Hydropower boosts Bhutan's GDP, spawns new problems

Bhutan’s GDP surges 11.8% in 2011

Bhutan’s 11.8 percent real GDP growth -- as the USA careens at the ‘fiscal cliff’ of government insolvency and the economies of Europe crash -- has astonished economists. Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley’s ‘state of the nation’ report in July 2012 cited hydropower contributing 44 percent of GDP with the service sector contributing 37 percent. Agriculture and forestry contributed 15 percent.

Fast flowing rivers for hydropower

Bhutan is landlocked in the eastern Himalayas, wedged between China above and India holding its rump and sides. Because the Kingdom controls several key Himalayan passes, it represents a strategic military imperative for India. India underwrites 60% of Bhutan’s annual budget expenditures. China builds roads on the carto-graphically uncharted common border with Bhutan establishing de facto territorial rights while ‘continuing discussions’ to define disputed borders.

Indian military engineers, through the Border Roads Organization (BRO) build and maintain high altitude roads and bridges, clearing landslides, avalanches and snow which are regular through the year. While Bhutan gets vital infrastructure, India gains a strategic presence.

India bankrolls hydropower construction

Bhutan’s Himalayan perch has powerful rivers raging during the heavy summer rains, which are a natural source for hydropower electricity generation. Harnessing that creates surplus electricity which Bhutan can plug into the Indian national power grid for export earnings. The economic expansion in India is constrained by shortfalls in electricity supply for its rapidly growing manufacturing sector, commercial offices and luxury residential developments.

India has funded major hydroelectric construction since Bhutan’s Fifth Economic Plan (1981-87) with a combination of grants and long term loans for the Chhukha, Tala and Kurichhu facilities. A Punatsangchhu Project is underway, expected to come onstream in 2015. Bhutan has planned for 10,000 MW hydropower generation capacity by 2020 with Indian government funding.

The hydropower plants of Chhukha (336 MW), Kurichhu (60 MW), Tala (1.020 MW) and Basochhu (24 MW) were consolidated under the Druk Green Holding Company to manage export of power to India. Bhutan Power Corporation manages domestic electricity supply and builds mini hydroelectric power plants to serve isolated communities off the national power grid.

Both corporations suffer seasonal shortfalls in power when the long dry winter months reduce river flows. They then import power from India at increased prices which leaves them with marginal annual net losses. That is another irritant in Bhutan-India economic relations.

The power sector’s role as the main economic driver through strong export earnings allows domestic supply to be subsidized through deeply discounted ‘Royalty Power’. This has spurred an ambitious rural electrification program from 17 percent in 1995 to 60 percent by 2009 and is on track for 100 percent coverage by 2013.

Rural programs need to distribute economic benefits

Rural electrification brings ancillary benefits: school children have lighting to study after dark, power is available for cottage industries to mechanize to improve productivity, there is option to establish factories to process and package agricultural produce for export. Economic planners now have vital power infrastructure to promote private sector investment in manufacturing at farming and cottage industry locations.

There is a concerted administrative effort to de-centralize planning and to distribute implementation responsibility to district levels (Dzongkhags). However the weight of tradition and lack of educated youth willing to return to their villages to modernize and innovate, leaves the pace of rural development lethargic. Despite increasing availability of electricity, rural households follow tradition by cooking with forest wood and heating with kerosene, LPG and firewood. That is also a factor of incomes which have not moved much for the rural folk. The primary rural economy remains disconnected from the secondary and tertiary sectors.

About 40 percent of the 317,000 population (July 2012 est.) are subsistence farmers tending livestock and working cash crops on the 2.3 percent arable land. There is an aggregate of only 400 sq.km. of irrigated agriculture. The population is widely dispersed at a density of 15 persons per sq.km. in small villages across 38,394 sq.km of mostly uninhabitable mountain terrain.

Rural youth migration into the capital Thimpu, without a sufficient safety net of gainful employment, has led to a spike in drugs and petty crime not seen before. Thimpu itself once a green, lush, riverine township bounded by Himalayan peaks, has been concreted over with squat commercial and residential blocks. Construction dust is in the air. Traffic jams are commonplace. The capital is not an advertisement for Gross National Happiness (GNH) -- a concept for which Bhutan is applauded internationally.

Dependence on India a mixed blessing

The import of capital equipment for the massive hydropower projects, trucks and bulldozers for construction, expertise to build and operate, Indian manual labour for stone-breaking plus interest-bearing loan repayments, add to Bhutan’s widening trade deficit and external debt.

There is increasing resentment within Bhutan that infrastructure and hydropower investments drain the treasury without benefitting domestic labour or local contractors. Many see Indian investments as self-serving value to Indian companies, manpower and government..

The outflow of Rupees led to the ‘Rupee Crunch’ shock of 2010-11 which disrupted cross-border petty trade. That was exacerbated by the Bhutan government closing Rupee bank accounts held by Indian traders, who then spirited out their hundreds of millions of Rupees at speed. This followed pressure applied by the Indian government as the traders were evading tax at home and profiting unduly by under-invoicing imports -- scamming the Bhutan government as well.

