June 21, 2007
Fanny Law's talking out of school

While the HK papers have devoted acres of newsprint to the Institute of Education inquiry, most people don't know or care much about it. Yesterday the ICAC's Fanny Law quit because the report said she had been naughty when she was still part of the Education Department. Her crime?

Law was found to have improperly interfered with the academic freedom of former lecturer Ip Kin-yuen and the director of the institute's Center for Institutional Research and Development Cheng Yin-cheong when she telephoned them after the two had publicly criticized education policies.

Law had asked for the dismissal out of anger or frustration but "it must be remembered that Mrs Law was the second most senior government official in charge of education in Hong Kong.

"Her demands and complaints, even if made casually, carried significant weight and, more particularly, could be viewed as attempts to silence the Education and Manpower Bureau's critics. It was unacceptable that she did not express her opinions openly and through proper channels, but instead in a manner with the semblance, if not also the substance, of intimidation and reprisal. The commission disapproves such behavior unequivocally."

She was pissed off, called these guys up and now she's being crucified for it. Meanwhile outside the ivory tower this kind of thing happens all the time, albeit not reported in newspapers. The principles of "academic freedom" and tenure are cherished jewels in universities, to protect academics and allow them to pursue their studies without fear and favour. Personally I'm struggling to see the crime here that's resulted in Ms. Law's resignation.

But more interesting was what Ms. Law said when she resigned:

Clearly, there are serious and irreconcilable differences between me and the commission over the boundary of academic freedom.

"To safeguard the dignity of a civil servant in the implementation of government policies and in the discharge of duties, I have decided not to remain in the public service. I have no regret about leaving the public service, but I do have concerns. If my departure could stimulate discussion and reflection on the unhealthy political situation in Hong Kong, this would be my last contribution as a civil servant."

She's been out of the public service for a matter of hours and she's telling everyone about the "unhealthy political situation" in Hong Kong. Is it that the public service is losing its grip on the city and government? Or something more? That's where the real story is...but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for more. I'd love to know what Ms. Law's alluding to.

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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 14:01
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June 18, 2007
Hong Kong schools

The Sunday SCMP started banging the drum about the rapidly rising prices of debentures at private schools in Hong Kong. Starting last weekend, they repeated the effort this Sunday, albeit with little new information. But proving that in this part of the world it's been a slow news week, now The Economist has joined in and has a story on the debenture issue. It's reproduced in full below the jump. Now there are two conclusions that could be drawn from the rising price of schooling here: firstly that the market is doing its job (which is how The Economist sees it) or there is a market failure here because supply is not able to respond to demand. When was the last private school established in HK? Surely there's a large market gap for an entrepeneur to open up schools here given the rapidly rising demand. And it shows the ESF, while providing some kind of hybrid public/private education, is not valued in the same way as the private sector schools.

How long will it be until we hear calls from the private sector for the government to "do something"?

The $1m question Jun 14th 2007 | HONG KONG From The Economist print edition

What is the price of a good education?


AMONG the most commercial of cities, Hong Kong follows many markets; but none more intently than the trade in debentures tied to admissions to the city's international primary and secondary schools. These non-interest-bearing bonds are typically issued to pay for construction or other costs. Bought by parents anxious to do the best by their children, or by employers anxious to attract the best staff, they are then traded at prices set by the city's volatile economic fluctuations.

Recently, slots in international schools have become precious. The economy is booming in China's tailwind, attracting well-paid expatriates. Prosperous local residents, meanwhile, are deserting local schools because of what is seen as deterioration in English-language teaching since the reversion to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. It is not just the very rich who are worried: early this month a small group of not very well-off South Asian residents marched through central Hong Kong, demanding more schooling in English, arguing their children were suffering from having to attend classes conducted in Chinese.

Demand is high, supply is limited, and the results, at the top end of the market, are predictable: soaring prices. In 2004, the price of a debenture at the Chinese International School, possibly the most sought-after institution, sold for HK$600,000 ($77,000). On June 9th the South China Morning Post splashed on its front page a report that a family had paid HK $1m for a debenture, and then entered its child in the school's first grade. Similar, if less dramatic, price increases were reported at other international schools.

The schools all treat the debentures differently. The Chinese International School stresses that theirs does not guarantee a school place. Applicants sit a merit-based test, and some debenture-holders are rejected and some non-holders accepted. Still, holders must feel their children gain some advantage. Hong Kong International School, popular among Americans, gives debenture-holders more rights. If an applicant meets the school's standards, a debenture places him at the head of the queue. Most schools lie somewhere in between these two approaches.

All the international schools have lengthy waiting lists for all ages. So companies scoop up debentures for their staff—some expatriates are refusing jobs in Hong Kong because they cannot find schools for their children. Resale rights exist, with schools in some cases sharing the profits. Alternatively, two years ago Hong Kong International School bought back all its debentures and then reissued them at a higher price—much as a company might when business is good.

