The thoughts of Fred

The South China Morning Post efficiently squeezes two news stories out of one interview with former Secretary for Financial Services/Commerce Frederick Ma. In the Hong Hong establishment pantheon, Fred ‘Fat’ Ma fits into the middle-class-to-success bracket. In other words, he is one of the 1940s-50s middling-born kids who went on via HK University through talent and/or timing to greater things (typically banking – as in his case – or the civil service). More to the point: not part of the tycoon caste, nor a member of the Communist-worshipping patriotic Red sub-culture.

Unlike some officials of the 2000s, he did not leave the administrations of Tung Chee-hwa and Donald Tsang under a huge cloud. He had to take responsibility for the ‘penny-stocks affair’, though the wider blame probably lay with a range of bureaucrats. And he left prematurely for health reasons, so everyone felt sorry for him. He also became an Evangelical Christian, but more on the fuzzy Isn’t-Jesus-nice? wing of the movement than the mouth-frothing, gay-bashing, Creationist Biblical-literalist wacko side.

So in a nutshell, we’re talking about the sort of person many Hongkongers can more or less relate to and respect: local, moderate, successful and basically decent. But in times like these, it’s hard to be all these things. A more calculating man might keep his head down, but by opening up to the SCMP reporters, Fred has no choice but to take sides.

So he has to endorse the increasingly desperate-sounding pleas to pro-democrats to pass SCMP-GameOverthe political reform package. He claims that Hong Kong will be finished without these reforms, citing the recent warning (via a Chinese government ‘think-tank’) that Shenzhen is overtaking us, etc, etc.

He suggests that the mandate resulting from the package’s ‘one-man-one-vote’ system would make a difference and enable the next government to tackle ‘burning issues’. The issues he mentions are the aging population and ‘tax reform’, neither of which is strictly critical (and which are to some extent two sides of the same coin). But it is an implicit admission that the current system – which Beijing and its local supporters have insisted on preserving for years – doesn’t work. And it is a relatively rare claim that the proposed reform might impact the quality of governance.

Rather than probe him on this, the SCMP interviewers invite Fred to intone on recent remarks by Lau Ming-wai – the property tycoon’s heir whom some idiot-official made head of one ‘Youth Commission’, and who says young people should save hard to buy an overpriced tiny apartment. And poor Fred takes the bait, saying that people are picking on Lau Jr for being rich.

SCMP-RichYouth

But Lau’s sin is not being born into a rich family: it is being born into a family that got rich off the Great Hong Kong Property Scam and urging the next generation to become serfs in order to enrich the family further. Fred, ever the nice guy, concedes that upward mobility and property prices have changed since his day. But the damage is done, and the reporters have their angle.

There is an interesting dilemma for the SCMP here. As and if the paper slides further into propaganda, how should it modify material that superficially bolsters the pro-Beijing/establishment line but is so crass it probably undermines it? The editorial puppet-masters at the paper presumably made a story out of Fred’s ‘defend Lau’ position in the hope of convincing readers that Lau Jr is an innocent and that his detractors are a bunch of pro-dem beasties. Yet this article if anything highlights the hypocrisy and lack of empathy of the property cartel and the tycoon caste. (Or maybe rebel pro-dem editorial staff were at work, and that’s what we’re supposed to think. How weird is it that we can’t tell?)

The pan-dems should be seeing the property scion’s comments as Everything Wrong handed to them on a plate. The disaffected young in particular should be getting their teeth into Lau like Rottweilers, loudly and bloodily flinging him from side to side, refusing to let go. Yet the opportunity passes; the movement’s lawmakers are pondering a grandiose shadow cabinet, while the young carry on splintering into dozens of localist and student groups. With this lot as opposition, and the hapless Fred Ma and witless Lau Jr as obedient followers, the Chinese Communist Party – like the rest of us – probably doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

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6 Responses to The thoughts of Fred

  1. NIMBY says:

    …and as if an ex-banker didn’t make his money out of the property cartel? The banks were the first and fore-most leg of the tripod. If a much smaller and less mighty Li had not already existed, HSBC would have had to make a version of him from scrap, and the other banks had their pony picked too.

  2. Joe Blow says:

    Student activist Joshua Wong denied entry to Malaysia to speak about Occupy protests.

    BOYCOTT MALAYSIA

    No more holidays in Malaysia !

  3. Cassowary says:

    “But it is an implicit admission that the current system – which Beijing and its local supporters have insisted on preserving for years – doesn’t work. And it is a relatively rare claim that the proposed reform might impact the quality of governance.”

    So can anybody spell out how electing Tweedledum or Tweedledee is meant to improve our governance? Is it just the idea that they’ll have to make promises to the public in order to get themselves elected? (How’s that working out for America, where money is speech and corporations are people, my friend?)

    Is it the hope that Beijing will install an anti-tycoon CE who’ll use electoral legitimacy as a bully pulpit? Really? After having to crawl through a nominating process that still involves a fair measure kissing tycoons’ arses, especially if you’re one of the lesser candidates who doesn’t get automatic United Front support. Then having to govern with a legislature packed with the concrete pouring industry, the bankers, and the Heung Yee Kuk on one end and suspicious, hostile pan-dems on the other. That’s supposed to lead to functional governance how, now?

    If Beijing could snap its fingers and order the tycoons to pipe down, what’s stopping it from doing so right now? Why do you need a pretend election? Are they imagining that once we have a faux-elected CE, the pan-dems will slink away and the electorate will happily vote for the DAB? How is this even remotely supposed to work?

  4. inspired says:

    missed it last week, but saw this morning: Mainland cuts import duty on skincare products from 2% from 6.5% and on diapers to 2% from 7.5% …

  5. inspired says:

    typo above, should be cuts import duty on skincare products TO 2% from 6.5%

  6. PCC says:

    A fair assessment of Fred Ma but it is useful to keep in mind that he has spent his career within the orbit of Planet Li.

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