The Economist has a long article on China and the internet, and it doesn't require a subscription: The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk. It is a good summary of China's battles to censor the internet and contain free expression by both the internet and the mobile phone. It ends on an optimistic note:

But the market is likely to prevail over restrictions. Limiting phone-card sales to just a few shops with the ability to process registration requirements would be a blow to mobile-phone companies and huge numbers of private vendors who thrive on such business. It is hard to see how it could be enforced any more rigorously than, say, China's ban on the unauthorised reception of satellite signals. Illegal sales of satellite dishes and cable services offering uncensored foreign satellite channels are big underground businesses in urban China.

China's news portals, in their competition for traffic, will continue to test the limits of official tolerance. And in a competitive market few internet-café operators pay attention to government requirements that users' identities should be registered. An hour on a broadband connection in an internet café in a small town can cost as little as one yuan—about 13 cents.

Research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggests the scale of the government's task. Over 20% of people surveyed in five Chinese cities last year said the internet had increased their contacts with others who shared their political interests—a far higher proportion than found in a similar survey conducted in America (8.1%) by collaborators in the investigation. Nearly half of the respondents said going online increased their contacts with people who shared their hobbies, compared with less than 20% in the United States (networked role-playing games, growing fast in popularity in China, may partly account for this). And nearly 63% agreed that the internet gave them greater opportunities to criticise the government.

“China is changing, it's improving,” says Jack Ma, head of Alibaba, which last year took over the running of Yahoo!'s Chinese operations—for, despite an early start in China, Yahoo! has been elbowed aside by domestic rivals. “Ten years ago, 20 years ago, in Chairman Mao's time, if we came here to talk about these things [government censorship],” he begins. Then he puts an imaginary pistol to his head and, with a grin, fires it. That, of course, was when power just grew out of the barrel of a gun. Now it also grows out of the infinite, albeit virtual, barrels of the internet.

Are they getting value for money?

Henry Ford once said you can have a Model T car any colour you like, so long as it's black. So too China's attitude to Hong Kong democracy. From the SCMP:

Guardian Wang Zhenmin, deputy dean of Tsinghua University's law school, set out six failings that demonstrate the city is not ready for universal suffrage.

1. There's no community consensus over democracy - an ironic reason not to introduce a means of expressing alternative points of view.
2. Too soon for redistribution of economic power - this from a Communist.
3. Article 23 legislation hasn't been passed - mostly because at least 500,000 people found the last attempt too odious for words.
4. No law governing political parties - because there hasn't been a need for one.
5. Equal participation in politics not yet achieved - he doesn't mean by women, he means by various interest groups. This is despite Hong Kong's "rotten borough" system of special interest groups having their own seats in Legco and a veto over legislation.
6. Not enough patriotic education, something well covered previously by Dave.

But wait, there's more:

Another speaker, Basic Law drafter Xu Chongde , said universal suffrage could be implemented only when it could be guaranteed that patriots would be selected to be the political leaders.

"If anyone today could ensure that the [chief executive] selected through universal suffrage is a patriot, then I would suggest introducing universal suffrage today."

Professor Xu said the Democratic Party was misleading Hong Kong people through "blind worship of universal suffrage", which was "just one kind of democracy".

A black Model T, anyone?

According to an official report of a Beijing Commission on democracy in Hong Kong, there should be no plans to significantly expand the franchise for the time being. One Qinghua academic, Wang Zhen Min, said that Hong Kong did not have enough 'patriotic education'.

Now of course, it sounds horrible to have Chinese nationalism forced down our throat, sitting here in Hong Kong. But from another perspective, it is a perfectly reasonable proposition - as a city that is now part of China (and I note this by the increasing number of websites, that when they ask me where I am from, do not have Hong Kong as a separate option but force me to choose China), it is only reasonable that Hong Kong be exposed in its educational curriculum to the civic indoctrination of the rest of the country. But from another perspective it is monstrous, because Hong Kong is above all else, a free-thinking society, where there is liberty even if there is not democracy; it is also unique in having local attitudes that are far less shaped by a sort of patriotic canon than another other territory, owing to its past. To be forced to swallow and submit fully to a nationalism, especially one such as China's that hides so much of its less pleasant history from its own citizens, is very disturbing.

The other academic, Xu Chong De, managed to trump this first one in his suggestions by saying (as did Regina Ip - and got her fired) that democracy wasn't anything special because it led to Hitler and Mussolini. He also went on too warn against 'blind worship of universal suffrage' as only 'one kind of democracy'.

He is, of course, counting the People's Republic of China as 'another' sort of democracy. What people that bring up the bogeyman of Hitler in this instance seem to forget is that the fascism of Europe in the 1930s was due to incomplete democracies, and due to the weakness of political institutions. If there is one thing that is strong and resilient here in Hong Kong, it is our institutions. The fascists they bring up appear more in situations of uncertainty, where demagogues can take power due to weakness of the state and of political machinery. Ones that can subsequently sweep aside any checks and balances in a system and rule by personal fiat. Demagogues, for instance, like Mao Ze Dong...enough said, I should think.

• Chinese internet writer charged with subversion for supporting the "Velvet Action of China".
• Capitalism at it's absolute worst.
• Professorship for Kim Jong-il at Yale? Has the whole world gone mad?
• Jodi shares her thoughts on Korean reunification.
• Sun Bin on the billion people market dream come true.
• While we're talking about economics, did anyone notice China's surprise move on interest rates? How about the recent Financial Times article on saturated retail markets? Hmm...
• Tokyo's Dream.
• Muzi Mei on Danwei TV.
• Search for the Great Chuan Master.

