNY=CFXS or even a basket of currencies, Tsang said the current monetary policy framework was appropriate.
"If people think that managing a link with one currency is complicated enough, try managing it with a whole basket of currencies," he said.
There has been speculation that Tsang could run for Hong Kong's top post in elections in 2017.
According to opinion polls, the fencing-enthusiast is more popular than Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying. He recently endeared himself to the public by appearing at a soccer match and praising the local team in his blog.
Asked, however, if he would join the leadership race, Tsang said he "would not consider it at all".
With the recent slide in stock prices also threatening to hurt the city's property market, one of the world's most expensive, Tsang reiterated the government will watch prices carefully and revise policy when necessary.
Hong Kong's role as a premier offshore yuan hub will evolve as Beijing allows greater access to foreign investors, he said.
"We hope to be the London in the euro-dollar sense as we have been working very hard to build the infrastructure here."
A member of the search committee that recommended Johannes Chan Man-mun for a pro-vice-chancellor's post at the University of Hong Kong has said professional experience and standing is more important than a doctorate degree.
As the committee's recommendation was rejected by HKU's governing council on Tuesday night, the member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the council's considerations "differed" from the selection body.
During the meeting, pro- government members who opposed Chan's appointment were said to have cited reasons including Chan having no PhD degree and not publishing enough in international journals.
"This is a managerial post. We put more weighting on the managerial skills than academic qualifications," the member said. "For professional faculties such as law, medicine and dentistry, professional experience and standing count more than publications in journals."
International and local legal scholars came to Chan's defence.
Yash Ghai, an internationally renowned public law scholar and an emeritus professor at HKU, said it was "absurd" to say Chan was not qualified for the job because he had no PhD, as some of the world's leading law professors and scholars did not have doctorate degrees.
To say Chan seldom published in journals was a "deliberate attempt to vilify him", Ghai said, noting he had published in well known journals locally and overseas.
Chan has a 30-page list of publications on his HKU webpage that includes books, articles, conference papers and research projects.
One of the recent works, Law of the Hong Kong Constitution, which he co-edited and co-authored, was hailed by former chief justice Andrew Li Kwok-nang as "a seminal work" on the Basic Law.
Cheryl Saunders, a laureate professor at the University of Melbourne, added that many senior public law scholars had published major books instead of undertaking PhD studies.
Cambridge University professor David Feldman, who does not have a PhD, said it was a mistake to regard the international ranking of journals as reliable indications of the quality of the work published in them.
Michael Ramsden, associate law dean at Chinese University, pointed to the fact that Chan was the only legal academic in town who was made an honorary senior counsel, having argued in landmark cases on constitutional law and human rights. He said it "speaks volumes" about Chan's contribution to the field.
Radio Free Asia - China news in EnglishToday, 01:49
Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have released on 'bail' four activists who launched a T-shirt campaign in support of detained human rights lawyers, amid an ongoing crackdown on the country's embattled legal profession.
Police in Guangdong's Zengcheng city had detained Liu Yajie (also known as Liu Jinlian), Huang Xi, Lai Rifu, Wei Xiaobing, and Huang Yongxiang after they created campaign T-shirts calling for the release of detained human rights attorney Wang Yu.
While Huang Xi was released soon after his initial detention, the authorities released Huang Yongxiang, Wei, Liu, and Lai after they were granted bail on Tuesday, an activist known by his online nickname Zhouzhou Zhuzhou told RFA.
"They got out at around 7.00 p.m. yesterday," the activist said. "They have already sent out messages on [the smartphone messaging app] WeChat."
Huang Yongxiang said in a later interview that police questioning had focused on the mailing of a single T-shirt.
"It was because we were showing support for the lawyer detained since July 10," Huang said. "They basically wanted to know where we had sent the T-shirts, because they want to get them all back."
"I was held under criminal detention, and now I'm out on bail."
Huang said there are strict conditions attached to the release of the activists, who are still regarded as criminal suspects.
"If we leave the Guangzhou area, we have to report to the police, and they expect us to report to the local police station at regular intervals," he said.
While in detention, the activists were denied access to lawyers on the grounds that their actions had "harmed state security."