The World Bank Sept 2011 update notes that Bhutan’s GDP share of agriculture fell from 25 percent in FY 2002-03 to 14 percent in FY 2010-11. Some attribute that to the inefficiencies and low productivity of subsistence agriculture, plus the abundance of supply from India at affordable rates. In 2011 Bhutan spent about Rs 4 Billion on imports of meat, dairy products, coffee, tea, rice, cooking oils and sugar. There is debate about the negligence of agricultural development at policy level in government.

One major concern is the level of external debt which reached 82.7 percent of GDP in 2011. The Bhutan Chambers of Commerce report on the Rupee Crunch pointed out that government budget expenditures rose from Nu 9.8 Billion in FY 2002-03 to Nu 38 Billion in 2011-12 and that 60 percent of government expenditure was for imports from India. It cautioned that increasing government expenditure without a corresponding increase in domestic savings leads to a current account deficit which is unsustainable.

Increase in private vehicles imported from India is another contributing factor to the Rupee Crunch -- a civil service quota is available to all government employees. And government is the biggest employer in Bhutan. There were 1,103 vehicles imported from India in 2002 at a value estimated at Nu 310 Million. That escalated to 6,893 car imports in 2011 at Nu 3.6 Billion. The number of vehicles on the roads also increases the need for fuel imports from India.

The government has since imposed a strict use of the Ngultrum as the primary currency for all trade within Bhutan. All goods have to be bought from suppliers within the country. That will create its own distortions to the supply chain and lead to various other work-arounds by traders.

The stellar 11.8 percent GDP growth spawns a litany of problems. How Bhutan uses its rising export income from hydropower for equitable social development and to balance its trade deficit is a challenge. How India can find ways to help its little neighbour survive GDP success is another matter. All of which confirm the Fourth King’s assertion in the 1970s that GDP is a very limited indicator of national progress.

ENDS

Anti-Japanese riots across China

Patriotic Education fuels mass hate

There it was for all to see on TV -- the ugliness of mob hate across cities in China for the stand-off on the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. Frenzied rioters attacked Japanese restaurants and shops, throwing stones and setting fire to the Japanese flag. Japanese cars were overturned and burnt even though they were owned by fellow Chinese citizens.

All the bottled anger of a repressed population was allowed to explode against Japanese assets. Chinese society is seeped in historic hatred of the Japanese, taught in school history books. There is no attempt to identify the militaristic Japanese nobility as the fanatical war mongers who advised the Emperor in a society which believed in his divine origin.

Parents, teachers and government in Hong Kong got a timely lesson for what can be triggered on Hong Kong streets when distorted patriotic indoctrination seeds young minds with blind hate.

China cannot be proud of this. The riots had the tacit approval of the authorities for ‘righteous anger’. For a society as forcibly bunged as China, such a rare release of mass misbehaviour can be intoxicating.

Allowing the genie out of the bottle holds unpredictable consequences for the Party as the stresses of the rural-urban divide, widening rich-poor gap, disenfranchisement of villagers, rampant official corruption, police brutality and environmental devastation take its toll.

40th Anniversary may be silent

The Senkaku Islands, controlled by Japan but claimed by China, is rapidly nose-diving bilateral diplomatic relations. Commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the normalization of relations signed 29 Sept 1972, following President Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing, seems to be in deep freeze as both sides contend with heightened domestic nationalism ahead of major leadership changes in China and elections in Japan. Neither side wants to be accused of being soft.

China has had a problematic relationship with Japan from the pre-WWII invasion of Manchuria, the callous Nanjing Massacre of 300,000 civilians and the Korean War conducted by America from massive air and naval bases in Okinawa. Japan has been a disturbing factor in the ambivalent China-America relationship. Japan is a major irritant to China for its refusal to atone for war crimes.

Without its bases in Japan, America would not be as omnipresent in the growing maritime disputes of the East China Sea and the Spratly’s. It constrains an increasingly assertive China pursuing undersea oilfields and access to rich fishing grounds. It allows the USA to ‘pivot’ its Pacific strategy and for the ASEAN nations to try to contest China’s bullying.

Japan has still not fully accepted responsibility for its military misadventures of WWII. Japan’s school textbooks do not face up to its full culpability. No remorse is expressed for war crimes - unlike post-WWII Germany which had the evil of Nazism and Hitler’s genocide of the Jews burnt into its conscience. German society has moved on. Japan is still stuck in denial of comfort women and the Nanjing Massacre.

Brown shirts, Black Shirts & Red Guards

Totalitarian regimes with dodgy legitimacy use young children to embed ‘patriotic’ instruction. Young minds are open, trusting and willing to be led. They have boundless energy and enthusiasm which can be manipulated. Youth are the foundation to construct the next ‘great society’ to fit the twisted megalomania of the day.

Fascism in Italy and Germany after WWI advocated authoritarian single-party rule as the only solution for rapid socio-economic reconstruction of their war-ravaged economies and national humiliation. The promise of jobs, educational opportunities and the mission for youth to purify the nation, was seductive. The fascists promoted a cult of heroic youth in music, art, theatre, movies and literature as the glorious future.

State sponsored movements, subsidized leisure outlets, a strong national identity and clearly defined gender roles attracted youth and gave them an alternative allegiance to the traditional authority of parents, school and church. Loyalty to party, leader and nation was above all else.

Hitler’s Brown Shirts and Mussolini’s Black Shirts both had very tightly controlled youth recruitment, training and loyalty rituals to ensure supremacy of the leader and blind obedience.