• Chinese authorities ban the burning of "vulgar" items used for ancestor offerings. Imagethief weighs in with a list of his own.
• China and Taiwan's race for diplomatic recognition leads to riots in the Pacific.
• China sends aircraft to evacuate citizens after rioters target Chinese businesses.
• Bear victim in Xi'an gets new face.
• Bigger bras for Chinese women.
• Half-liter of Baijiu sells for 800,000 Yuan.
• Corpses on parade?
• Shanghaiist has everything you need to know about jaywalking in Shanghai.
• Almost everyone outside of China has heard of the White House blunders during Hu's visit to Washington, but have you seen these photos?
• Controversy surrounds AOL's new China portal.
• English with Chinese characteristics.

I will be out of blogging action for a week or so. With a bit of luck and a subtle hint, my co-bloggers will dazzle and post in the interim. Alternatively, please avail yourself of the comments here or the forum to talk about whatever you like.

Sometimes you can learn stuff from the People's Daily. They note a recent sex survey that contains some interesting findings:

Middle-aged and older people in Western countries were the first to take the contraceptive pill, challenge the institution of marriage and campaign for women's rights, and now they are continuing to reap the benefits of the sexual revolution.

A global study has found that people living in countries with high levels of gender equality enjoy the best sex, with the over-40s saying they are most satisfied. Middle-aged and older people who live in Western countries and who enjoy more equality between men and women are most likely to report being satisfied with their sex lives, according to the study....

Nations categorized as having more "gender-equal" relationships are more likely to report having fulfilling sex lives in their later years. People in long-term relationships reported having the best sex but across all countries men are more likely to say they have a good sex life than their partners, who are consistently a little less pleased...

"If you're dating from the age of 40-plus you have relatively better satisfaction than those who are married. People who are divorced or widowed are more likely to be physically active and capable of full sex lives."

The enlightened efforts in China to advance understanding of HIV/AIDS took a small step backwards yesterday. The SCMP:

Shanghai police yesterday locked down a hotel where a group of haemophiliacs seeking compensation for being infected with HIV by a tainted blood product are staying. At least one foreign reporter who met the victims was detained.
The group of about 40 haemophiliacs and their relatives travelled to Shanghai from all over the mainland this week to demand redress from the government-backed Shanghai Biological Products Research Institute for selling a contaminated product in the 1990s.

Authorities surrounded the small hotel, shut off the elevators and prevented anyone from leaving after the group met journalists yesterday afternoon. Police also detained a US reporter for nearly three hours.

No group members were formally detained, but they complained they had been shadowed all week and harassed.

It was always likely that as President Hu goes to visit George W. that Comrade Hu would announce a flurry of changes and deals to defuse the political pressure over the China economic bogeyman story. And the Chinese have made a signficant couple of concessions in partially liberating their capital account. But as always, irony abounds in these measures.

Firstly, domestic companies will no longer be subject to quotas in overseas investments. This means more Chinese companies can follow the example of CNOOC and try buying American assets, only to be chased off by aggressive, almost racist, protectionism. If Dubai Ports causes such a fuss, imagine what the fuss when a Chinese company tries buying GM.

Secondly China's banks get approval to manage assets abroad. Instead of China's central bank buying these assets, effectively private investors can use banks to do instead. It's outsourcing, China style.

The end result of these two measure is Chinese funds can flow out the country more freely. This should weaken the yuan and strengthen the US and other currencies. And that is the ultimate irony, because the American senators and others have long been complaining the yuan is undervalued. Both of these measures shift the huge foreign exchange reserves out of SAFE and into the funds management arms of the banks and the investments of Chinese companies abroad. Will it magically reduce the trade surplus problem? In the longer term it should and will. In the short term, no. In the short term, the problem is Americans (especially government and consumers) spending more than they save. That's not the fault of the Chinese.

The government has announced a slightly scaled back version of the Tamar development, to give a little more cover and face to those politicians rushing to support the white elephant project. But finally the real reason Donald Tsang is so keen on the move to Tamar has become clear: he wants more room. Below the jump is a SCMP chart showing how the CE's office space will rise by 36%, a small increase on the original 2003 plan. This contrasts with everyone else, who's spaces have been reduced compared to the earlier plan.

Make way for the Chief.

They're not making gweilos like they used to. The SCMP reports:

Warnings that Hong Kong is becoming less attractive to top foreign professionals have been underlined by figures indicating that the number of western expatriates working and living in the city plunged last year.
Arrival and departure records of foreign expatriates showed the number of Americans, Britons, Canadians and Australians dropped by 14 per cent - from 93,000 to 79,190 - continuing a steady decline in recent years.

Of course this is actually a very serious problem for the Hong Kong government. Expats are not coming in the same numbers as they used to because of worries over air pollution and the exorbitant rise in income taxes from 15% to 17%. Aussies, Yanks and Poms are reluctant to come to a city where a half decent bottle of plonk costs more than vintages in the homeland and where petrol is the most expensive in the world. But there are two real concerns. Firstly, how can the high end luxury rental market survive with a dwindling number of company paid rental allowances? These renters are the cream of the crop for developers. Secondly, these expats tend to be income taxpayers...a rare thing in this city. The real losers are mainland tourists who come to Lan Kwai Fong of an evening to gawk at these expats in their natural habitat.

