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you're
looking for. 1.
Bargain buy for Great Eagle 2.
Tung admonishes his finance chief 3.
Call to expand the Pearl River Delta region 4.
Saturation blamed for the fall 5.
Clash over treatment of finance chief 6.
Antony Leung's tax claims on new vehicle disputed by
angry dealers 7.
An apology not enough, say callers 8.
Historic buildings must be preserved 9.
Government fails to convince on deficit 10.
SCO adds legal twist to extreme business planning
11.
Blogging to pitch words, images to handsets 12.
We need domestic opportunities, not foreign cash 13.
Leung does more with a new four-door 14.
Free office suite opens door to Word files
1. Bargain buy for Great Eagle
Staff
reporter, The Standard 11 March 2003 Great
Eagle Holdings is reported to have paid less than HK$300 million to secure total
ownership of an HK$8 billion Mong Kok project jointly developed with the Urban
Renewal Authority (URA). The
market expected Great Eagle would have to spend several billion dollars to obtain
control, Ming Pao newspaper quoted sources as saying yesterday. The
listed property investment firm will be able to dispose of the project at any
time. The cash-strapped
URA will reap no financial gain from the development because of Hong Kong's plunging
property values. Great
Eagle assistant director Adrian Lee yesterday said Great Eagle had taken total
control of the property in Mong Kok after making a payment to URA. He refused
to disclose the amount involved. The
130,000-square-foot Argyle Street/Shanghai Street redevelopment, which consists
of a 709,000 sqft office block, a 14-storey shopping and entertainment centre
of 586,000 sqft and a four-star, 750-room hotel, is ready to take tenants and
is due to open in March next year. There is direct underground access to Mong
Kok MTR station. The
project was initially to be built in conjunction with the now-defunct Land Development
Corporation (LDC). Great
Eagle is understood to have entered into an agreement with the LDC in 1999, under
which the LDC was to take ownership of all properties in the project subject to
it meeting certain deadlines. Great
Eagle was to pay all construction and development costs. But,
after property prices plunged, Great Eagle claimed the LDC failed to fulfil its
obligations under the terms of the agreement and demanded compensation. Market
watchers estimate the current market value of the development to be HK$8 billion,
down from the HK$10 billion assessed in 1999. Had
the LDC claimed just one-third ownership of the project in 1999, Great Eagle would
have had to pay about HK$2 billion to gain full control. A
URA statement yesterday said: ``Considering the total costs invested and the market
outlook, the LDC's managing board decided, in 1999, that it was unrealistic to
expect any substantial profit sharing. Therefore, based on this consideration,
there was no question of a HK$2 billion-plus profit sharing for LDC.'' It
added: ``As there has been no expectation of any substantial profit from this
project when the URA took over all ex-LDC projects in 2001, there is no question
of the URA's current financial position being affected.'' Shares
of Great Eagle closed 2.2 per cent lower at HK$4.40 yesterday.
2. Tung admonishes his finance chief
JIMMY
CHEUNG and GARY CHEUNG in Beijing, SCMP 11 March 2003 Hong
Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa yesterday said the financial secretary had
been "negligent" and acted "inappropriately" in buying a luxury
car for himself ahead of imposing tax increases on new vehicles. But
Mr Tung stopped short of punishing Antony Leung Kam-chung, and instead told him
to be more politically sensitive in future. The
mild response has enraged pro-democracy legislators, who accused Mr Tung of swallowing
his promises to hold top officials accountable for their blunders under the ministerial
system he introduced last year. The
financial chief was forced to admit at the weekend that he had effectively paid
$50,000 less for a Lexus 430 than he would have after the Budget. The equivalent
car now costs $840,000 because of the hefty increases in registration tax Mr Leung
introduced last Wednesday. Mr
Leung on Sunday agreed to donate $100,000, double the difference between the purchase
price of the car before and after the tax increase, to charity. But last night,
a spokesman for Mr Leung said he had decided to donate about $380,000, twice the
amount of the difference in tax that would have been due had the car been bought
after the Budget, to the Community Chest. The
spokesman said Mr Leung sent a cheque for the revised amount to the Community
Chest yesterday morning to dispel any doubt about his integrity. Although
Mr Leung stressed the vehicle was to transport his newborn baby and family, newspaper
headlines and editorials remained critical while angry callers to radio phone-in
programmes demanded he resign. Mr
Tung, speaking in a meet-the-media session, said he had met Mr Leung and looked
into the matter. But he said it was more an inadvertent mistake than an act of
dishonesty. "I
believe that he did not do it for personal gain," Mr Tung said. "I told
him that he should be more sensitive when it comes to issues like a conflict of
interest," he said, adding that he believed Mr Leung had learned his lesson.