They were used to attack and intimidate ‘enemies of the State’ and to disrupt the Old Order. The single-minded focus to ‘educate’ youth was to ensure loyalty to the Nazi State for the Third Reich to last a thousand years. “Whoever has the youth has the future” was Hitler’s mantra. This was a lesson not lost on the communist dictatorships which followed.

An ageing Chairman Mao, paranoic about internal plots to replace him, mobilised Red Guard units across China to attack his ‘enemies’ within the Party and to correct the ‘bourgeois’ misdirection of society. The traditional roles of authority represented by parents, teachers, doctors, party elders and universities were demolished on a relentless mass renewal of revolutionary zeal.

The direct ‘approval’ of the Chairman over the heads of the existing political machinery became the license for roving youth groups to attack and destroy people and institutions in furtherance of the ‘Four Clean-ups’ -- to cleanse politics, the economy, party organization and ideology. Over the ten years of the Cultural Revolution terror, 36 million Chinese citizens were put to death.

Hong Kong has good reason to review the introduction of Communist Party style national education into its school system. Although in the face of persistent mass protests, chief executive Leung Chun-ying withdrew compulsory national education for schools by 2015, parents, teachers and students cannot rest assured that it will not re-emerge in some other form. Administrative coersion of principals and teachers away from public glare, is ever present.

ENDS

All parties to Diaoyu islands shy away from International Court

Kai Fung 2 returns flying Taiwan flag!

Between Taiwan & Okinawa

Whose Diaoyu islands - Taiwan’s, China’s or Japan’s?

Considerable heat was generated on the streets of Chinese cities recently with enraged mobs burning Japanese cars while a fishing boat load of ‘national heroes’ planted China and Taiwan flags on the disputed Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea.

Apart from plentiful bluster and jingoism there is neither clarity nor consensus over the legal merits of the claims by Taiwan and China. Japan controls the island cluster which they refer to as the Senkakus. No party is eager to take its claim to an international court. Politicians have no strategy to deal with legal rejection after fanning nationalistic flames. Any legal dispute brought to court will have a winner and a loser with binding obligations.

Chinese Imperial maritime logbooks going back to the 1400s refer to the Diaoyu Islands as navigational landmarks. Imperial Japan formally incorporated the Senkaku Islands as national territory on 14 January 1895, converting their prior terra nullius (no man’s land) status.

After Japan’s WWII surrender to America, the Senkakus was administered as part of the Okinawa Prefecture under the United States Civil Administration of the Ryuku Islands from 1945 to 1972 when they reverted to Japan under the Okinawa Reversion Treaty ratified by the US Congress in 1971.

The UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) report of 1969 raised the potential of large oil reserves around the Senkaku/Daioyu archipelago. That energized the territorial claims between Taiwan, China and Japan, which continue unresolved.

Since 1972 the civic administration of the Senkaku Islands was placed under the mayor of Ishigaki but he is not permitted to develop them or initiate commercial activity without clearance from the central government.

Private ownership of Senkakus problematic

At the turn of the 20th Century private entrepreneur Koga Tatsushiro took advantage of the rich fishing around the Senkakus to erect a bonito processing plant with 200 workers. The business did not thrive and fell into disuse with the WWII disruption till the 1970s when Koga Tatsushiro’s grandchildren sold four of the islands - Uotsuri, Kita-Kojima, Minami-Kojima and Kuba to the Kurihara family of Saitama Prefecture.

Since 2002 the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications pays the Kurihara family ¥25 million a year to rent Uotsuri, Minami-Kojima and Kita-Kojima. Kuba island is rented by the Ministry of Defense and is used by the US Air Force for bombing practice.

On 17 December 2010, the Ishigaki mayor declared that January 14 would be ‘Pioneering Day’ to commemorate Japan's 1895 annexation of the Senkaku Islands. That brought swift condemnation from China. In 2012, the central government and Tokyo municipality announced plans to purchase Uotsuri, Kita-Kojima and Minami-Kojima from the Kurihara family to properly centralize administration of the Senkaku Islands.

These attempts to tidy-up the private ownership status of the Senkakus against national sovereignty priorities, add to the rising tensions of the dispute. The moves are seen as further provocations by China and Taiwan.

National Heroes return from Diaoyu mission


The returning heroes arrived in two batches - seven on a deportation flight and the other seven on board the Kai Fung 2 which docked at Tsim Sha Tsui pier, Wednesday August 22, ten days after it evaded Hong Kong’s marine police to spirit 14 professional protestors to the cluster of disputed islands in the East China Sea.

They landed on the main island, planted Chinese and Taiwan flags, sang the Chinese national anthem, denounced Japan’s illegal occupation of Chinese territory and collected three rocks as souvenirs. Mission accomplished.

The rocks got lost in transit. If anyone finds a heavy red plastic package, please return it to the patriots. They will gift one rock to the HK Museum. Where the other two rocks will go has not been decided yet if they turn up.

The protestors aim to replay their action on the Diaoyu islands in October on China’s national independence anniversary -- if they find sponsors to finance repairs to the fishing boat and underwrite expenses.