Luckily the government will soon announce a recruitment drive for the senior eschelons of the civil service as part of a rescue effort to save that dwindling and ever-rarer species: the gweilo.

Not in Hong Kong anyway. A recent Greenpeace study on vegetables available at leading supermarket chains Wellcome and Park N' Shop demonstrated that the veggies they were selling to hapless consumers had pesticide levels well in excess of recommended limits, and used banned substances such as DDT.

The unspoken, shocking thing about this, of course, is that most consumers go to those supermarkets because they think that the beans and tomatoes there are somehow 'cleaner' and less 'local' that the produce on hand at the wet markets. But a Wellcome choi sum offering, for instance, had 240 times the EU limit on pesticides, and other fresh veggies offered by both stores were tainted by up to 5 different pesticides that act like a 'cocktail effect' that can multiply their effects by up to 100 times. All this produce is naturally coming from China.

Aside from prompting questions of why people on the mainland aren't just dropping dead (and in the countryside, many are), is there really any way local consumers can stop poisoning themselves? In the short-term, aside from the option of paying megabucks for a Japanese radish or a Dutch tomato, there really aren't any foolproof methods. One hopes though that China will eventually impose some sort of standards for their agricultural exports, and failing that, that Hong Kong perhaps needs to set one up for imports to set its citizens' minds at ease.

Just had another very pleasant trip to Japan. Sure Narita Airport is closer to Hawaii than Tokyo and I had the pleasure of spending the Easter weekend stuck in a seminar, but otherwise it was great. One thing I've always kept in the back of my mind is that Tokyo is an accident waiting to happen, that accident being an earthquake. I've always wondered what the right thing to do in an earthquake might be - I've heard plenty of stories where locals enjoy much merriment as their gaijin visitors scrable under desks.

Thankfully Tokyo's Metropolitan Government has come to the rescue, with an easy to understand guide for what to do when the big one hits. The good folks have also included a series of cartoons to really make sure the message hits home. Like all good stories, this one has subliminal messages...Japundit points out the hidden meanings these cartoons really contain. See if you can spot the black guy.

On a different note, I know what Hong Kong developers are getting for Christmas.

Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat is a best-selling look at globalisation on its impact both politically and economically. I've not read it, but I have read an incredibly interesting review of the book by Edward Leamer titled A flat world, a level playing field, a small world after all, or none of the above? It's not just a review; it's an elegant tour of the work economists have done on the topics Friedman discusses, with plenty of intellectually stimulating side-roads along the way. The review also demonstrates several counter-intuative challenges to the conventional wisdom, just like a good economist should. It's very readable for the intelligent layman (and laywoman) as well as those versed in the ways of economics. For example:

“Is a computer more like a forklift or more like a microphone?” It doesn’t matter much who drives the forklift, but it matters a lot who sings into the microphone. Think about the forklift first. You might be a lot stronger than I, but with a little bit of training, I can operate a forklift and lift just as much as you or any other forklift operator. Thus the forklift is a force for income equality, eliminating your strength advantage over me. That is decidedly not the case for a microphone. We cannot all operate a microphone with anywhere near the same level of proficiency. Indeed, I venture the guess that I would have to pay you to listen to me sing, not the other way round. And I seriously doubt that a lifetime of training would allow me to compete with Springsteen, or Pavarotti.

The effect of the microphone and mass media have been to allow a single talented entertainer to serve a huge customer base and accordingly to command enormous earnings. This creates an earnings distribution with a few extremely highly paid talented and trained individuals and with the vast group of slightly less talented working in LA restaurants, hoping someday to hit it big. Thus, opposite to the forklift, the microphone creates a powerful force for inequality. Think Silicon Valley, with ext raordinary riches accruing to some, but with the manual service workers living in their cars.

(via MR)

Japan's last election was largely fought over the privitisation of Japan Post, the world's largest financial institution. The government has realised the massive Japan Post system has distorted its financial market thanks to its government backing. China, on the other hand, is going in the other direction. A small story in The Standard (no link) says:

China's deposit-taking postal system has started to extend small loans to individuals and businesses in the countryside for the first time as it prepares to evolve into the nation's fifth largest bank. Beijing approved a blueprint to turn China Post into a lender last summer, and state media have recently said the new bank will be set up soon.

It has cost China hundreds of billions to bail out the big four banks and prepare them for listings. Hopefully this new venture won't end up costing as much.

Today's trivia question: why do they always put that green plastic grass looking stuff into take-away sushi boxes?

Beijing has announced new criteria for selecting its next generation of provincial leaders, reports the SCMP:

...a notice was issued recently by the central leadership spelling out the requirements for the provincial leadership changes that will be completed in the first half of next year.

Future provincial leaders must have a high political standard, be professionally capable, have a good record in their personal life and have earned the trust of the public...Special emphasis would be placed on the candidates' record in public administration, combating corruption, promoting consensus and personal qualities such as honesty and modesty.

In particular, the appraisal of future leaders would not be based solely on their economic performance but would also look at areas such as promoting social harmony and achievements in protecting the environment.

Hong Kong Government sets record for longest time to complete corporate merger: 50 years. Lest anyone ever thought otherwise, the KCRC/MTR rail merger is about one thing and one thing only: property.