Even so, the debenture systems are opaque—the ratio between debenture-holders and accepted students is unknown. Schools are understandably sensitive about acknowledging the embarrassing tie between money and admittance. Raising money for education is a challenge everywhere and Hong Kong's system compares favourably with, say, British private schools, where prices are stratospheric, or American ones, where parents' “contributions” often can carry the same benefits as debentures, but have no market-signalling value. Hong Kong's school-debenture prices are sending two messages: there is a market for good education; and some people have the money to pay for it.



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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 11:54
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June 12, 2007
Watching China

"China has become rather like Israel..." Rick Perlstein talks about James Mann's The China Fantasy

Thanks to Gordon for the pointer

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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 13:55
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June 11, 2007
Why Hong Kong lawyers cross the road

It turns out, not to anyone's surprise, that Hong Kong's lawyers are just like their counterparts the world over....from last week's SCMP (I'm catching up):

Mercenary considerations had assumed greater prominence than ethical standards in the legal profession, the chief justice said yesterday. "In this competitive environment, commercial pressures have led to the profession becoming more like a business," Andrew Li Kwok-nang said at a 20th Biennial LawAsia Conference session on ethics.

"The virtue of the profession, which distinguishes it from a business, is that in its practice, the selfish pursuit of economic success is tempered by adherence to ethical standards and a concern for the public good," he said. "But this virtue has been eroded. To put it bluntly, mercenary considerations have assumed much greater prominence at the expense of ethical standards."

Obviously the chief justice hasn't heard of Adam Smith, the invisible hand and that pursuing self-interest is serving the public interest. But the judge is a lawyer, and we all know lawyers are a "profession" (i.e. a protected guild that can restrict entry and competition for their own benefit). And lawyers would never allow avarice to sully their reputations...
Mr Justice Li cited the case of a client who asked his lawyer for a breakdown of his bill. The itemised account included a charge for "recognising you in the street and crossing the busy road to talk to you to discuss your affairs, and recrossing the road after discovering it was not you".
Absolutely brilliant. It's almost worth paying that bill a reward for the creativity and imagination it takes to come up with stuff like this. Lawyers live in 6 minute increments and crossing the road is never easy.

Thanks to J. for the pointer.

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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 14:41
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Lucky numbers

The people in charge of the economy are captains of economics, using science and precision to guide the lives of millions....right? Perhaps not, says our very own Sir Don:

The stock market would have collapsed and banks forced to raise interest rates by 50 percent had the government not stepped in with HK$120 billion in 1998 to force speculators to retreat, said Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen...Many foreign speculators had expected us to fight till the Hang Seng Index had climbed to 10,000 points, but we decided to make a sudden halt at 7,800, which was proposed by [Monetary Authority chief executive] Joseph Yam Chi-kwong and Hui, who insisted such a move would give us good luck as the Hong Kong dollar is pegged to the greenback at HK$7.80."...

"We only intended to fight the vultures by going back to step one. Norman Chan, Rafael Hui and I are all superstitious about 7.8 as our lucky number, where our US peg-link stays and our index finally hit rock bottom at 7,800.

Thank God the peg isn't at 2.

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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 08:07
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June 06, 2007
The problem of history

The Chinese Communist Party does it's very best to limit all news and views on the events of June 4th, 1989. But not teaching history can have its consequences...not merely in the (in)famous Marixsm that it is repeated as farce, but in the law of unintended consequences too. The SCMP (new site, still unlinkable and not even working today) reports:

A young woman unaware of the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown is believed to have let an advertisement saluting the mothers of students killed in and around the central Beijing square make its way into a Chengdu newspaper, highlighting the national collective amnesia about the events of 18 years ago.
To be fair, it's hard to call it "collective amnesia" when the government doesn't let its citizens know where there is to forget.
Two sources with connections to the Chengdu Evening News, which ran the controversial 13 character classified adverstisement on Monday, said the woman, who worked for an advertising company responsible for the newspaper's classified section, was in charge of receiving content from clients.

A man visited the copmany on May 30 and the woman took down the advertisement - which read "Saluting the adamanat Tiananmen Mothers" - from the client without knowledge of the June 4 crackdown, the sources said.

"She called the man back two days later to check what June 4 meant and the man said it was [a date that] a mining disaster took place," one source said. The woman's age was not known but the source said she had just graduate from school.

Now I don't know what they teach in Chinese schools, but there aren't too many mines around Tiananmen square.

Still, the whole story leaves the question as to how Beijing deals with a new generation who know nothing of Tiananmen. Is ignorance always bliss?

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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 09:19
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June 04, 2007
18 years: Tiananmen Square

chinaliberty.jpg

Taken from a large collection of AP photos with captions.

Also: Tiananmen Square, 1989: The Declassified History

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[boomerang] Posted by Simon at 08:27
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