All senior appointees
had also been reminded to be "whiter than white" when it comes to issues
of conflict of interest, he added. But
pro-democracy legislators were unhappy with Mr Tung's response. Democrat
Cheung Man-kwong said the system to hold officials accountable for their faults
would be meaningless if Mr Tung simply required his appointees to be more sensitive
in future. He
was referring to the furore in which Secretary for Financial Services and the
Treasury Frederick Ma Si-hang had been spared any disciplinary action for his
role in last July's penny stocks scandal. In
a separate media session following Mr Tung's defence, a remorseful Mr Leung went
further and admitted that he had been negligent. "Inevitably
people will find it suspicious. It also shows that my political sensitivity is
insufficient and that I should be more alert," he said. "I
hope the community accept that it was only an inadvertent mistake rather than
deliberate tax avoidance." Influential
mainland officials and Beijing advisers also sought to defend Mr Leung. Gao
Siren, director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, said
Mr Leung had made a "careless mistake". Speaking
in Beijing, Mr Gao said: "Civil servants should be careful about their words
and deeds. They should behave in accordance with requirement as public servants."
But he did not
believe that Mr Leung was a person who sought "petty favours". Tsang
Hin-chi, a member of the standing committee of the National People's Congress,
said the issue was "no big deal". "Hong
Kong people should not spend too much time on such petty issues. Our urgent task
is to revitalise our economy," he said.
3. Call to expand the Pearl River Delta region
LEU
SIEW YING in Guangzhou , SCMP 11 March 2003 Guangdong
Governor Huang Huahua has called for the creation of a Greater Pearl River Delta
taking in Hong Kong and Macau that would rival the Yangtze River Delta. The
existing delta region has a gross domestic product (GDP) of 100 billion yuan (HK$95.24
billion) which when combined with the two special administrative regions would
be equivalent to the Yangtze River Delta's GDP, of 200 billion yuan, he said.
Mr Huang, who
is attending the National People's Congress, was giving his first interview since
being appointed governor in January. "All
three parties must benefit from the Pearl River Delta co-operation. It cannot
be one party or two parties reaping all the benefits," he said. It
was the first time a top Guangdong official had openly called for Greater Pearl
River Delta co-operation as a way of competing with Shanghai and signals a strong
desire to move government-to-government co-operation with Hong Kong and Macau
beyond rhetoric. Hong
Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, in his policy address on January 8, said greater
co-operation with the Pearl River Delta would lead Hong Kong out of its economic
woes. There have
also been calls by the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce for a Greater Pearl
River Delta economic council along the lines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation
forum. Lin Jiang,
an economics professor at Zhongshan University, said the private enterprises of
Guangdong and Hong Kong have laid a strong foundation for close economic co-operation
but cannot replace government-to-government dialogue. "Government-to-government
co-operation has been hampered by the one country, two systems policy," said
Professor Lin. "Officials from both sides have to go through the Hong Kong
and Macau Affairs Office and people prefer not to go through with the bother.
But with economic development there's a need for both governments to co-ordinate
policies," he said. While
the Pearl River Delta has benefited from early opening up, it is also paying the
cost of haphazard development and the suppression of environmental concerns to
attract investment, all lessons that the Yangtze River Delta is learning. During
the past decade, the northern delta region has become more attractive for foreign
investors than Guangdong. Professor
Lin believes that with the will to do it, Guangdong and Hong Kong officials will
find the means to work around the one country, two systems policy. Mr
Huang said the scope for Greater Pearl River Delta co-operation included infrastructure
development, transportation, energy, high technology, tourism and intermediary
services. He
said Guangdong, which supplies water to Hong Kong, also wants to supply natural
gas to the city. On Guangdong's economic growth, Mr Huang said GDP growth has
been set at 9 per cent this year and is expected to be met with difficulty, partly
because of an expected fall in exports if war breaks out in Iraq. Mr
Huang said regional imbalances in economic development, low farmers' income and
the delay in refunding export tax to enterprises would also need to be addressed.