Colourful watermelons.

This could be titled "what they don't teach you at Havard Business School". People pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to business schools when all they needed to do was take a Shanghai taxi.

Following the chart showing China's acutal purchases of US Treasuries lags far behind perceptions comes an excellent piece in The Times sayign America misdiagnoses the "China syndrome":

The problem with all of these protectionist prescriptions is that, not only do they wholly misdiagnose the malaise supposedly gripping the American patient, but also that the supposed “cure” could prove lethal — and would certainly be extremely painful.

The senators’ misdiagnosis rests on their belief that the yuan is hugely undervalued, that Beijing is barely moving to address this and that the cheapness of the Chinese currency is what drives the scale of its exports to America. All of these views are mistaken.

Yesterday was a big day for Hong Kong's press, with the eagerly awaited Hong Kong News Awards 2005 lunch. This is where newspapers get to give themsevles a pat on the back in an orgy of self-congratulation. Both The Standard and SCMP have run pieces today detailing where they won, came runner-up, got citations and merit awards. It all smacks of a school's awards day, where everyone gets something and goes home a winner. In a town where there are only two English language newspapers, having them split awards in such catagories as "best English headline" and "best in business news writing (English)" seems ludicrous. It's got to be the most ridiculous awards show since the Oscars.

At the same ceremony, Donald Tsang weighed in with his thoughts on what the punters ought to be reading and how papers should be run:

"[One of the challenges] journalists face now is whether they should produce more reports popular among consumers or reports of significance to society. We all know that popular news is not necessarily significant news. Sensational tabloid news reported by paparazzi, as seen world-wide, often secures high readership. Such news, however, seems to leave no mark in history," he [Tsnag] said...

"Journalists should strive for depth rather than just speed, presenting full details of news stories highlighting their meaning to the present world," he said. "Apart from quantity, one should also seek to enhance the quality of content, writing, graphics, artwork and printing. Only by doing so can traditional newspapers survive under this challenge."

"Now bloggers come from all walks of life, writing with inside information, to produce explosive results. They are the competitors of conventional journalists.

"But the credibility of bloggers may be questionable so journalists should stand firm in upholding professional integrity to win readers' respect."

Despite the flak I took in promoting an article written by mainland born, U.S. based political science professor Minxin Pei (the last time about Taiwan), I shall do it again. This time, Dr. Pei writes a very readable editorial for the sometimes geographically challenged readership of the San Francisco Chronicle. He had some brave observations about why we should be pessimistic about political liberalization following on from economic liberalization:

To many observers, Beijing's tight grip on the Chinese economy means only that its reform process is incomplete. As China continues to open itself, they predict, state control will ease and market forces will clear away inefficient industries and clean up state institutions. The strong belief in gradual but inexorable economic liberalization often has a political corollary: that market forces will eventually produce civil liberties and political pluralism.

It's a comforting thought. Yet these optimistic visions tend to ignore the neo-Leninist regime's desperate need for unfettered access to economic spoils. Few authoritarian regimes can maintain power through coercion alone. Most mix coercion with patronage to secure support from key constituencies, such as the bureaucracy, the military and business interests. In other words, an authoritarian regime imperils its capacity for political control if it embraces full economic liberalization. Most authoritarian regimes know that much, and none better than Beijing.

Today, Beijing oversees a vast patronage system that secures the loyalty of supporters and allocates privileges to favored groups. The party appoints 81 percent of the chief executives of state-owned enterprises and 56 percent of all senior corporate executives.

Courtesy of Jake van der Kamp at the SCMP, a chart of which overseas countries have been buying US Treasuries (below the jump) which should turn conventional wisdom on who's buying these securities on its head.

As he concludes:

And China? Well, over the last 10 years China accounted for only 8.1 per cent of total net inflows to the US by way of long-term securities purchases. Even this figure is likely to decline soon as China's overall trade surplus is now narrowing rapidly and it will not have as much money for the game as it previously did.

Do you get the impression from all the protest in the US about China's foreign reserves that people in the US are looking for a convenient bogeyman on whom they can pin the blame for their own profligacy? I certainly do and yellow is a more convenient colour to them than white.

Questions were raised of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Joseph Yam (yes, the same organization that saw fit to rent the top 14 storeys of IFC 2, the tallest building on the island) with regard to the future of the Hong Kong Dollar. These were in light of increasing speculation that the Chinese Renminbi, or Yuan, would become more valuable than the Hong Kong Dollar. But he said, in as bland and bureaucratic a manner as possible, that Hong Kong would retain its currency even if the Renminbi became the stronger of the two units.

He said that two units of currency could be ruled legal tender in Hong Kong, but that it would take a long time for the Renminbi to become a global currency.

But it is what he is not saying that is so important. For all of China's success, its financial system is still a complete mess. Dodgy loans continue to be extended to even dodgier companies, and could yet cause massive turmoil in China's economy (not to mention its government) and wreak havoc, of course, on the RMB -even having the greatest foreign currency reserves in the world may not be enough to stop any slide. It behooves Hong Kong to keep its dollar, then, to insulate itself from what is arguably an eventuality.

A real "only in Hong Kong" story to see you though the weekend: the eccentric English judge and the case of the missing toilet seats.

