This is like shooting low-hanging fruit in a barrel taken from a baby, but…
From yesterday’s South China Morning Post, Chief Editor-in-waiting Tammy Tam produces yet another of those ‘Hong Kong must compete with Mainland cities’ pieces. This theme goes back over 10 years, and is aimed at scaring Hong Kong into obedience to Beijing, without whose generosity we would be starving and derelict.
She begins by noting that we don’t suffer the sort of carnage that is routine on the Mainland, like Shenzhen’s recent man-made landslide disaster. But if we are so competent, she goes on, how come our government is failing to develop the convention business as successfully as second- and third-tier Chinese cities like Wuzhen, which hosted the recent World Internet Conference?
Before the reader can start trying to grasp the connection or ask ‘Wu-what?’, she proceeds to heap praise on the accomplishments of the city of Zhengzhou, which hosted the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.
The World Internet Conference was about legitimizing state censorship, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – as its members’ tacky flags suggest – is an assortment of central Asian ex-Soviet thugocracies slated for absorption into the Greater Motherland Co-Prosperity Belt-Road Sphere at some future date. We may very well ask why we should want such people in our midst at all?
Tammy adds that both Wen-whatever and Zhengzhou were given these events because of ties with the current leadership – connections with which Hong Kong is sadly not blessed.
And why does Hong Kong need more conventions? As all right-minded people are painfully aware, we have too many visitors already. And the ‘MICE’ travel-industry niche is surely best left to loser-cities like Macau or Dubai; you never hear London or New York bleating about wanting more conventions – they probably have agencies dedicated to sending these bore-fests elsewhere.
Having asserted that our superior, non-Shenzhen level of governance is no excuse for failing to attract dismal conferences just as obscure Mainland cities do, Tammy concludes that Hong Kong needs to continue being different from these aforementioned centres. Presumably, we should host the conferences in a different way – maybe make all the attendees sit facing the rear of the convention hall. Yes, that would do it.
What we really need is a conference for people who do not normally get invited to conferences. They could also stand up for the entire event. That would be different …
I’ve been in Zhengzhou. It sucked.
It’s frightening really to think that Tammy’s going to be in charge.
There are pcmp journalists who can write cogently, fairly pithily and relatively lucidly on anodyne matters. There are a few who possess a little imagination or even creativity.
Among the females, a few seem to be tolerated due to their photogenic or flirtatious qualities, or at the very least their youth.
But the poor woman has, as far as I can see, no redeeming qualities at all. Is she some sort of fall “guy”, a reductio ad absurdum designed to show us what the glorious patriotic future holds?
Sorry, I meant: pro-integration MP.
If Ms. Tam lasts more than six months under the Alibaba regime, then that will be confirmation that the SCMP has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP. There’s no way Mr. Ma would tolerate such unflagging obtuseness otherwise.
Even the comments on wee, timid Tammy’s piece are overwhelmingly derisive of both the piece and its scribbler (the usual flock of wumao commentators on PCMP are evidently taking a well-deserved seasonal holiday).
Just a pity none so far have made Hemmer’s point about the egregiously nasty nature of the two conferences cited.
Are you sure Tammy Tam isn’t actually a bot? They’ve got AIs that write passably good poetry nowadays. It would be fairly easy to program one to write “patriotic” opinion pieces. You just feed it a template and have it randomly plug in words and concepts from a “Motherland Good”/”Hong Kong bad” database. It’s not like it needs to make logical sense.
And that is how you end up with a piece that says “Don’t Feel Good About Not Dying Gruesomely, Feel Bad That You Haven’t Got Enough Conferences.”
Tammy Tam emits a foul and unpleasant odor. That’s how we know that she is not a pre-programmed robot.
Zhengzhou is one of the worst places I have ever had the misfortune to stay in the PRC. You wouldhave to pay me to go back there……….oh.