Lawyer's access denied
As the Guangzhou activists were getting out, police in the central province of Hubei formally arrested detained New Citizens' Movement activist Yi Xu'an on charges of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble."
"The rule of law team at the Daye city police department and the Daye Detention Center have made it very clear that I won't be able to meet with my client," Yi's lawyer Lin Qilei told RFA on Tuesday. "They said that's not going to happen."
Lin said there is no provision in China's judicial regulations to deny access to a lawyer for such charges, which he said were unfounded.
"Yi Xu'an has done nothing that is against the law, and the charge ... is not one that requires official approval for a meeting," he said.
"Of course we don't know the details of the case against him, but to judge from what his relatives told me, he hasn't broken the law," Lin said, adding that Yi's detention could be linked to his support of free-speech activist Wu Gan, known by his online nickname "The Butcher."
Wu, 42, taken away by police during a performance protest he titled "selling my body to raise funds" in Nanchang city in eastern Jiangxi province.
He was trying to help finance a legal defense for four men campaigners say were wrongly jailed by a court in Jiangxi's Leping city in 2000 for robbery, rape, and dismembering a corpse.
Wu is being held on charges of "libel," "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," and the more serious "incitement to subvert state power."
Official media have indicated that the libel charge relates to his criticism of the police shooting of a man at a railway station in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang in May.
Lin said Yi's support of Wu is entirely within the law, however.
"If he has been detained for supporting the Butcher, then this nothing but a case of government persecution," he told RFA.
Activist vanishes in custody
Wu is believed to be held in the southeastern province of Fujian, but his circumstances and location remain unknown, according to Fujian-based netizen You Jingyou.
"Wu Gan's wife Song Kai went to the Yongtai Detention Center on Sept. 28 to give him clothes and money, but the detention center staff told him that he hadn't been held there for some time," You wrote on Twitter.
"When she asked them where he is, they said she'd have to get that information from the officers in charge of the case."
Song later went to the port city of Xiamen to enquire after her husband's whereabouts, where she was told to await a letter confirming his location, You added.
Wu's lawyer Li Fangping said the authorities are required by law to inform his relatives where he is being held.
"We found out from the state prosecutors here that he was transferred somewhere else within seven days of his formal arrest," Li said.
"But the prosecutors can't find out where he is, and the police and the detention center are refusing to answer this question."
Wu was formally arrested on charges of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" and "incitement to subvert state power" in July, Li said, adding that Wu's former attorney Wang Yu was the first to be arrested on the night of July 9 and 10.
Since Wang’s detention alongside her husband Bao Longjun and other colleagues from the Beijing-based Fengrui law firm on July 10, at least 288 lawyers, paralegals, and assistants and other activists or family members had been detained, placed under house arrest, or otherwise had their movements restricted in an ongoing crackdown, the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group (CHRLCG) said in a statement on its website.
Of those, 251 have since been released, but at least 16 are still being held in undisclosed locations, including Wang Yu, her husband Bao Longjun, and Fengrui colleagues Wang Quanzhang, Huang Liqun ,and Zhou Shifeng, it said.
Reported by Qiao Long and Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing of Hutchison Whampoa attends the company's annual results announcement in Hong Kong on March 29, 2011. (Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images)
HONG KONG—Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has defended his business strategy against accusations from China’s state media that he is abandoning investments in the world’s No. 2 economy because of its slowing growth.
In an unusual move, Li released a statement responding to a barrage of criticism in recent weeks about him selling off China assets as he restructured his global business empire to focus more on Europe and less on China.
Commentaries in state media chastised Li this month for being immoral and ungrateful, accusing him of running out on China as its economy slows despite profiting handsomely in better times.
Li has undertaken a major reorganization this year of his sprawling business interests that range from ports to mobile phones. The shakeup included shifting the domiciles of his two main companies from Hong Kong to the Cayman Islands, triggering speculation that he was planning to withdraw from China.
“We are vigilant not to let these unfounded allegations escalate to cause investors’ concerns,” said the statement released Tuesday by his company CK Hutchison Holdings. It said there was “no truth in the withdrawal accusations.”
The statement said Li was “confident” that Chinese President Xi Jinping will continue to improve governance and reform China’s economy.
