The Great Flood
By Chip Tsao | published Aug 26, 2010
Chief Executive Donald Tsang and his financier John Tsang’s efforts to stabilize Hong Kong’s property market with new “measures” and “policies” have only served to rocket the market further. It’s like the turmoil in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the comical Mickey Mouse short in the movie “Fantasia.” In the cartoon, the not-so-well-trained apprentice tries to use a magic broom to fetch water in a pail, only to find the floor is soon soaked with water. Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice splits it in two with an axe, but each of the pieces becomes a new broom, takes up a pail and keeps on fetching water, now at twice the speed.
In our version, the water comes from the north, our dear Motherland. Property prices rocket up in Beijing, Shanghai and many other major cities where ancient citadels and temples are being knocked down—and the water can only spill over to the whole world. Compared with buying up iron ore in Canada and Australia, oil resources in Iran or even having the Liverpool football team or American newspapers served on a plate to Chinese cash-makers, Hong Kong’s property market—being the nearest outlet—serves as a healthy rectum for this outpouring on a biblical scale of hot surging Chinese cash before it reaches the toilet of Victoria Harbor. If you refrain from flushing and let your investment stay afloat in Hong Kong for a short while, it will flourish along, with the best sights and smells.
Chinese cash-makers are right and smart in their choice of toilet. Hong Kong still maintains a bit of rule of law of the British brand. A can of milk powder purchased from the nearby Park’n’Shop doesn’t contain melamine. Road traffic is regulated by traffic lights, a primitive fair-play system imported into the Far East by the colonial government a century ago for peasants to learn not to knock each other down with their ox-carts and rickshaws. When stopped by a traffic cop on the roadside, if you speak good English, have a bit of money and come from a socially respectable family, you can slap the officer’s face and, once taken to a police station for interrogation, howl about in protest and slap a couple of woman constables’ faces to teach the “madams” a lesson about class society, —and you’ll only be ordered to go to a “treatment center” for your “bipolar disorder.” For China’s property investors, Hong Kong has the best of both worlds.
Professor Cheung Bing-leung, a member of Donald Tsang’s executive council, has called for the government to follow the “Singapore model” by banning mainland Chinese from buying property in Hong Kong. May I remind Professor Cheung that this discriminatory act would be a blatant infringement of article 112 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that Hong Kong SAR “shall safeguard the free flow of capital within, into or out of the region.” So, Hong Kong is no Singapore, and mustn’t fall between two stools.
Chief Executive Donald Tsang and his financier John Tsang’s efforts to stabilize Hong Kong’s property market with new “measures” and “policies” have only served to rocket the market further. It’s like the turmoil in the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” the comical Mickey Mouse short in the movie “Fantasia.” In the cartoon, the not-so-well-trained apprentice tries to use a magic broom to fetch water in a pail, only to find the floor is soon soaked with water. Not knowing how to control the enchanted broom, the apprentice splits it in two with an axe, but each of the pieces becomes a new broom, takes up a pail and keeps on fetching water, now at twice the speed.
In our version, the water comes from the north, our dear Motherland. Property prices rocket up in Beijing, Shanghai and many other major cities where ancient citadels and temples are being knocked down—and the water can only spill over to the whole world. Compared with buying up iron ore in Canada and Australia, oil resources in Iran or even having the Liverpool football team or American newspapers served on a plate to Chinese cash-makers, Hong Kong’s property market—being the nearest outlet—serves as a healthy rectum for this outpouring on a biblical scale of hot surging Chinese cash before it reaches the toilet of Victoria Harbor. If you refrain from flushing and let your investment stay afloat in Hong Kong for a short while, it will flourish along, with the best sights and smells.
Chinese cash-makers are right and smart in their choice of toilet. Hong Kong still maintains a bit of rule of law of the British brand. A can of milk powder purchased from the nearby Park’n’Shop doesn’t contain melamine. Road traffic is regulated by traffic lights, a primitive fair-play system imported into the Far East by the colonial government a century ago for peasants to learn not to knock each other down with their ox-carts and rickshaws. When stopped by a traffic cop on the roadside, if you speak good English, have a bit of money and come from a socially respectable family, you can slap the officer’s face and, once taken to a police station for interrogation, howl about in protest and slap a couple of woman constables’ faces to teach the “madams” a lesson about class society, —and you’ll only be ordered to go to a “treatment center” for your “bipolar disorder.” For China’s property investors, Hong Kong has the best of both worlds.
Professor Cheung Bing-leung, a member of Donald Tsang’s executive council, has called for the government to follow the “Singapore model” by banning mainland Chinese from buying property in Hong Kong. May I remind Professor Cheung that this discriminatory act would be a blatant infringement of article 112 of the Basic Law, which stipulates that Hong Kong SAR “shall safeguard the free flow of capital within, into or out of the region.” So, Hong Kong is no Singapore, and mustn’t fall between two stools.
Labels: Politically Incorrect, 陶傑
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