Japanese are not amused

The mood in Japan meanwhile is dismay that nine coastguard vessels could not prevent a lone fishing boat from landing Chinese activists on the Senkaku and anger at the Noda government for allowing the adventurers to return home without being charged for illegal entry. There are calls for firm deterrent action to be taken and for the Self Defence Forces (SDF) to be deployed.

Captain Yeung Hong of the Kai Fung 2 relished outmanouvering and slipping past the naval blockades of the Hong Kong marine police and Japanese coastguard boats: “We could break the cordon because both the Hong Kong and Japanese authorities made mistakes in stopping us.”

Boat owner Lo Hom-chau was more concerned with the safety of the party, funds to repeat the trip in October and younger manpower to carry on the heroic mission. “The expedition is a success because all crew members returned safe.”

The last time a Hong Kong boat ventured to the Diaoyu islands 16 years ago, one of the party drowned. Mr Lo is worried that the activists of the Action Committee for the Defense of Diaoyu Islands are all in their 60s and young recruits are not forthcoming. He also estimates HK$200,000 worth of repairs to fix the damage caused by Japanese coastguard ships.

It is unlikely that another Hong Kong fishing boat will be able to unload more heroes on the Daioyu or that flag-planting patriots would be sent back in triumph. The chances for tactical miscalculation and unintended consequences to life and limb are high, which the governments involved may wish to avoid.

Should Hong Kong have a role in maritime disputes?

In an unusual step-up for the mayor of a Chinese city, chief executive CY Leung had called in the Japanese Consul to assure the safety of adventurers aboard the Kai Fung 2 which Hong Kong’s marine police failed to stop from leaving territorial waters. It was a breach of marine regulations and it is not clear what action will be taken, if any.

There is considerable ambivalence about Hong Kong’s role in what is a sovereignty dispute between China, Taiwan and Japan over a group of five islands and three rocky outcrops in the East China sea under Japanese control. The Basic Law which is the territory’s mini-constitution, reserves international relations and national defence as functions of the central government. The national government has not outsourced maritime territorial claims to Hong Kong.

Both China and Taiwan prevent international adventurism being launched from their shores by civilians. Tokyo disallows nationals from similar theatrics. Hong Kong as a port of departure for Diaoyu activists seems to somehow allow provocation with deniability.

Japan does not recognize Taiwan as an independent state. Neither does China which waits to resume sovereignty over the ‘renegade province’ at some point in the future. To complicate matters, China agrees that the Diaoyu islands belong to Toucheng Township in Taiwan’s Yilan County. Does Taiwan have legal capacity to stake a claim? With whom should Japan negotiate to resolve the dispute?

CY Leung reportedly donated HK$1million to the Action Committee for Defense of Diaoyu Islands but did not show up to welcome the returning heroes. However, candidates from across the political spectrum gathered with bouquets of flowers as the Kai Fung 2 docked with its cargo of patriots. The crowd at the Tsim Sha Tsui pier jeered the ‘shameless’ politicians jostling for TV coverage. The Legislative Council and District Council ‘super seat’ elections are due Sept 9 and free publicity is useful for the candidates.

Righteous mass anger can be a double-edged sword

Expediency has played a large part in allowing jingoism to be stoked to add pressure and urgency to the diplomatic stalemate with Japan. The press in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan dutifully hailed the professional activists as national heroes and patriots. The 14 activists included Shenzen, Macao, Taiwan and Hong Kong residents. There were demonstrations in cities across China and Taiwan in an outpouring of mob hate against the Japanese, fuelled by lingering bitter memories of wartime atrocities.

Things got out of hand in Shenzen where crowds overturned and burnt Japanese cars -- including a police vehicle. That is exactly the sort of unscripted pandemonium the Chinese Communist Party loathes more than anything else. Every time it allows mass mobilization outside Party choreography, it risks unpredictable consequences.

Already the serial outbreak of persistent public protests against environmental damage and health hazards has the CCP worried. The social activism beyond Party control in so many Chinese cities has come to be referred to in mainland media as the ‘Shifang-Qidong Model’ of public action -- a challenge the Party is still trying to find a way to pre-empt.

President Hu and prime minister Wen continue to exhort ‘stability and social harmony’ as code for administrative prudence and public restraint. That has not been enough to stop public anger over secret mega projects that discharge toxic waste into rivers and the arrogance of local party chiefs who routinely unleash police violence on citizens.

ENDS

HK Ombudsman probes $12m funding to patriotic centres

Parents, students & teachers protest
'patriotic education' booklet

NPC Dy Yeung Yiu-chung
gets HK$12m per annum

Michael Suen believed to
have siphoned funds to pro-Beijing
National Education Centres

Education Department asked to clarify

Besides provoking 90,000 Hong Kong parents, students and teachers to protest-march last Sunday (July 29) , the government’s clumsy attempt to force ‘patriotic education’ on schools has now attracted a probe by the Ombudsman’s Office. It seeks to establish how HK$12 million taxpayer dollars is being funnelled annually without open tender, into two pro-Beijing agencies, both headed by the same person, for production of patriotic education materials.

The agencies which enjoy the government’s unusual largesse are the National Education Centre and the National Education Services Centre, both headed by National Peoples’ Congress (NPC) deputy Yeung Yiu-chung and run by the 26,000 member Federation of Education Workers (FEW).

