Hong Kong seeks ‘quality people’

Last week’s big amusement was the Hong Kong government’s subsidies for employers hiring tech-geek-inno ‘talent’. This was partly because the whole concept was so lame – but mainly because the website concerned was so outdated, user-unfriendly and clunky.

Another week, another desperate Hong Kong government attempt to lure outstanding specimens with super-human powers to our shores. Behold the Talent List, to ‘attract quality people from around the world’. It’s called ‘Talent List’ because ‘this once-great city is becoming wretchedly unpleasant to live in, please come here’ wouldn’t fit.

Anyway, the exciting this is that this has a genuinely modern-looking groovy website – click right here and be amazed.

A few quibbles about the home page’s aesthetics…

The red discs on which little cartoon images are portrayed vividly bring to mind Japan, don’t they? Memories come flooding back of all the exploitation, suffering and humiliation the Nipponese devil-dwarfs inflicted on the defenseless motherland during the 20th Century. If you don’t realize how grossly insensitive this is to the feelings of all the Chinese people, you shouldn’t be creating Hong Kong official websites in this day and age. (And if you think I am exaggerating, check back in a few months and see if the ‘rising sun’ is still there.)

The aforementioned cartoon images that represent the targeted professions betray another lack of sensitivity. In some parts of the world – anthropologists call them the Hello Kitty Cultures – such graphic design is normal in an adult context and the light-heartedness not considered out of place (try this actual and brilliant Hong Kong public ambulance). Elsewhere, such illustrations appear too childish or unserious for something as important as, say, a government promotion aimed at skilled and intellectual personnel.

Not that the visuals matter. The scheme is probably aimed at appeasing our own whining corporate scroungers. Certain semi-obscure sectors – notably maritime services and waste treatment – seem to have convinced officials that we need to attract qualified manpower specially for them. A large proportion of the professionals in demand have something to do with shipping (and it so happens the government is now flinging taxpayers’ money at something called the ‘marine insurance industry’, because Singapore competitiveness micro-management gotta-do-something whatever).

It’s a quick and easy way for officials to give the impression that they care deeply about the maritime lobby. Why this one sector deserves so much bureaucratic groveling is a mystery*.

Top government officials probably don’t realize that ‘superintendents of ships’ and the like are feral lowlifes. As if to even things out, the wily civil servants have added the world’s most mind-numbing blandness-driven vocation to the Talent List – actuaries.

* In fairness, they did bankroll this place.

This entry was posted in Blog. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to Hong Kong seeks ‘quality people’

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    **Friends of HKMM**
    Join our membership scheme NOW for our exciting upcoming activities!

    Surely there will be a permanent exhibit on the benefits and virtues of Belt-N-Road?

  2. Good to see the excellent Maritime Museum getting some recognition. If it seems way ahead of other HK museums (check out what railway enthusiasts here think of the Railway Museum, by comparison), that’s probably because the government had very little to do with its creation.

  3. old git says:

    HKMA appears not to have received the Talent List Memo on Fintech requirements:

    Experience preferably in the leading companies in the relevant field , such as artificial intelligence, advanced software skills, big data analytics, blockchain applications and cybersecurity.

  4. Chris Maden says:

    The heading “Data scientists and Cyber security specialists” clicks through to “Experienced data scientists and Experienced cyber security specialists.” And, for anyone in doubt as to who those people may be, is subtitled “Information and communication technology services.”

    The Immigration Guidance clicks through to the Quality Migrant Admittance Scheme, which is hardly news (though in fairness far less onerous in substance than Australia’s various schemes).

    Another world unfirst from HK Government.

  5. doofus says:

    I wonder why the Maritime Museum omits all mention of the first official British encounter with China.

    It’s memorably detailed in the book Anson’s Voyage Round the World, by Richard Walter. We can also read the Chinese side of the story. I forget where.

    A remarkable story and a shadow of things to come.

    It led to the Chinese side concluding that when it came to foreigners, the British were the biggest bandits of all.

  6. Joe Blow says:

    I am already totally comfortable with the expression ‘Bay Area’.

    Bay Area.

  7. steve says:

    The Creative Industries blurb features a picture of Morgan Freeman, who has been caught up in the #metoo dragnet. So the Talent List is looking to import creepy uncles to spice up the moribund movie industry?

Comments are closed.