4. Saturation blamed for the fall
MAY
SIN-MI HON, SCMP 11 March 2003 Hong
Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa said yesterday that the recent fall in property
prices was a result of too many flats flooding the market. Mr
Tung also said he hoped the measures taken by the government to stabilise the
market, including suspending land sales, would work in time. But
Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands Michael Suen Ming-yeung stressed that
the nine-point measures announced in November were not intended to boost prices
but were aimed at clarifying the government's role in the property market. "The
measures were never aimed at propping up the market," he said. Mr
Suen rejected claims that the recent fall in prices was due to the failure of
policies, which also included a halt in the sale of flats under the Home Ownership
Scheme. He said that property prices adjusted according to market situations.
5. Clash over treatment of finance chief
JIMMY
CHEUNG and AMBROSE LEUNG, SCMP 11 March 2003 Lawmakers
have clashed over whether the financial secretary should be punished over the
controversy surrounding his new luxury car. Those
from the opposition camp yesterday stepped up their campaign for an independent
investigation of Antony Leung Kam-chung, with some calling for his removal. But
pro-government lawmakers were more sympathetic, saying the case did not warrant
any harsh penalty. The
controversy erupted on Sunday after Mr Leung admitted that he had bought a $790,000
Lexus 430 only weeks ahead of increases in the vehicle registration tax announced
in his Budget last week. The price of the car rose to $840,000 after the increases
took effect. Mr
Leung said he needed the car to transport his new-born baby girl and family. He
later conceded he should not have bought the vehicle and that he would donate
$100,000 to charity. This figure has now been raised to $380,000. The
row has prompted pro-democracy independent legislator Albert Chan Wai-yip to stage
a signature campaign today calling for Mr Leung's resignation. The
Legco constitutional affairs panel is to convene a meeting as early as next Monday
to discuss if Mr Leung has breached the code of conduct on ministers. Amid growing
concerns that government integrity has been undermined, Frontier legislator Emily
Lau Wai-hing wrote to Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa calling for an independent
inquiry. "You should carefully consider whether it is appropriate for the
financial secretary to stay if investigation shows that he has made mistakes and
has problems with his integrity," Ms Lau said in her letter. Margaret
Ng Ngoi-yee, the legal sector representative, said Mr Leung had breached rules
preventing a conflict of interest. The
problem was not how much he had saved. And promising to donate the money would
not help either, she said. Mr Leung should have declared the fact that he had
bought a car ahead of the Budget. "He owes the legislature and the public
an explanation," she said. Asked whether the incident had discredited the
accountability system, Ms Ng said she did not think so as the system was already
in a bad state, offering people little hope regarding government ministers. However,
pro-government lawmakers sought to play down the controversy and said Mr Leung
had only been negligent. Philip
Wong Yu-hong, chairman of the Legco finance committee, said he saw no need for
the panel to look into the matter. Describing
it as a matter of negligence, Executive Councillor James Tien Pei-chun said the
incident was not serious enough to warrant Mr Leung's removal. But
he admitted people might question how Mr Leung had handled other matters, adding
that the government's authority would be undermined as a result. He
also backed moves by his Legco colleagues to look further into the matter.
6. Antony Leung's tax claims on new vehicle disputed by angry dealers
CHEUNG
CHI-FAI, SCMP 11 March 2003 Antony
Leung would have paid about $190,000 more in tax had he bought his new limousine
after his announcement to increase the first vehicle registration tax, car dealers
said yesterday. An
outspoken agent called the radio phone-in programme Teacup in a Storm to report
that Mr Leung had not just saved $50,000 on tax. Some
dealers contacted by the South China Morning Post, who declined to be named, believed
the financial secretary had also misquoted the price of his car. On
Sunday, Mr Leung said his Lexus 430 was worth $790,000, adding that it would cost
about $840,000 after the tax increase. But
the dealers said the price Mr Leung quoted was for a new model introduced to Hong
Kong last month. The older model he bought was priced at about $730,000. Crown
Motors, which sold the Lexus to Mr Leung, refused to disclose more details of
the transaction. But
it stressed that the company pricing strategy was not just based on tax rates
but also influenced by the imported price and changing market conditions. "As
we do not sell the old model any more, there is no way we could compare the price
difference of the model before and after tax," said a company salesman. Johnson
Li, vice-chairman of the Motor Traders Association, also said that it was not
fair to suggest the price difference was simply based on tax rate changes. He
also denied the car industry had deliberately exposed Mr Leung's purchase in protest
at the tax rise. "We
don't know who exposed the news or who spoke on the radio as well. This guy definitely
is not a member and does not represent the views of our association," he
said. Another
car dealer said: "The story about Mr Leung buying a Lexus had been circulating
. . . before the Budget. Perhaps, someone who did not like the tax rise deliberately
exposed the news to the media," he said. It
has been estimated that the stiffer progressive vehicle tax band will bring the
government an extra $700 million a year in revenue.