The Ombudsman’s letter notifying the 80,000 strong HK Professional Teachers’ Union of the probe, refers to study of ‘relevant materials’ - presumably the output of the twin national education outfits - as the basis for its action.

Before citizens get too excited about the Ombudsman’s involvement, note that his office is also investigating three government departments for failing to curb a hawker stall, the Fisheries Department for not removing stray cats and the Lands Department for not dismantling an unauthorised structure on government property.

Patriotic study tours for select HK schools

While at it, Ombudsman Alan Lai-nin should also check out the Education Bureau’s facilitation and subsidy of reportedly HK$1million for 450 students from 35 secondary schools in July, to tour scenic spots and the Mao Zedong Relics Museum in Hunan. The Education Bureau does not list the schools involved. It will be useful to know if there is a common thread underpinning this select group which is so favoured. The Bureau provided tour booklets which tell how Mao “sought the truth to save the country and citizens”.

Part of the student experience includes a display of Chairman Mao’s pyjamas replete with 73 repair patches as evidence of his “hardworking, frugal and noble character.” A Hong Kong girl interviewed by Hunan TV News gushed “I think Chairman Mao grandpa is quite amiable”. It is on YouTube. That about wraps up the educational value of the tour.

Education funds diverted without open tender

Last year the Donald Tsang administration siphoned HK$86 million for a six year program of patriotic education to cover teaching materials, study tours and training courses. The Professional Teachers’ Union however does not have any role in the Education Bureau’s program. That has been reserved for the Federation of Education Workers which is paid out of taxpayer dollars without any competitive tendering. What special educational expertise the FEW has is unclear other than its ‘United Front’ role in the education sector.

The HK government has deviated from standard procurement procedures without transparency or accountability, setting a precedent which the public wants stopped. Why the secrecy in deploying public funds? What else is the HKSAR administration hiding from its citizens? Why?

Financial Secretary Michael Suen who was Secretary for Education in the Donald Tsang administration, is widely believed to have engineered the funding for NPC deputy Yeung Yiu-chung, who chairs both the beneficiaries. Incoming Education Secretary Eddie Ng Kam-hai was caught with the dirty secret Michael Suen left behind. His lack of prior briefing showed as he dithered while the patriotic education farce unravelled. He was summoned to Beijing and stiffened up to mouth support for what his conscience told him was clearly against Hong Kong’s core values.

Hong Kong citizens and legislators - outside those complicit in the plot - are only now becoming aware of the extent of diversion of education funds to unknown agencies for problematic patriotic education campaigns.

National education or indoctrination?

Neither parents, students nor teachers who participated in the protest march through the blazing Sunday have any problem with factual national education about the motherland’s culture, traditions, geography, space exploration, economic progress, pollution or ecology. They draw the line at disguised party propaganda, distortion of history, silence on major policy disasters, hero-worshipping of Mao and widespread human rights abuses unacceptable in any civilised society.

That is a crucial distinction the propaganda promoters refuse to acknowledge. They conflate national education with indoctrination. Hong Kong society is too aware and alert for that to fly. They want clarity of intent from their government and professional scrutiny of teaching materials to excise propaganda. Information yes, indoctrination no. Critical thinking yes, regimentation no.

Dire warnings to HK ‘troublemakers’

A Basic Law Committee stalwart of the Standing Committee of The National Peoples’ Congress, Lau Nai-keung, used his column in the South China Morning Post (Aug 3, Op-Ed, A13) to warn HK citizens of punishment for challenging authority. The piece titled ‘Hong Kong courts disaster with culture of opposition’ intimated that Beijing’s patience is running out for ungrateful HK residents who refuse to salute the wisdom of the Party.

Mr Lau raises the spectre of a China challenged by external and internal threats and declares that Hong Kong is a ’springboard’ to destabilize the mainland, suggesting Beijing will move beyond benevolence to squash dissidents if they don’t hew to the party line.

What these external and internal threats are is not spelled out by Mr Lau. How punishing Hong Kong parents, teachers and students for demanding a clear separation between education and propaganda can resolve China’s domestic contradictions, remains unclear.

Next CCP leadership to set new priorities

The legitimacy of the CCP is being challenged by village communities left behind in the Dengist economic reforms of the last three decades. The wealth gap, rampant official corruption, theft of farmlands by bullying Party apparatchiks, polluting industrial facilities that poison rivers and food-chain, tainted milk and other food products churned out by factories protected by local Party chiefs, arbitrary arrest and torture of citizens who dare protest and petition for their rights and arrogant abuse of power and privilege, coalesce into the cracked social mirror that scares the ghosts who unleash these iniquities.

The ‘divine right to rule’ of the last imperial regime was ended by Sun Yat Sen’s republican revolution of 1911. The Chinese Communist Party re-educated the last Emperor as a repair workshop mechanic after releasing him from prison in 1959. The CCP has no divine right to rule either. Respect for the Party has to be earned.

More mature heads at the apex of the CCP leadership are preparing to announce an inclusive development policy to address the wealth gap, environmental degradation, social equity and the cancer of corruption at all levels of the Party, in the October session of the 18th National Peoples’ Congress which will confirm the fifth generation CCP leaders.