Second case of murder adds twist to a book, reports the NYT. The full article is below the jump. It details the story of Joe McGinniss, an author writing a book on the Kissel murder in Hong Kong and the change in plot due to the terrible events around Andrew Kissel. It is macarbe when the author's first response is: Oh, I need to recast my book to elevate a previously minor character into a key one, because he now dies too. His publisher is almost jumping out his skin with excitement:

"It opens up a whole facet to the story that has to be reported out and that will be complicated," said David Rosenthal, publisher and executive vice president of Simon & Schuster. "It is turning into a true American saga of murder, money and milkshakes."

Joe McGinniss was just grinding away on your average true-crime story: a book about a high-powered American financier in Hong Kong named Robert Kissel, who drank a sedative-laced strawberry milkshake and was bludgeoned to death by his wife. Then his body was wrapped in a piece of carpet that a workman took to a basement storage room.

But the plot thickened with additional blood this week when Mr. Kissel's brother, Andrew M. Kissel, a disgraced money manager on his way to prison, was found dead of multiple stab wounds in the basement of a rented house in Greenwich, Conn., his hands and feet bound.

Now Mr. McGinnis, 63, a journalist who has written 10 books, many of them best sellers, hardly knows which way to look.

"It became a very different story," he said by phone from Amherst, Mass., where he currently lives. "A brother who had been a very minor character in my book now meets the same fate. Clearly, this gives it a dimension beyond the average family tragedy."

There is nothing average about the Kissel family. Robert's wife, Nancy Ann Kissel, fell in love with a television repairman who lived in a trailer near their vacation home in Stratton, Vt., according to testimony at her trial, which ended in her conviction. Evidence showed that in 2003 she slowly and methodically gathered various sedatives over the course of weeks, and then mixed them into a confection that was unknowingly served to her husband by their daughter. The couple's three children became practical orphans after their mother was jailed and Andrew and his wife, Hayley Wolff Kissel, formerly a high-profile analyst on Wall Street, were awarded temporary custody of the children, who had inherited millions of dollars.

But then Andrew was charged with a series of financial improprieties, and his business empire imploded. The two men's sister, Jane Kissel Clayton, who is married and lives near Seattle, stepped in and after a long battle, gained custody, removing the children from the home where Andrew was eventually killed.

"These are highly educated people from the absolute top of society, and yet two brothers are murdered within three years of each other," Mr. McGinniss said. "It is hard to fathom."

But fathom he will try. Mr. McGinniss was unhappily toiling on a book for Simon & Schuster about an around-the-world, 101-day cruise he took in early 2005, but he was bored stiff by life among and riding on the swells.

Then, last spring he saw an article about the so-called "milkshake murder" and was taken by its lurid back story. Nancy Ann Kissel admitted that she had killed her husband by beating him with a lead ornament but said that she had done so in self-defense after years of being coerced into anal sex by a husband she said regularly abused whiskey and cocaine. William Kissel, the father of the two murdered men, agreed to cooperate with the book, in part to clear Robert's name, according to Mr. McGinniss. But last Tuesday he sent the author a one-line e-mail message.

"Andrew is dead," it read.

Mr. McGinnis initially thought that Andrew Kissel had killed himself rather than confront years of incarceration, but he found out differently as the day wore on. And a story that already had its share of twists and turns was lifted into yet another realm altogether. Mr. McGinniss has been swarmed with requests for television interviews, and his publisher is more eager than ever for the book.

"This is not a piece of luck for me," Mr. McGinnis said. "This is a horrible thing. I worry about how much one man, the father, can take. And these kids who lived in that house in Greenwich up until the end of last year, now find out that not only is their father dead, but their uncle with whom they lived has been murdered."

Mr. McGinniss is the literary version of the knockaround guy, an author who has been places and done things, and gotten into his share of scrapes along the way. In 1968, at 26, he wrote "The Selling of the President," a book that all but defined the modern American presidential campaign, and later produced "Fatal Vision" in 1983, a true-crime thriller that Mr. McGinniss originally conceived as a story about a wrongly charged man but which became a literary indictment of Jeffrey MacDonald, a Green Beret doctor who was convicted of killing his wife.

Mr. MacDonald, who continues to maintain his innocence, sued Mr. McGinniss in 1988 for rendering him as a murderous sociopath, and the case was settled for $325,000. (An appeal of his conviction will be heard later this year.) Janet Malcolm of The New Yorker used "Fatal Vision" as an example of the duplicity that lies at the heart of the journalistic transaction with sources.

Mr. McGinniss's 1993 book, "The Last Brother," about Senator Edward M. Kennedy, was roundly criticized for flimsy reporting and the liberties that he took in the writing, but in his two most recent books, "The Big Horse," about a race season in Saratoga, and "The Miracle of Castel di Sangro," a book about a soccer team in Italy, were well received.

"It seems that weird stuff happens around me, and I have no idea what to attribute that to," said Mr. McGinnis, who has lived a life as rich in drama as some of the nonfiction characters he writes about, including a near-fatal accident and a tour as a teacher at a university that he said was backed by a Buddhist cult.

His publisher still hopes that the book can be out next year.

"It opens up a whole facet to the story that has to be reported out and that will be complicated," said David Rosenthal, publisher and executive vice president of Simon & Schuster. "It is turning into a true American saga of murder, money and milkshakes."