The former British colony’s tycoons have long embraced China’s communist leaders in order to ensure survival of their business interests on the mainland. Li was part of a business contingent that met Xi in Beijing last year to show their support as tensions rose over pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
The 87-year-old Li has long been Asia’s richest person, although he recently fell to second place with a fortune of $24.3 billion, according to Forbes.
Earlier this month, a think tank affiliated with the official Xinhua news agency and the People’s Daily newspaper, the communist party’s mouthpiece, both lambasted Li over his business decisions in China.
Li said his company has been taking a “prudent” approach to mainland China property investment over the past two years because of an “imbalance” between supply and demand.
“Reducing property investments does not imply we are not investing in the mainland,” the statement said. It said the company’s retail network in China has risen 77 percent to 2,300 stores in the same period.
A woman walks beside a board with the characters for "prosperity" in Chinese in Beijing on July 28, 2015. (FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images)
Please repeat this sentence over and over: “China will overtake the United States as the worlds largest economy. China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy.” Somebody must have given Wall Street and the mainstream media this instruction at the beginning of this decade and some people are still following it.
The truth of the matter is, even if you have four times the population you have to bring something more to the table than just building things andstealing technology: you have to compete. China previously was quite competitive because of a cheap currency, cheap labor, and cheap land. Now anymore. Now they have to innovate to keep moving ahead.
Hedge fund manager Jim Chanos of Kynikos associates has long been skeptical about China’s ability to do just that: “We are still waiting for that one on China,” he said.
While Chanos’ word carries some sway, we now have the scientific proof that innovation in China is just not happening.
“Faced with rising production costs, an aging population, and diminishing returns on the massive capital investments of the past three decades, China must now evolve to a model where productivity gains are generated through innovation and demand through domestic consumption,” the World Economic Forum says in its Global Competitiveness Report of 2015.
In fact, China is ranked only number 28 in global competitiveness, compared to number 3 for the United States.
The World Economic Forum compares the competitiveness of China and the United States across 12 pillars. The United States wins 9. (World Economic Forum)
The critical elements for competition through innovation in the twelve pillars (and their respective rankings) are:
Higher Education and Training (China 68 / U.S. 6)
Technological Readiness (China 74 / U.S. 17)
Business Sophistication (China 38 / U.S. 4)
Innovation itself (China 31 / U.S. 4)
Even if we look at some of the pillars where China is ahead, we can find some bones to pick.
Market Size (China 1 / U.S. 2)
Health and Primary Education (China 44 / U.S. 46)
Macroeconomic Environment (China 8 / U.S. 96)
While there is practically no difference between the two countries regarding the size of the respective goods and services markets, it is quite embarrassing for the United States to be ranked so low in health and primary education.
However, when it comes to the macroeconomic environment, the Global Competitiveness Report just take some numbers at face value without really understanding how the Chinese economy works.
The 12 pillars of competitiveness. (World Economic Forum)
Many of the factors determining the ranking are based on government spending and national debt. Yes, the United States is a spend-thrift and has racked up too much debt, no question about it.
China, on the surface has not. But only because the companies which the Chinese government owns and which are drowning in debt aren’t counting towards government debt. Neither does the local government debt (about 25 percent of GDP) and the state controlled banking system (About 300 percent of GDP).
China also ranks on position number 3 with 48.9 percent of GDP in gross national savings. But that is just the one side of the balance sheet. On the other side is a mountain of wasteful investment spending.
So after the Epoch Times adjustments, the official tally between China and the United States is 10 U.S. wins and two draws. Or in the words of Jim Chanos: we are still waiting, China.
The city’s numerous buildings may be listed on a database as a way to make sure registered voters declare the right addresses. Photo: AFP
Hong Kong’s election watchdog is mulling the possibility of building a database of the city’s tens of thousands of buildings as part of a package of stricter measures proposed by the government to combat vote-planting.
Measures under consideration also included requiring those registering as voters or updating their home addresses to supply proof of abode, as well as increasing the penalty for giving false information, lawmakers heard today.
But to avoid abuse of the complaint system, officials said people who alleged voting fraud might be required to substantiate their cases and provide evidence at hearings.