HK citizens do not fear their government. Dissidents do not expect to be kidnapped in the dead of night by secret police. Their families are not punished. They do not ‘disappear’ nor are they ‘suicided’ in custody. The incoming leadership in China will hopefully have the greater wisdom and confidence to finally liberate citizens from abuse by an unfettered police state apparatus, six decades after the promise of social justice.



ENDS

Why NASA matters to Earthlings

Mainland-style Indoctrination for Hongkong schools

March forth under the banner of Mao!

Compatriots script textbook for patriotic study

The Hong Kong government gave HK$13 million taxpayer dollars to the Hong Kong Patriotic Education Services Centre (HKPESC) to produce a 34-page booklet titled ‘Chinese Model National Conditions Teaching Manual’ for Hong Kong schools. How this came to be without proper public consultation, professional vetting or Legislative Council debate, remains yet another mystery in HKSAR mis-governance.

The Donald Tsang administration allocated this annual fund to a hitherto unknown ‘patriotic education’ outfit created by the HK Federation of Education Workers (FEW) which represents 26,000 comrade teachers and is an integral part of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB).

These and many other bodies are hydra-headed expressions of ‘united front’ work co-ordinated and fuelled by the China Liaison Office. While exerting coercive influence on the HK government, the Communist Party remains largely invisible in the territory, working through ‘united front’ activity in schools, unions and Taoist religious organizations.

Parents and teachers call for mass protest

Parents, teachers and pupils have scheduled next Sunday July 29 to march to the government headquarters in Admiralty. Widespread public dismay over the contents of this ‘Chinese Model’ teaching manual caused the government to postpone full implementation of moral and patriotic education classes.

Instead, the booklet will be distributed to some primary schools this September while secondary schools will implement the ‘compulsory’ curriculum from 2015. Hong Kong society has three years to agree the boundary between education and propaganda.

The Catholic, Anglican and Evangelical Lutheran Church schools networks have rejected the ‘Chinese Model’ booklet as inappropriate. That removes one-third of primary schools in Hong Kong from the scheme this year.

Love the motherland. Love the Communist Party

Thirty-two pages of the ‘Chinese Model’ booklet extol the virtues of the mainland government under its one-party communist dictatorship. Perfunctory reference is made to recent incidents of concern like the tainted milk scandal, internet filtering software and the “My dad is Li Gang” case of the son of a Party official whose car knocked down a girl on campus. He fled the scene boasting of his powerful dad.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is described as “progressive, selfless and united” in contrast to the messy two-party conflicts of the USA and contentious multi-party European governments.

The horrors inflicted on the Chinese people through unchecked political monopoly power and callous disregard for human rights are not discussed in ‘Chinese Model’. The ten-year Cultural Revolution madness gets no mention. The June 4 1989 Tiananmen massacre of students is absent.

Education Secretary summoned to Beijing

The new Education Secretary, Eddie Ng Hak-kim, while bravely trying to justify patriotic education, could not bring himself to endorse the booklet. He worried that parts of it were biased and could lead to brainwashing.

Eddie Ng has reservations

Hardly a fortnight into his job, Secretary Eddie was summoned to Beijing on a secret trip which breached protocol and long-established procedure to inform the press. Eddie has been silent on the content of the Beijing meeting since his return.

The HK Professional Teachers Union (HKPTU) which represents the majority of teachers in the territory with a membership of 80,000 against the left-fringe FEW which has 26,000 members, rejects the patriotic education scheme. Its founding chairman was the late Szeto Wah, a respected human rights leader who came to prominence during the 1989 Tiananmen military action against students.

The HKPTU’s current chairman Fung Wai-wah called for the government to scrap the discredited ‘Chinese Model’ booklet and patriotic education course. “The government should not wait until students refuse to show up in class before it reviews the course”. The union is collecting signatures from teachers opposed to the biased patriotic education material and will lead the July 29 mass rally.

Patriots lie low for the moment

The uncharacteristic reticence on this loaded issue by otherwise vociferous pro-Beijing patriots in Hong Kong is because the Legislative Council elections are due in September. Hong Kong is still fresh from the huge turnout for the June 4 vigil and public outrage on July 1 against the suspicious death in custody of Tiananmen detainee Li Wangyang.

The DAB fears a backlash from Hong Kong’s fiercely non-conformist residents. If it fails to secure a two-thirds majority along with allies from the rotten boroughs of functional constituencies, it will be difficult to stall the demand to jettison functional constituency voting blocks for directly elected seats, or to pass the Article 23 Security Bill which Beijing needs to de-fang Hong Kong’s press and chill public dissent. Touted as a national security obligation, Article 23 is a thinly veiled internal suppression tool to align Hong Kong with mainland police state methods.

Hongkong pride in being Chinese drops

Hongkong University’s annual poll on the sense of pride in becoming Chinese citizens after 1997 dropped to its lowest level of just 37% of residents since 2001. That 63% of HK disavows China identity fifteen years after the handover must be worrisome for Beijing and its proxies in the territory. Hence the frenzy to instill love of the Party through indoctrination of vulnerable youth in schools.

Children are systematically schooled in regimentation
and love of the Communist Party 

 

‘National Little Vanguard’ teaches Mao worship

At the ‘City Forum’ weekend televised debate of July 15 on patriotic education, Yu Yee-wah, chairperson of the Education Employees General Union and the HK Primary Teachers Association of General Studies (both organs of FEW) smacked down 15-year old Jasper Wong Chi-fung, co-founder of a student group opposed to brainwashing. Her tantrum was captured on camera and distributed widely on YouTube.