The DAB continue to perform a difficult move badly: the backflip. The Don drops in and tells Hong Kong he only wants to deal with friends and suddenly the DAB will wave through the Tamar development. The Don already managed to get a few Democrats on board and now has enough support to get the thing through. That's a stunning achievement, given most of the public are opposed to the idea, and is a testament to Tsang's political cunning. This comes just days after Tsang announces he no longer is interested in talking to opponents and only wants to deal with sycophants.

Stephen Vines has a go at both James Tien and Donald Tsang and makes some telling points. It's a read the whole thing kind of editorial. The money quote:

The big difference between Tsang and Tung is that Tsang has spelled out his determination to ignore political opponents whereas Tung merely followed this policy without annunciation.

You would suppose that being the richest and most successful Chinese city in the world would make Hong Kong a secure, confident place. Its politicians and chattering class would be full of good advice for their Mainland cousins on how such success could be replicated. Mainland leaders would hang on their every word, collecting pearls of wisdom from the Pearl River Delta.

Instead the Big Lychee suffers from an incredible inferiority complex, even though China's leadership keeps telling the city not to worry. Try today's Standard (screenshot below the jump):

SAR's role shrinks as firms lift China focus. Shockingly, local companies are making more money in the Mainland relative to Hong Kong.

Wen eases worries on marginalization. China's Premier tells us not to worry. For once we should take him at his word.

It's a cops kind of day. We have Hong Kong's IPCC scandal, which continues to drag on without anyone being held accountable. Now in my other home town it seems the police have put a list of passwords and emails onto the web. What is it with police services and their inability to keep information private? It's a good job they don't do anything important like protect us from crime or track down terrorists.

The Don dropped in on his new friends at the DAB yesterday to explain why it's far better to spend HK$5 billion building a new government headquarters at Tamar rather than at daggy old Kai Tak. Rejecting arguements that it would increase traffic, clutter the harbourfront, that it is unnecessary and that putting it at Kai Tak could be both cheaper and a boon to that area, the Don explained that it is vital for the government's branches to all be within 5 minutes of each other. Why this is the case isn't made clear. I thought it was meant to be about the seperation of the three branches, not the proximity?

Meanwhile, it turns out the taxman had a good year in 2005. A single income taxpayer had a bill of HK$101 million, implying an income of HK$630 million or so. The top ten taxpayers ranged from HK$13 million up to this figure. Nice work if you can get it. Given the tycoons are the most likely to benefit from the juicy construction contracts for Tamar, why not earmark their income tax to pay for it?

Yesterday saw the funeral of Tsang Kwok-hang, the policeman killed in a gun fight in TST with an apparently crooked colleague. But if morale is flagging amongst our boys in blue, there's something to cheer them up:

The ethical standards of the police have been placed under scrutiny after an activist campaigning on behalf of sex workers wrote to lawmakers requesting that the practice of undercover vice officers receiving sexual favors be prohibited.

Referring to information provided by activist Zi Teng about police officers receiving daily sexual favors, barrister and lawmaker representing the legal sector Margaret Ng told a Legco security panel meeting: "[I feel that] the image of the police force is completely destroyed. Is it really necessary? Personally, I find it very hard to accept."

It is the police force's practice to allow undercover officers to receive certain sexual favors in order to collect evidence targeting triad-controlled establishments offering sex services.

ESWN has more on what constitutes a sexual favour.

Jake van der Kamp takes the bait in a nicely set up April fools joke involving the newly formed Civic Party. I especially like the "targets for investigation of antitrust behaviour".

The Kissel story took another turn for the worse yesterday. From Bloomberg, a report that Andrew Kissel, Robert's brother, has been found stabbed to death in America:

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Kissel, the U.S. real estate developer charged with fraud, forgery and theft, was found dead in his home with multiple stab wounds, less than three years after his brother was murdered in Hong Kong. Police in Greenwich, Connecticut, said in a statement yesterday that the body of Kissel, 46, was found by workers from a moving company.

In November 2003 his brother Robert Kissel, an investment banker at Merrill Lynch & Co. in Hong Kong, was beaten to death by his wife Nancy after she fed him a drug-laced milkshake. She is now serving a life sentence. Andrew was facing a federal bank fraud charge and state grand larceny and forgery charges.

"Mr. Kissel appears to have suffered several stab wounds to the body,'' according to the statement. "The results of a medical examiner's report on the cause and manner of death are still pending.'' An autopsy will be conducted later today.

Greenwich police were called to Kissel's home at 9:42 a.m. yesterday, where they found the body, said Lieutenant Daniel Allen, a department spokesman. The police are treating the death as a homicide, the statement said.

Kissel's attorney, Philip Russell, confirmed his client's death and otherwise declined to comment. A call to a phone number listed for Kissel in Connecticut, where he lived with his wife and the couple's two children, wasn't returned.

In July, federal prosecutors charged Andrew Kissel with falsifying mortgage documents to defraud lenders of as much as $11 million in loans. At the time of his arrest, Nancy Kissel was on trial in Hong Kong. She killed Robert in their bedroom with five blows to the head with a lead statue and slept with his body for at least two nights, the court was told. She claimed self defense. She was convicted in September.

Hong Kong Prison

Nancy Kissel, now living in a 7 foot by 7 foot cell in top security Tai Lam women's prison near the Chinese border, alleged at her trial that Andrew was a drug addict.