Undersecretary for constitutional and mainland affairs Ronald Chan Ngok-pang said implementing this requirement could “avoid people lodging complaints based purely on imagination”.
The proposals were made at a special meeting of the Legislative Council’s constitutional affairs panel today, following a surge in complaints – mainly lodged by pan-democratic parties – of suspected vote-planting in the run-up to district council elections in November.
The Registration and Electoral Office received 49 complaints involving 1,451 registered electors, up from just three complaints involving 86 electors during the last district polls, in 2011.
This year, Hongkongers complained of unknown people using their home addresses to register for voting. Some voters allegedly declared addresses that did not exist.
According to the law, all cases shall be referred to judges assigned as independent revising officers.
The three judges this year disqualified 299 of the 1,451 electors in question after court hearings. Another 300-odd voters had their addresses updated, while the rest of the complaints were ruled to be unsubstantiated.
Electoral Affairs Commission chairman Mr Justice Barnabas Fung Wah said in August that hotels could be cited as a voter's address if they "ordinarily reside in the hotel". Fung also said there were "about 10 cases" of voters using public areas as registered addresses. "The electoral registration system should not deprive homeless people of the right to vote. It is a matter of human rights concern," he said.Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam Chi-yuen said the government was looking at ways to enhance the accuracy of the electoral register and to make it easier for the office to verify information.
“The [office] may consider building up a database of buildings … so it will be easier to spot wrong addresses or addresses that do not exist,” Tam said.
He said it was hoped some of the measures could be adopted before the Legco election next year.
Legislator Ann Chiang Lai-wan, of the pro-establishment Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said: “The proposed measures would make the voter registration system so troublesome that they would discourage people from registering as voters. And this will defeat the government’s policy.”
Labour Party lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan added: “It is difficult, especially for young people, to provide proof of address.”
Lee also said the idea of requiring a complainant to attend hearings was “to punish those who report malpractice”.
The existing registration system is based on the principle of honest declaration. There are two related sets of offences.
According to the Electoral Affairs Commission Ordinance, the maximum penalty for providing false information in voter registration is a HK$5,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment.
And under the Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance, anyone who knowingly gives an electoral officer false or misleading information faces a jail term of up to seven years and a HK$500,000 fine.
The tainted water scandal has led to four firns being barred from seven housing projects. Photo: Sam Tsang
Four companies have been punished for the lead-in-water scandal at public housing estates by being barred from seven new projects to build 18,000 flats.
But the Housing Authority is still pondering whether to suspend them from submitting tenders for other developments, as doing so may increase costs and delay the supply of new flats.
The sanction was announced yesterday by Cheung Tat-tong, chairman of the authority's tender committee, after a four-hour special meeting behind closed doors.
It came a week after a review committee of the authority, which was also chaired by Cheung, concluded that soldering materials on fresh water pipes were one of the main sources of excessive lead found in supplies at public housing estates.
"Since we won't consider these companies' bids, we may not always be able to pick the proposals that ask for the lowest prices … An extra HK$1 billion of public money may be spent as a result," Cheung said after the meeting.
The contractors are China State Construction Engineering (HK), Yau Lee Construction, Paul Y Engineering Group and Shui On Building Contractors.
Drinking water samples taken at 11 estates they built were found to contain lead levels in breach of World Health Organisation safety standards.
The decision rules them out of tendering for seven contracts involving construction of 18,000 flats. The authority originally expected they would cost a total of HK$14.4 billion.
"As for whether the authority should still invite these contractors to submit tenders in the future, members had a heated discussion and have yet to reach consensus," Cheung said. The committee will continue the debate tomorrow.
Citing a plan to launch tenders for eight contracts involving 15,000 new flats in the coming six months, Cheung said the authority might need to pay an extra HK$1.2 billion on top of the HK$12 billion original budget if the four companies were further barred from making bids.
"We have to be very prudent in our consideration because public money is involved. From past experience, these four companies have been the best performing contractors in Housing Department projects. They completed jobs on time and their work was fine," he said. "We also have to consider public housing applicants' wish to be allocated flats in a timely manner."
Civic Party lawmaker Dennis Kwok, a committee member, said the penalty was insufficient. But he warned that a further suspension might allow other companies to raise their prices, thus costing more public money.