Yu Yee-wah heads many bodies
brainwashing Hongkong schoolchildren

Young Jasper Wong says he is both a Chinese and Hongkong citizen and sees no problem with patriotism. “But patriotism should not be cultivated through a school subject which aims to brainwash students”. His student group would join the July 29 rally.

Netizens researching Ms Yu Yee-wah found to their astonishment that she was also vice-chair of the ‘National Little Vanguard’ which teaches schoolchildren to worship Chairman Mao’s calligraphic works and ‘relentless spirit’. Little Vanguards wear military uniforms, raise the national flag, sing red songs and march with rifles. After this discovery led to uproar in HK’s blogosphere, the Little Vanguard website was hastily removed.

Yu Yee-wah’s Facebook page displays photographs of herself in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and one-on-one photo with CY Leung, the territory’s current chief executive.

The last word on the progress of the Communist Party is best left to former mainland public security officer Ni Kuang, who likened it to the progress of a cannibal tribe upgrading to knives and forks to eat humans. "The essence hasn't changed. It becomes more absurd. And they are so proud of it."

Ni Kuang preferred scriptwriting to
death warrants for class enemies

Ni Kuang migrated to Hong Kong from China in 1957 after serving as a public security apparatchik in Inner Mongolia where his job was to write death sentences for class enemies and anyone else nominated by local party chiefs. He feared political persecution for his reluctance to co-operate in terminating people.


His career in Hong Kong blossomed as a science fiction writer and prolific scriptwriter for Shaw Brothers Studios from the 1960s through 1980s, famous for hits like One Armed Swordsman, The Blood Brothers, Flying Guillotine etc. His Fist of Fury launched the career of a young Bruce Lee. 


Ni Kuang was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the HK movie industry at its 31st Film Awards in April this year.


ENDS

Incoming HK Chief Executive's trust deficit accelerates

Can Hong Kong citizens trust him?

CY Leung apologises for illegal structures

Wealthy property surveyor Leung Chun-ying is due to take office, mired in controversy, as Hong Kong’s next chief executive on July 1.  


The Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily reported last week that Leung’s residence on Victoria Peak, the lofty enclave for the rich, powerful and famous, featured an illegal glass canopy extension. That caused Buildings Department inspectors to check more closely, tallying five more instances of illegal structures on the property.  


Extensions to property in Hong Kong are a big deal, partly because rapacious landlords erect them on the top of their buildings for extra revenue. They are often illegal, unsafe, unsanitary and occasionally downright dangerous. 

The campaign of Henry Tang Ying-yen, Leung’s main rival for the chief executive job, collapsed when it was discovered he had a 2,400 square foot illegal basement under his Kowloon Tong house. Tang first denied it, then blamed his wife for building it. CY Leung had publicly declared during the campaigning that he had no illegal structures at his home.

Conducting a media pack through his HK$500 million residence, Leung explained that he bought the twin property 10 years ago and had an ‘authorized person’ inspect it for compliance with buildings regulations. He promised to rectify the infringements immediately. 

Albert Ho Chun-yan, Democratic Party chairman and the third man on the CE ballot in March, was incensed and will seek a judicial review or court petition to nullify the results of the small-circle CE election. “We are taking this matter to court because Hong Kong people need a credible chief executive” declared Albert who participated in the election to challenge the legitimacy of the electoral college.

The media circus has hired cranes stationed outside CY Leung’s residence just as they did outside Henry Tang’s Kowloon Tong quarters in February. There is live TV coverage and commentary.

Leung talks the talk

“There is only one law for all in Hong Kong, rich or poor,” Leung stated on ‘Newsline,’ the ATV interview program hosted by Michael Chugani last Sunday. He made the comment in the context that the same rule should apply to himself and to the New Territories villagers who claim they should be exempt.

Leung has the ability to say the right things even when caught with his pants down. In politics that is a rare gift. Comparisons with the ‘Teflon president’ Bill Clinton, who could look people in the eye and lie with a straight face, are not amiss. 

Allegations of being a closet communist, of urging riot police action on the 2003 public rally against a draconian security bill, of taking instructions from the ‘united front’ plotters at the China Liaison Office and now of violating the buildings code, all seem to slide off without sticking. 

Leung rarely gets flustered in public. He takes it all in stride like a hardened politician. He will not be scuppered.  He puts on the long-suffering look of the misunderstood. Colleagues who have worked for decades with him have difficulty penetrating his inscrutable personality. Nobody really ‘knows’ him. The old establishment of senior civil servants, property tycoons and university academics have major reservations. 

Public trust is surprisingly absent for a man who diligently tours depressed neighborhoods, avoids hobnobbing with the tycoons and projects himself a champion of the poor. There is something about CY Leung which invokes deep-seated mistrust.

Leung has apologised three times within the past five days at the various forums and meetings his team has organised. His latest apology was “I am disappointed in myself over this incident. I have let down my friends and the public. I am sorry”.

Tardiness after Henry Tang fiasco?

What rankles about Leung’s illegal extension discovery is that Henry Tang was felled by extensive media disclosure of similar unauthorized structures over which Henry remained silent as his government declared it would demolish all such extensions. 

