July 08, 2004

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The news

This blog has claimed its first political victim. I can't take all the credit, but I can take most of it. The resignation of Health Secretary Yeoh is the natural consequence of the "acountability" system set up by Tung Che-hwa in 2002, following Regina Ip's Article 23 debacle and Antony Leung's "I bought a luxury car just before I jacked up new car taxes". While it will not solve the problems brought up over the SARS disaster, it will act to sharpen ministers' minds in performing their duties. Indeed they will be even more mindful of their responsibilities. I am not in favour of constant pandering to public opinion, but I am in favour of people resigning when clearly being found wanting in their jobs. This has been such a case, although funnily enough Xinhua forgets to mention the public pressure in its coverage of the resignation. Wouldn't want people getting the wrong idea on the Mainland. That the Hostpial Authority Chairman and CEO remain in their jobs is still a scandal and it may have the counter-productive effect of making the civil service seeing Ministers take the fall for their mistakes. There needs to be more resignations.

Briefly on democracy and China, the Christian Science Monitor has a good article on the attitude of Beijing to both Taiwan and Hong Kong's democratic tendencies. At the same time Tung Che-hwa, in what was a busy birthday, met with HK's democracts and told them there was nothing he could do. In fact he finally admitted what everyone already knew: he has no power to affect Beijing's decisions.

``I understand a lot of people are disappointed,'' Tung said after the meeting with democrats. ``I explained to them that the chief executive has no power to ask the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress to amend a decision that has already been made. But I will reflect some of their views to relevant departments of the central government.''
The good news is at least Beijing still take his phone calls.
Tung told the democrats during the one-hour meeting, according to a source, that he had telephoned Beijing in the morning regarding their demands and had been told that a request for a review of the universal suffrage issue was off the table.
In other news it is a good job I spent the weekend stocking up on my pirate software.

The re-emergence of bird flu in China is a worry, especially given scientists think it is still evolving. When you see the words "super-fit mutant" you know it's not good, although apparently it's the ducks that are to blame. It's even worse when you see China's press calling the new cases an "isolated incident". It seems ironic this has happened literally a couple of weeks after Hong Kong started re-importing chickens from the Mainland. Nevertheless I'll be exacting my revenge: Mrs M, duck for dinner thanks.

China has also decided to overturn Pfizer's Viagra patent, meaning millions of Chinese men can carry on buying fake Viagra knowing they aren't breaching China's intellectual property laws. From the article:

Viagra was introduced in China in 2000, and after six months on the market, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that some 90 percent of Viagra pills sold in Shanghai, the country's largest city, were fake.
I actually find those figures hard to believe. Who are the moronic 10% who still pay for the real thing? With the savings China will have ever more money for pointless projects like sending rockets to the moon, a mere 40 years after the Yanks did it and realised the moon was really just a big rock.

posted by Simon on 07.08.04 at 10:12 AM in the




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Heads roll
Excerpt: So the health secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong has finally resigned. Simon seems to be happy about it, whereas Fumier is less impressed, writing (to paraphrase slightly) that "The mob marches; a head rolls, the baying crowd has been appeased" and that
Weblog: OrdinaryGweilo.com
Tracked: July 8, 2004 03:24 PM


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