7. An apology not enough, say callers
LOUISA
YAN, SCMP 11 March 2003 An
apology was not enough to ease the public's anger with the financial secretary,
callers to a radio phone-in programme said. Callers
jammed the switchboard of Commercial Radio's Teacup in a Storm, with most saying
that an apology would not restore Antony Leung's credibility. One
caller said: "I am very disappointed and angry. Does he think he can walk
away with an apology? He has been in the business world for so long and he should
know what can be done and what can't be done. If he's not qualified [as financial
secretary], let somebody else take over." Another
caller said: "If you make a mistake and can walk away freely by donating
$100,000 to charity, then anyone who makes any mistake can walk away if they are
rich." However, one female caller expressed sympathy for the plight of the
former banker: "Don't give him a hard time. He has had quite enough these
days. He has sacrificed so much, such as a job with a much better salary."
8. Historic buildings must be preserved
SCMP
11 March 2003 For
more than a quarter of a century, Hong Kong's Antiquities and Monuments Office
has developed lists of historically valuable structures and had the power to step
in to prevent their demolition. A quick glance around the city shows, however,
that demolition has too often won the day. Dozens of 19th century facades have
disappeared, sometimes before the office even knew of development plans. A
property slump has hardly dented the trend. Now and again, we see a knock-down,
drag-out fight, which results in preservation of a gem such as the Leah Opel Synagogue,
or Kam Tong Hall. But more often than not, the wrecker's ball comes in, and something
new goes up. We
need to take urgent stock of all our pre-World War II buildings. According to
the latest survey, some 500 have historical value and should be protected. This
is the inventory of our cosmopolitan past. The buildings highlighted in our City
section today show just how vulnerable these premises are, particularly if they
are privately owned. Yet
relative to other Chinese cities, Hong Kong has had the longest continuous successful
relationship with the global community. These 500 buildings should be reminders
of the rewards of globalisation. A
government policy overhaul is just one step. On the business side, of course,
there needs to be an economically feasible way of preserving history. The first
place to start is by viewing the way other cities, from Baltimore in the United
States to Sydney and (sigh) Shanghai and Singapore, have turned older parts of
their cities into showplaces, using age as an attraction, not a turnoff. In a
slow property market, developers should be aggressively seeking out historic properties
as keystones for development of mixed-use entertainment, office and retail complexes,
and the antiquities office should be imaginative in accepting radical proposals
that preserve the old, while making way for the new. One
of the oldest principles in Chinese art and architecture is constant renewal;
hardly an ancient monument exists that has not been restored with a difference.
Even Tiananmen's Heavenly Gate was given a massive facelift after 1949; the present
edifice is two metres higher as a result. Similarly, Hong Kong's guide should
be using the past to serve the present, and the future.
9. Government fails to convince on deficit
SCMP
11 March 2003 Financial
Secretary Antony Leung Kam-chung has delivered Hong Kong's most unpopular budget
in recent years. Not only are tax rises during a tough period of economic restructuring
inherently unpopular, the government has not convinced anybody that its plan to
cure the fiscal deficit is effective. Hong
Kong's fiscal deficit is no longer caused by an economic slowdown in macro terms
but rather by the dynamics of economic restructuring. Our economy achieved real
growth of 2.3 per cent in 2002. In fact, our GDP is now 11.4 per cent higher in
real terms than it was in 1997. As
a mature economy, we really cannot expect to sustain a higher growth rate than
this in the foreseeable future. Yet
Mr Leung stuck to the old model that with economic growth at 3 per cent and land
sales resumption, an additional $30 billion in revenue will be generated between
now and 2006-07. How likely will that be? It
is unrealistic to expect zero per cent deflation over the next few years. Mr Leung
correctly mentioned that quite a few of Hong Kong's economic activities have moved
out. But he failed
to explicitly attribute that as the root cause of our downward price adjustment.