In December 2003, Andrew and Hayley, a former Wall Street analyst with Merrill Lynch & Co., sought temporary custody of Robert's three children. The court granted it in January 2004. In October, a court awarded temporary guardianship of the children to Jane Clayton, 38, the sister of Robert and Andrew, who lives in Seattle.

In October, Andrew Kissel was indicted by a New York state grand jury in Manhattan on charges of stealing $3.9 million from a co-op where he had been treasurer. That case was adjourned until May 26, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

Not-Guilty Plea

Kissel faced as many as 25 years in prison had he been convicted of the state charges. He was in court on March 31 and was expected to return next month to plead guilty to a grand larceny charge and agree to serve a jail term, Thompson said.

Kissel had pleaded not guilty to both the state and federal charges. A father of two, he was free on bail at the time of his death. His next hearing in the federal case was April 6. A spokesman for the Connecticut medical examiner's office said an autopsy will be held today. The spokesman wouldn't identify the deceased or disclose other information.

Porsche, Jet

The Kissel brothers were born in Manhattan and raised in the New Jersey suburbs. Robert, who was 40 when he died, was an expatriate banker living in a $20,000-a-month, 3,270-square- foot (304-square-meter) apartment with a view of Hong Kong's skyline and the South China Sea; driving a silver Porsche Carrera; and employing two live-in Filipina maids. He amassed a $20 million fortune.

Andrew, 45, lived in a four-bedroom, four-bath house in Greenwich, Connecticut; bought a $2.85 million, 75-foot Hatteras yacht named Five Keys; and had access to a private jet. He called his company Hanrock because the first four letters stood for the initials of the brothers and their wives -- Hayley Kissel, Andrew, Nancy and Robert.

"He always wanted to be in real estate, and he made a lot of money too, but he thought he had figured out a way of being able to spend more than he made,'' Andrew's father William Kissel said in an interview in Hong Kong in September.

At the time of his death, Andrew's wife, Hayley, was seeking a divorce. Her attorney, Joseph Martini, had no comment on the reports of Andrew's death.

Federal authorities claimed that Kissel had deposited records with town clerks falsely claiming that mortgages on properties he controlled had been paid off. He allegedly filed papers falsely claiming the property was free of debt in order to take out multiple loans against the same property.

The Manhattan district attorney charged Kissel with forgery and grand larceny for siphoning money from the bank accounts of a co-op apartment building on New York's Upper East Side, where he was treasurer from 1996 to 2002.

Kissel pleaded not guilty to both sets of charges.

The federal case is U.S. v. Kissel, 06-cr-77, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, White Plains.

Here is the New York Times story: Developer on Eve of Guilty Plea is Discovered Slain at His Home (reproduced below the jump).

GREENWICH, Conn., April 3 — Andrew M. Kissel, the wealthy Greenwich real estate developer who had agreed to plead guilty this week to having swindled banks, title companies and others out of tens of millions of dollars, was found dead on Monday, his hands and feet bound, in the blood-splattered basement of his home, according to the police and employees of a moving company who discovered the body.

Greenwich police officers arrived about 9:45 a.m. at the home on Dairy Road that Mr. Kissel and his wife, Hayley, had been renting for three years. Officers and investigators from the state medical examiner's office spent the day combing through the house, which they sealed off with yellow crime-scene tape, as reporters and neighbors watched. The body was removed shortly after 7 p.m.

The police said in a statement last night that Mr. Kissel, 46, appeared to have been stabbed several times and that they were treating his death as a homicide.

Earlier, the police told the medical examiner's office that Mr. Kissel's hands and legs had been bound behind him and that he appeared to have been shot in the head.

Workers from a company hired to move the Kissels out of the house discovered the body in the basement on Monday morning. They described a bloody scene and said Mr. Kissel's hands and feet had been bound and a T-shirt had been pulled over his head.

Before moving to Greenwich, Andrew Kissel and his wife, Hayley Wolff Kissel, lived in a richly appointed duplex in a co-op building on 74th Street near Third Avenue. He was an investor and a real estate developer who owned classic cars and a $3 million yacht; his wife, a former world mogul-skiing champion, was a widely quoted stock analyst.

His death was the latest tragedy to befall the Kissel family after years of apparent success.

In 2003, Mr. Kissel's brother, Robert, a successful investment banker with Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong, was bludgeoned to death by his wife, Nancy, who had one of her children give him a milkshake laced with sedatives. The killing was called the "milkshake murder" in the Hong Kong press.

At the time, questions had already been raised about Andrew Kissel's management of his co-op building's finances. He ended up paying $4.7 million in restitution, making the final payment about a week before his brother was murdered.

There was a lengthy custody battle over Robert's three children after the murder, with Andrew and Hayley Kissel initially winning temporary custody pending the resolution of the mother's trial.

After Nancy Kissel was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for her husband's murder, the custody fight resumed as Andrew Kissel's business empire crumbled amid allegations from state and federal prosecutors that it was built on fraud.

Hayley Kissel offered to retain custody of the children, even though she initiated divorce proceedings against her husband early in 2005. But in December, family members agreed that Robert's three children should live with Jane Kissel Clayton, Andrew and Robert's only other sibling, and her husband, Richard, at their home in Mercer Island, Wash.

