Stuart Wolfendale

There are occasions when newspapers should carry a reader warning. It could be a capital ‘N’ for “Narcosis content; likely to produce a state of stupor or unconsciousness” Thursday was one of those days.“HK delivers 200-point answer to China’s 5-year plan” was the headline in the South China Morning Post. Of course, the ‘N’ warning would have been futile. The big black words struck me as I lifted the paper from the hawker stand. It was all I could do to pay the man. Two hundred tiny weights were closing in on the back of my head. I could feel the deep sigh of lungs deflating as every year of the plan settled on my chest. I found a wall to lean on. Passers- by quickened their pace. I was beginning to dribble. My legs were giving and I was falling asleep to the rhythms of a bike I was riding all the way to Beijing to deliver the Chief Executive’s ten score initiatives lodged safely in the pannier.I was only saved from total collapse by a fading glimpse of a big photograph of Bouphavanh of Laos, Abdullah of Malaysia, Roh of South Korea, Abe of Japan and Wen of China all in a line in white Pinoy dress shirts for a group photo. The rare compact of characters in one frame was a flash warning of how much a bunch of ageing schoolboys with adolescent egos, candy grab desires and a tendency to bully can govern our fates. It scared me awake.

That headline had all the zap of a 5- year plan but the piece was not really the paper’s fault. It is what passes for big news, politically, here. There is a lot like that in the mornings and it leaves in the reader a sense of non-specific discomfort somewhere in the lower crawl. Come on, what sort of a working political policy is a 207 point proposal put together by 33 people made up of ideas from another 130 from all over the shop? It has all the durable cohesion of a banqueting room ice sculpture after the buffet has shut. It is Blair Blurb. The British prime minister’s rule has been a fiesta of initiatives, passionately explained and almost instantly forgotten. He assessed the British electorate as one huge goldfish that would swim round and round him as though each time was the first time. He was, largely, right.

Nobody is going to bother swimming round Donald but he had better make very sure that at junctures later in his long reign, points currently sloshing around in the 207 are not fished out as brave new policy initiatives. Somebody somewhere will be watching for that but it probably won’t be me. I’ll be fast asleep over the cornflakes.

 

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 One remark in the Chief Executive’s introduction of his 207 point picture (you join the dots with a pencil) which rose to the level of a disappointment was when he said that Hong Kong should “not be distracted by whimsical thoughts.” This is not the spirit that brought a small, ravaged colonial armpit from mid century to glitter rich and tall in the sun by its end. Whimsy is the wizardry of economics. It is little men with whims that turn into big guys with businesses. They do not all become a Cyberport which was the whim of a big old guy who had once had a big business before he had a big delusion. There is a difference between whimsy and follyOne gets the distinct impression that whimsy is regarded as recklessness. Shaking it off like a dog coming in from the wet, we are all going to get on doing what we already do well even better according to the report. There is something keenly civil service, ‘great and good’, plump and prosperous about that sentiment. Yet even these people cannot resist whimsy in their ponderings. When bureaucrats come out with a whim, it reminds me of early newsreel footage of men in caps and overcoats surrounded by paraphernalia of canvas, string and wood, pedaling themselves furiously over the edge of a cliff. This time, the Chief Executive’s action plan’s ‘focus group on trade and business’ has recommended the need to create a ‘Brand Hong Kong’ to be come up with by , yes you have it, a ‘Brand Hong Kong Group’- at the highest level, of course. Of course this has been done before and the result was comparable in coherence to the top of a box of Japanese export chocolates.. You will recall “Asia’s World City” and a dragon motif which evoked a Highland terrier dragged though a hedge backwards. You can still see them stuck to the grills of Government cars, like road kill.So it all has to be done again. “We have to continue developing and making use of it” said group convener Victor Fung Kwok-king as they must have said of airships after ‘the Hindenburg’ disaster. Group will consult with bureaux, will consult with departments, will consult with advisory committee members, will consult with their wives will consult with their hairdressers and files will climb and descend circulation lists. And no-one will say. “Stop! This is nonsense. It is MikeRowseism rampant.”
  Has Dr Fung ever heard of Paris described as ‘Europe’s world city’? Well let him take the fatuity of that notion, transfer it to tracing paper and lay it over Hong Kong. The SAR doesn’t need its international image strengthening anymore than India needs to beef up its reputation for curry. (I know, I know but I’m keeping it.) Hong Kong’s reputation is nothing but international. I have correspondents who refuse to put ‘Hong Kong, PRC’ on the end of my address because they can’t accept it. We know there are people who think we are an island off Japan or one of the closer Polynesians. I have heard of people who have visited, done what they came for and left without being entirely sure what part of the world they were in. Every tacky TV documentary on Discovery and every travel article written from press release droppings describes Hong Kong as ‘where East meets West’, which should put us anywhere on a line running through Istanbul and Minsk. It doesn’t matter. We are a miraculously over interpreted concept. Boy’s, stand down your groups, leash in your trashed terrier logos, strike out your mongrel tag lines, cancel your campaigns—you’re already there!                    

         

    

  

 

 

 

 

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