The harsh reality is that painful deflation will persist until the wage differential
between Hong Kong and Shenzhen and other Pearl River Delta cities more objectively
reflects their differences in productivity. Pressure
on wages and salaries of low- to medium-skilled workers will reinforce a stagnant
domestic economy, but their ability to shoulder further tax increases is severely
limited, both politically and economically. The
government's own commitment to cost-cutting is far from solid. Mr Leung provided
no committed plan and quantifiable measures. Reducing public expenditure from
22.3 per cent to 20 per cent will require an overall public expenditure reduction
of 10.3 per cent, or $29.5 billion, of which $20 million is operating and recurrent
in nature. The
various politically appointed ministers have yet to demonstrate leadership, analytical
ability to identify internal savings opportunities and political will to move
forward in streamlining government operations. To
achieve a fiscal balance and a public sector size of 20 per cent of GDP, the government
needs first to cut public spending by $29.5 billion through more efficient government
processes, outsourcing or privatising government-run operations where economically
and socially sustainable. Second, it has to come up with some additional revenue
base to annually raise $26 billion from 2004 onwards. Sale
of public assets is one significant revenue source over the next few years. But
the government will also need to secure other more stable and sustainable revenue
sources that are perceived to be equitable by the public. ALEX
CHAN, Chairman, Citizens Party
10. SCO adds legal twist to extreme business planning
NEIL
TAYLOR, SCMP 11 March 2003
Somewhere
in my extensive and increasingly tatty collection of trade show hand-outs is a
faded T-shirt proclaiming that Caldera makes Linux for Xtreme Business.
Last
week we found out just how extreme Caldera's business strategy can be. Caldera,
or SCO Group as it is now known, has always taken an unorthodox approach to business.
And its billion-dollar lawsuit against IBM could be its final approach. On
Thursday, SCO filed a suit against IBM, alleging that Big Blue had built some
of SCO's code into Linux. The
company also threatened to cancel IBM's licence to distribute its own AIX Unix
system if it does not comply with various demands by June 13. Many
analysts are already saying that SCO knows this is a fight it cannot possibly
win, and that a full frontal attack on the New York giant is a thinly disguised
exit strategy for a firm with no future. That
might explain SCO's choice of lawyer, David Boies. Mr Boies's recent record includes
prosecuting Microsoft, defending Napster and supporting Al Gore in the Florida
recount controversy - hardly a stream of successes. Caldera's
OpenLinux was the first version of the free operating system that I managed to
get running on my PC. I had previously grappled with SuSe Linux, which had an
ugly disagreement with my monitor and video card. My
next attempt came with Red Hat, which refused to accept that I wanted to run a
server with two Ethernet cards. Both systems carried out these arguments through
slow and frustrating text-based interfaces. But
Caldera knew exactly what I wanted. It
gave me a comforting graphical interface, recognised all the odd requirements
of my PC and even let me dual-boot with Windows. A
year or two later, I bought a new Windows PC and turned the old box over first
to Mandrake, and then to SuSe, which I have been very happy with. You
might be wondering why I should abandon such a nice system in favour of one that
had been so buggy before it. The simple reason was that while SuSe had improved
dramatically, Caldera had not. In
the days before Red Hat and IBM had honed their Linux services strategies, Caldera
looked for profit by following the proprietary Big Software route. This is no
easy task in the open-source world. Caldera
decided to release two versions of its software. One was the basic open-source
package, and the other contained closed source code. Naturally, the latter had
the support, while the former was left to wither. Soon
after its US$70 million listing in March 2000, Caldera bought Santa Cruz Operation
(SCO), hoping its ownership of the original Unix code would be the kind of trophy
wife to get them into all the best parties. Unfortunately, SCO Unix was already
looking a little like my old T-shirt, and the invitations were drying up. And
this lawsuit is unlikely to help. German
partner SuSe says the suit will probably end its relationship with SCO. This could
effectively wreck the UnitedLinux standardisation effort, since Japan's TurboLinux
and Portugal's Conectiva are too small to balance SuSe's obvious domination of
the group. Other
partners, Unix licensees and SCO Linux customers, will be equally uncomfortable
working with a company they fear may be planning to sue them next. According
to trade paper eweek, SCO chief Darl Mcbride has admitted that even Microsoft
and Apple are being investigated, for their use of Berkeley Standard Distribution
(BSD) Unix code. This
is not the first time SCO has played this game. In 1996, Caldera bought DR-Dos
from Novell and promptly sued Microsoft for anti-competitive practices. The suit
was settled for a rumoured US$350 million to US$500 million in Caldera's favour.