Tang was then second in command in the Donald Tsang administration. Henry typically stuck his wife with it. She is now the subject of Buildings Department and legal investigations.

Leung had plenty of warning and ample time to rectify his illegal structures away from public glare. Why did it need a report by Ming Pao Daily, the same paper which broke the Henry Tang story, for him to act? Was it gross negligence, poor judgment or arrogance?

As a property surveyor himself, CY Leung has even less excuse for being unaware of what contravenes building regulations. Questions are being asked about the professional advice he received. Some point to that as disturbing evidence of his inability to find competent advisors.

His choice of outsiders inexperienced in administration or policy-making, to head up several bureaus in the incoming government has raised eyebrows among independent and pro-Beijing legislators.

Democrats bay for resignation

Several pro-Beijing compatriots voiced their disappointment and displeasure at this unwelcome tarnishing of the incoming chief executive’s reputation. After the humiliation of Beijing’s first choice for chief executive, the compatriots were relieved to have Leung slide into position by default. He was embraced as one of them who made good on his own.

Tsang Yok-sing, president of the Legislative Council, characterized the illegal structures as “serious negligence” on a radio talk program but did not think it was a deliberate cover-up. 

Chan Yuen-han, head of the Federation of Trade Unions (FTU), demanded a full explanation. The FTU had cast its vote for Leung in the ‘small-circle’ election for the chief executive.

Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, an unsuccessful contender for the CE nomination, declared “integrity matters for those running for public office, therefore the illegal structure row is a serious problem”.

The democrats predictably held a protest march calling for Leung’s resignation saying he is “morally bankrupt”.

Fast-track ploy defeated in Legco

The attempt to fast-track the incoming administration’s restructuring bill ahead of the 10 pending bills and 17 resolutions was defeated in Legco by one vote. Of the 54 legislators in the chamber, 27 voted for, 25 against. The motion needed 28 votes to be carried. The government was too casual in assuming it easily held the majority in Legco. Chief secretary Stephen Lam’s jaw dropped when the vote-count was announced.

The president abstained from voting to maintain his impartiality. Regina Ip abstained ‘on principle’. Two pro-government legislators were absent.

That unexpected setback means the full complement of three top officials, two deputy secretaries and 14 bureaus in Leung’s administrative revamp (which will cost the government HK$60 million more per annum), will not be in place July 1 when it takes office.

What is particularly embarrassing about this is that President Hu Jintau will be in Hong Kong on that date to commemorate 15 years of the resumption of Chinese sovereignty. It is an altogether inauspicious start for the new chief executive.

Security bill rears its ugly head

It is widely suspected that Beijing’s support for CY Leung in the CE election, after Henry Tang self-destructed, included an obligation to pass the reviled Article 23 security legislation during the next five-year term. CY Leung has denied that Article 23 is a priority for his administration.

CY's 689 votes at the CE election adds to Article 23?

In 2017 the chief executive is to be universally elected. Given Hong Kong’s instinctive suspicion of the real intent of Article 23, it is unlikely that any popularly elected leader can endorse it. If the security bill is not enacted during the next term, it will be near impossible to embed it in the statutes thereafter.

Many independent and pan-democratic legislators fear that Leung’s strongman leadership style, evidenced by his aggressive push for quick approval of his massive reorganization of the government machinery, will similarly railroad the Article 23 bill when he feels it opportune to do so.

After 180,000 Hong Kong residents turned up for the June 4 vigil in Victoria Park for the 1989 student massacre in Tiananmen and a mass march June 10 over the suspicious suicide of Tiananmen dissident Li Wangyang at a hospital in Hunan, the public mood is outrage at the Communist Party’s callous disregard for human rights.

Ambrose Lee Sin-kwong, the outgoing secretary for security, last week made the loony claim that Hong Kong people “owe the central government a constitutional responsibility” to enact the national security legislation. 

That sounded like Hong Kong should show its gratitude to Beijing for the right to exist, by passing a bad law designed not to defend national security but to allow government to curtail treasured rights of free expression, assembly and press, allow home raids without warrant and imprison journalists for disclosure of undefined ‘state secrets’. 

The Singapore Straits Times’ China correspondent Ching Cheong was jailed for three years in 2005 for disclosing ‘state secrets’ and spying for Taiwan. None of the allegations were proven. He was also the subject of a false smear campaign by the authorities for allegedly keeping a mistress. Ching Cheong was a vice editorial manager on the communist paper Wen Wei Pao in Hong Kong. He resigned in protest with 40 others after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. 

China already has responsibility for external defense and international relations under the Basic Law. Article 23 is not a vital defense against attack by foreign forces. It is to shackle internal challenges to the creeping pro-mainland takeover of Hong Kong’s legislature, governance, academic institutions, police and justice systems. 

James To Kun-sun, chairman of the Legco security panel and a democratic lawmaker, said Article 23 should not be voted on until Hong Kong moved to universal suffrage. When all legislators are elected by the people, they are unlikely to pass bad laws which undermine fundamental freedoms and human rights.

The worry now is whether Hong Kong’s new chief executive will connive with Beijing to remove the territory’s last remaining freedoms and rule of law. Can Hong Kong people trust Leung Chun-ying?

ENDS