Andrew Kissel was scheduled to appear in federal court in White Plains on Wednesday to plead guilty to fraud charges in various real estate deals, according to his criminal lawyer, Philip Russell. Mr. Kissel also faced fraud charges in a separate case brought by the Manhattan district attorney's office stemming from the millions of dollars he had admitted taking and then repaid with interest to his Manhattan neighbors in the years he served as treasurer of his co-op.

"I haven't read the book of Job yet, but I'm about to," Mr. Kissel's father, William, said on Monday after learning of his other son's death. He said the Greenwich police had told his daughter that "there was trauma. That's all they said."

According to officials of the moving company that was hired by Mr. Kissel's wife on Friday to move the family's belongings out of the home over the weekend, movers discovered Mr. Kissel's body on Monday when they went to retrieve the last of the Kissels' belongings.

Mr. Kissel's hands and feet were bound, his T-shirt was pulled over his head and "there was blood everywhere," according to Doug Roina, the manager of the company, J. B. Moving of Stamford. "It almost sounds like a mob hit, the way it was set up," he said. "If his hands and feet were bound, it would be a tough suicide."

The Kissel family had sought to keep a low profile in Greenwich while laboring under the shadow of the divorce, the looming criminal case against Mr. Kissel, and several civil lawsuits seeking to seize assets that Mr. Kissel obtained in the years he was living the millionaire's life.

Mrs. Kissel found work as an equities analyst in Stamford while caring for the couple's two daughters Ruth, 8, and Dara, 6. Mr. Kissel had been helping his lawyer liquidate assets and raise cash in an effort to placate creditors in hopes that it would reduce the punishment he faced, his lawyer said.

According to legal papers filed in State Superior Court in Stamford by Mrs. Kissel on Feb. 28 as part of the divorce case, Mr. Kissel had also been in and out of rehabilitation programs for alcohol abuse and "has resumed drinking alcohol, consumes alcohol on the property" and has been "belligerent and argumentative especially when intoxicated including in the company of the minor children."

On Friday, Mrs. Kissel called J. B. Moving, and said that she wanted the company to send movers to her house the following day to empty its contents and store them for at least a week to give her time to figure out where everything ought to be shipped, according to Mr. Roina. He said the company's owner, who did an estimate, "thought it was a strange situation. It was not our normal move scenario," having someone call one day to order a move large enough to require three trucks for the following day.

He said that the couple were arguing or "going at it pretty good" while his movers were on the premises on Saturday and that at one point, Mrs. Kissel turned to one of the movers and said, "He's going to jail anyway," by way of explanation for the heated volley of words.

Having to watch "was uncomfortable for my guys," said Mr. Roina.

At least one part of the couple's argument, Mr. Roina said, revolved around Mr. Kissel's desire to stay in the house over the weekend, and the two ultimately agreed to leave a few items, including the bedroom set, until Monday morning so that Mr. Kissel could remain, Mr. Roina said.

His wife and the children then left, according to the movers. On Monday about 8 or 8:30 a.m., when the movers returned to finish the job, they had trouble getting into the house and called Mrs. Kissel, Mr. Roina said. He said she gave them a code number that opened the gate and they began to gather the last of the couple's belongings. When they got to the basement, he said, they found Mr. Kissel, notified their boss and called the police.

At that point, Mr. Roina said he called Mrs. Kissel and notified her that "you need to get to your house; there's a situation there."

"She said, 'oh, O.K.,' no reaction. Not even a question," he said.

Mrs. Kissel did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment.

William Kissel said a relative of his from Boston did reach Mrs. Kissel on Monday and was told simply, "Andrew died."

A fantastic, even if Photoshopped, picture of urban renewal in Shenzhen, just across the river border from the New Territories of Hong Kong.

It has stirred controversy because it is an amalgamation of two different pictures, but it is at once a statement of China's steriod-fuelled development (the steroids being the limitless amount of cheap credit for property development), and the eclipse of Hong Kong as a center for wealth creation when the action is north of the border. Yet as Cindy Sherman, a famous American photographer once said, the camera can turn lies into truth; the photo over-simplifies the relationship between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, and masks their interdependence.

Thanks to the top referrers for March:

Bloggies 2006
Rockson
Hemlock
Fumier
ESWN
Mr Brown
Imagethief
The Peking Duck

Thank you to everyone else who also linked and visited.

As usual, some site statistics for March:

* 28,214 unique visitors made 58,341 unique visits, reading a total of 164,309 pages,and drawing 12.36 GB of bandwidth.
* This equals 1,882 visitors per day reading 5,300 pages each day. In other words each visitor reads 2.81 pages on average. Each visitor returned on average 2.06 times during the month.
* 308 subscribe to this site's feed via Bloglines and 343 via Feedburner.
* 19.1% of visits were via search engines, of which Google was 55%, 20% via Virgilio (no idea what that is) and Yahoo 15% (the mysterious Tiscali was 6%). The top search phrases included "Simon World" (is the URL that hard to remember?), "Singapore Blog" and the ever-popular "Klara Smetanova".
* The most visited individual page was "And the whole world smiles with you", again testifying to the power of Google image search. A close second remains "Tiananmen Square - June 4th, 1989", which was my piece last year commemerating that event and which the front page of Google's image search under that topic.

It's well known that the TV in Hong Kong is mediocre at best. Luckily our law courts more than make up for it. The latest is a story involving triads, lawyers, sex, affairs, a kung-fu master, a knife attack in a foot massage parlour and (inevitably) an Annie Pang connection...and it's all ad free.