The market seems
to support the exit theory. After the IBM suit was announced, SCO's stock rose
by 40 per cent. Those buyers were not investing in SCO's US$25 million in losses,
nor its US$35 million market cap. And few expect IBM to settle. The
chances of IBM losing are remote. IBM has shown over decades that it is big enough
to weather any suit and, with its huge patent portfolio, Big Blue could throw
up enough objections and counter-suits to keep the courts busy for years. Which
is why SCO gave its June deadline. IBM cannot conceivably rework Linux in 100
days, just as it cannot afford to stop shipping AIX. SCO
is clearly hoping to force a settlement. Though
SCO claims the lawsuit is purely about IBM, a victory would hand them a whole
new business model - suing former partners and their customers for distributing
copyrighted code. SCO
knows that the biggest businesses in the information technology world have far
too much invested in Linux and other Unix-like operating systems to let one relatively
tiny company hold the whole open-source world hostage. They
cannot seriously expect to win this case, just as they know IBM cannot afford
to lose. So I
may be wearing my Caldera T-shirt long after SCO has become a footnote in Unix
history. Neil
Taylor is the editor Technology Post.
11. Blogging to pitch words, images to handsets
TONY
CHAN, SCMP 11 March 2003 Thousands
of people every day put their views into words and pictures and publish them on
the World Wide Web. Blogging (short for Web logging) has penetrated all corners
of online society. Now blogging is coming to a mobile phone near you. NewBay
Software, based in Dublin, Ireland, claims to have developed the world's first
mobile-phone blogging system, aptly named FoneBlog. Taking
advantage of the growing popularity of camera-equipped handsets, FoneBlog allows
users to instantly publish their photos and comments on a personal Web page that
can be viewed online. "Operators
throughout the world see FoneBlog as the perfect application to drive multimedia
messaging [MMS] and data traffic, and increase camera phone and PDA [personal
digital assistant] sales," NewBay Software chief executive officer Paddy
Holahan said. "FoneBlog
offers consistent, long-term revenue for network operators and unmatched loyalty
from consumers." NewBay
is in talks with several European and United States carriers to implement FoneBlog.
Meanwhile, ucp
morgen, based in Vienna, has launched mobileblog!, targeted at operators. The
product is deployed on ucp's youth-orientated mobile content portal, and offers
the same instant publishing capabilities as FoneBlog. Ucp
chief executive officer Christian Lutz claims 5.5 million users are blogging on
uboot.com, resulting in more than 100 million blogs and hundreds of thousands
of photos. Allowing
photos taken by mobile phones to be published in the public domain offers intriguing
possibilities. Already,
news organisations such as the BBC are equipping their reporters with camera phones
to cover breaking events, such as the recent anti-war protests. A
number of Asian operators, including Hutchison Telecom, Sunday Communications
and Peoples Telephone in Hong Kong, offer services that allow subscribers to store
photos online. Nokia's
Club Nokia and Samsung's Funzone portals, both available in Hong Kong, have online
photo album services for customers. These are personal pages, however, and can
be shared with others only through the use of a password.
12. We need domestic opportunities, not foreign cash
JAKE
VAN DER KAMP, SCMP 11 March 2003 Where
does our government find them? I mean not just the hare-brained ideas but the
people who sponsor them. You have to ask when you hear of the latest scheme to
emanate from Henry Tang Ying-yen, one of that crop of principal officials appointed
last year. Mr
Tang, who holds the post of Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology, all
of them fields in which government has little business and less expertise, wants
to make formal appointments of prominent Hong Kong businessmen to promote the
SAR to overseas investors. On
the surface this sounds just fine, of course. Why
not have respected people outside of government tell the Hong Kong story abroad?