He suggested the four contractors be required to set up a fund for the authority to compensate residents in the event of lawsuits and to pay for new pipes.
Investigators check the site of a blast in Liuzhou, Guangxi, Sept. 30, 2015.
A series of "huge" explosions ripped through public buildings in the southwestern Chinese region of Guangxi on Wednesday, killing at least seven people, injuring more than 50, and destroying vehicles and buildings, local residents and state media said.
The explosions left confusion and chaos in their wake, as terrified local residents ran for cover, then posted photos of gutted buildings and plumes of smoke and dust in the wake of the blasts they said "shook the earth."
One resident of Guangxi's Dapu township said he was just a few hundred meters from one of the blasts, which collapsed buildings and sent plumes of smoke and debris towering into the sky, according to photos posted online.
"I just heard several explosions," the resident said. "They were really, really loud, and they shook the earth, even from 500, 600 meters away from where I was."
Local police said via social media that they are now investigating 13 reports of explosions, which ripped through public places including a jail, a supermarket, and an area close to a hospital.
Two people have been reported missing, as reports of more than 60 suspicious packages have continued to flood in, and rescue services have rushed to the scene, China's state news agency Xinhua reported.
It said police have made an initial detention of a 33-year-old suspect surnamed Wei, but police and government officials told RFA that details are still sketchy amid an ongoing investigation.
'Terrifying'
"The explosions collapsed a building; it was terrifying," the Dapu resident said.
"There was also a report of an explosion at a bus stop near a police station. Buildings have collapsed in several places, and cars were turned right over by the blast," he said.
"There were cars and even trolley buses that were flung into the air; it's terrifying."
He said police have since sealed off the entire area affected by the blasts.
"The traffic cops have closed the road; I just took a few photos and they are stopping vehicles going that way," the resident said. "I am staying home; luckily I didn't go out today."
"Who would dare to venture out today, when its so dangerous to go to public places?"
A local resident surnamed Huang said she heard several explosions in the space of about one hour.
"I wasn't at the scene of the explosions, but the blasts shook my glass table, and shook the ground; it was a big shock wave," Huang said.
"The explosions started at about 4.00 p.m., and carried on until just after 5.00 p.m.," she said. "I thought they were dynamiting rocks in the hills."
Huang said she had counted "more than 10" separate explosions, adding that local news reports had said there were 13.
"They were at public transportation stops, shopping malls, and near the county government too," she said.
Chaos on the streets
A third Dapu resident described chaotic scenes on the township's streets.
"It's awful; everyone on the street is running and terrified, and there are police cars everywhere," the resident said.
"I felt so scared when I heard these ... huge noises," she added. "Apparently there were some bombs hidden in parcels, but I don't really know."
Officials who answered the phone at the Dapu township police department and county government propaganda bureau declined to comment in detail on Wednesday.
"Things aren't clear yet, and we don't yet know anything," a Dapu police department official said.
"I have no way to answer your questions right now. No comment," the official said.
An officer who answered the phone at the Liucheng county police department, which oversees Dapu, said: "We are in the process of investigating [the incidents] and all of our news is being coordinated as a single source by the propaganda department."
"We still don't know much, as investigations are still ongoing."
Liuzhou-based rights activist Li Jianghan said the authorities had yet to determine whether the blasts were the result of a terror attack or the result of personal grievance.
While Beijing has recently launched an "anti-terrorism" campaign after a string of violent incidents linked to the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang, Li said that previous blasts in public places have also been the result of deep social tensions, personal grievances, and disgruntled petitioners.
"The fact that they chose the day before National Day to do this will cause a lot of debate and concern," Li said.
Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
Electoral Affairs Commission chairman Mr Justice Barnabas Fung Wah said in August that hotels could be cited as a voter's address if they "ordinarily reside in the hotel". Fung also said there were "about 10 cases" of voters using public areas as registered addresses. "The electoral registration system should not deprive homeless people of the right to vote. It is a matter of human rights concern," he said.Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Raymond Tam Chi-yuen said the government was looking at ways to enhance the accuracy of the electoral register and to make it easier for the office to verify information.