Our government officials are hardly up to the job. They
often have a hard time telling the Hong Kong story to their own people without
wringing their hands about how bad things are, even when they have good news to
relate. The specific
idea is that very successful, knowledgeable and well connected (and on and on
and on) businessmen will take representatives of InvestHK (our coals to Newcastle
agency) along with them on business trips abroad and introduce their contacts
to InvestHK, which will then follow up with the razzmatazz. Let
us think about this a little more closely, however. In
the first place, Mr Tang wants money for this effort, part of a HK$200 million
fund set up in last week's budget (a belt-tightening budget, you understand) to
promote foreign investment. But
if, as he claims, these businessmen "are willing and prepared to spend their
own time to promote Hong Kong . . .", where does this need for money come
in? And what
do we expect these businessmen to do that they do not already do? For
instance, the one person he cited as having signed up for this promotion, battery
manufacturer Victor Lo Chung-wing, is, among other things, already chairman of
the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, chairman of the Hong Kong Science and
Technology Parks Corp, a council member of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council
and a Gold Bauhinia Star holder for his technology-promotion efforts. It
strikes me that every one of these already entails heavy obligations to promoting
Hong Kong overseas. His shareholders in Gold Peak Industries may well wonder whether
he should not rather be promoting their interests more. But
let us say that he now goes on a trip to do so and takes some eager people from
InvestHK along with him to meet his contacts. Mr Lo's purpose on such a trip would
be to sell Gold Peak's line of batteries, wall switches and car audios and his
contacts will be people who buy such things in bulk. What
are the InvestHK staffers then to do with these contacts? Are they to suggest
purchases from sources other than Gold Peak? Mr Lo would really appreciate this,
would he not? Or
perhaps they may tell these contacts of Hong Kong's wonderful investment opportunities,
which, since they are in the battery, switch or car audio trades would mean investing
in new plants to produce these things in the Pearl River Delta. Once again, that
would be a real return of favours to Mr Lo. Alternatively,
Mr Lo may go on such a trip to promote Gold Peak Industries' shares to foreign
portfolio investors and InvestHK could then tell his audiences to put their money
into things other than Gold Peak. You can just hear the applause from Mr Lo. No,
you are not deaf. The
fact is that when a businessman goes abroad on a trip specifically related to
his business the only promotional effort InvestHK staffers can make by going along
to meet people they would not otherwise meet is further promotion of that businessman's
business. Why should the taxpayers pay for this? And
if the trip instead has the general purpose of promoting Hong Kong, then these
narrowly focused contacts will prove of little use. InvestHK is in any case perfectly
capable of doing this on its own or, at least, we must assume so if we are to
give it an additional HK$200 million for this purpose. More
than this, let us get back to the coals to Newcastle character of InvestHK. I
have said it before but it obviously needs saying again. Hong Kong has HK$1.2
trillion more of claims on foreigners than foreigners have on Hong Kong, almost
the size of our economy, and our financial system at the moment has about HK$200
billion more of deposits than it has of loans. We
do not need foreign investment inflows. The world is divided into providers and
recipients of capital and we are firmly in the provider camp. It is what has made
us an international financial centre. It is what has made us rich. What
we need is not foreign money but domestic investment opportunities and the general
environment of deflation has made these scarce at the moment. Mr
Tang's scheme is pointless, almost as pointless in fact as InvestHK itself. Email
Jake van der Kamp at jakeva@scmp.com.
13. Leung does more with a new four-door
Lai
See, SCMP 11 March 2003
Talk
about road kill. Toot
toot, beep beep. It was short, and it was sweet. Antony Leung Kam-chung, a man
of the people. "As
a member of the community, I am well aware of the impact of the revenue-raising
and expenditure-cutting measures," the financial secretary humbly noted during
his budget speech last week. All
too aware of the impact, it would seem? Funny
that he didn't have the forthcoming vehicle registration tax hike in mind when
he opted to buy a shiny new Lexus 430. According
to Mr Leung, it was his baby daughter that prompted the purchase. All
40cm of her. But
yes, adding yet another car to the additional two he owns - including a Land Cruiser,
otherwise known as possibly one of the biggest cars in Hong Kong - and the BMW
he receives from the government is a no-brainer. "I
have genuine needs," Mr Leung protested when it was pointed out that what
he had done could be tantamount to tax evasion. It
all just runs slightly contrary to the spirit of this year's Budget. Including
one of Mr Leung's own sub-headings of choice, "Doing more with less".
14.
Free office suite opens door to Word files
SCMP
11 March 2003 I
refer to the anonymous letter published in the Technology section on February
25 on the widespread use of Microsoft products. Your
correspondent's claim that no other software can legally read Microsoft Word's
proprietary data format is incorrect. The
open-source office suite OpenOffice.org can read and edit Microsoft Office documents
and vice-versa. An
open-source version of StarOffice, it runs on Solaris, Microsoft Windows, Linus
and, of late Mac, Os X. It
is a fully developed, realistic alternative to Microsoft Office and it's free
to everyone. For more information and the free download please go to www.openoffice.org. David
Carr, Discovery Bay
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