Acceptable ‘leaders’ found in the snooker hall

Stan-Leaders-Economy

Is anyone nostalgic for early-/mid-2015 – those days of contrived ranting and rage against the Occupy/Umbrella movement for wrecking the Hong Kong economy (even though the GDP stats had ticked along as if nothing had happened)? If so, they should have been at the Sing Tao News-sponsored HK Leaders of the Year awards on Friday.

Sing Tao boss Charles Ho used the occasion to dust off last year’s official Beijing-approved diatribe against unpatriotic radical lawbreaking protesters, mentioning several of the movement’s leading figures by name. Benny Tai, Joshua Wong, Alan Leong – all more or less well-known and, in the case of the boy Joshua, a global star worthy of the front page of Time. They and their companions are still making news today, with Scholarism and the Civic Party both recently announcing plans for future anti-establishment awkwardness.

Ho’s remarks are an exquisite example of the Hong Kong elite’s unique style of gratuitous, frantic and embarrassing shoe-shining – ritualized self-humiliation as a means to prove loyalty…

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Even Chief Executive CY Leung must have blushed as Ho took a swipe against spoilt kids being unable to support themselves. If I had inherited a tobacco monopoly from my father, I’d have left that bit out.

So having trashed Hong Kong’s heroes of civic consciousness, Ho hands out the awards for Leaders of the Year. The judges are predictable pro-establishment types, including Professor Arthur Li, installed by the government on HK University’s Council to root out such enemies of the Chinese Communist Party on campus as the aforementioned Benny Tai. The ‘Leaders’, by contrast, are people of whom we have never heard.

This is not necessarily because they are worthless nonentities, but because in Hong Kong scions of tobacco monopolies, property cartels and banking empires are far more important than people who use their own talent to accomplish anything socially useful. (By ‘more important’ we mean ‘richer and more desperate to grovel to the Communist Party’.)

One of the Leaders of the Year is HKU Professor Vivian Yam Wing-wah, who’s into LED-type research. Another is Chinese U Professor Emily Chan Ying-yan, who has worked on humanitarian missions. Then there’s Yeung Kin-man, ‘king of touchscreens’. He gets an extra big pat on the head for being the richest person in Hong Kong who is not part of the property cartel/pyramid scheme…

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Could this be the same property cartel that has crushed the innovation and entrepreneurship out of Hong Kong? Yes it could. The ‘Leaders of the Year Awards’ do not do irony.

The remaining two winners are Ng On-yee and Wu Siu-hong, champions in snooker and bowling. How can they be ‘leaders’ when these are not even team sports? Indeed, not even sports, but pastimes on a par with Monopoly or Dungeons & Dragons? No matter. The organizers had to find some youngsters, and with the rest of Hong Kong kids joining the Fishball Revolution or launching Scholarism Mk 2, the closest we could get to ‘wholesome’ were in the snooker hall.

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The Standard’s glowing coverage (on-line on today’s flip-the-pages, p20-21), is headlined ‘Leaders honored among peers’. Sadly, ‘Decent innocent citizens dragged into tycoon’s grotesque kowtowing charade’ wouldn’t fit.

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17 Responses to Acceptable ‘leaders’ found in the snooker hall

  1. Chinese Netizen says:

    Probably lots of frozen-smiling-faced, slick haired, anus lickers clapping in the unison method, a la up north when some grand poobah visits a front line unit, coal mine or factory.

  2. Cynic says:

    They have all the qualities of leaders… except followers

  3. Joe says:

    “Indeed, not even sports, but pastimes on a par with Monopoly or Dungeons & Dragons?”

    But below Scrabble right?

  4. But we all know who the real leaders are. Infiltrate, demonstrate, agitate. The world belongs to us.

  5. LRE says:

    “[Speaking at the Parasite of the Year ceremony on Friday, Ho] stressed that independence is impossible, and that one should not believe in what the United States preaches.”

    I am mildly perplexed. The only US preaching I’ve seen is an SCMP article “Separatism is suicidal – US democracy expert urges Hong Kong activists to act smarter”. Said article — as you may have guessed — said that an independent Hong Kong is not possible.

    So following Mr Ho’s advice, we must ignore that wrong-headed capitalist imperialist propaganda, and seek true independence for Hong Kong.

    As a bonus, thanks to Mr Ho’s fine work, we also have a pretty good list of who to put up against the wall first and in what order when the revolution comes!

  6. HillnotPeak says:

    Ahh, Eddy Ng was there, in uniform?

  7. reductio says:

    Gold Bauhinias with oak leaf clusters all-round!

  8. BUSYBODY says:

    What (pray) is “scholarism”? Please elucidate, if possible — cannot find a definition in the usual places, i.e. dictionary, encyclopedia. Perhaps something to do with dyslexia (or worse) maybe?

  9. Headache says:

    Perhaps maybe, BUSYBODY, these kids are smarter than you think. Perhaps maybe even smarter than your erudite self.

    Perhaps maybe it’s not dyslexia but a portmanteau of scholar, representing their status as students, and schism, representing their politics.

    Perhaps maybe it isn’t to your taste, but perhaps maybe they’re doing more to advance the debate than some smug prat on a message board.

  10. Headache says:

    Btw, great post today Hemmers.

  11. Hermes says:

    “one should not believe in what the United States preaches.” Strange, then, that his own son Kent was educated in the US.

  12. Bob says:

    “Probably lots of frozen-smiling-faced, slick haired, anus lickers clapping in the unison method”

    Sounds like an average day at work for me

  13. Joe Blow says:

    @Hermes: And Xi Jin-ping’s daughter is being educated at Harvard as we speak. Let’s hope she doesn’t get tainted by the ideas of the Enlightenment.

    Independence is not a flag, new banknotes and a series of Henry Steiner-designed stamps. It’s something that lives in the hearts of people. Hong Kong’s independence was born when the drug pimps of Jardine’s opened their first godown. The people always remained independent, and distant, from the colonialists, the Jap occupiers and the unworthies who took over on 1/7/97. Even 50 million China tourists, an endless supply of China immigrants and even the most evil schemes of 689 and wannabe Vagina Ip aren’t going to change the fact.

    China may have bitten off far more than it can chew.

  14. dimuendo says:

    Joe Blow

    Given his official remuneration how can President Xi and his retired singing wife afford Harvard’s fees? Or is there something we do not know?

    Headache

    I suspect BUSYBODY may be a chastened Qian Jie.

  15. WTF says:

    Hillnot Peak

    Eddie Ng dressed as a clown will do half-hour shows at $5000 a pop to stop create more suicides. Fewer students means more schools for local children can be shuttered and sold on to mainland interests running cross-boarder academies.

  16. BUSYBODY says:

    wot, wot? who is Qian Jie? why is he/me chastened…? “enlighten” please.

  17. WTF says:

    BTW, on “Ho’s remarks are an exquisite example of the Hong Kong elite’s unique style of gratuitous, frantic and embarrassing shoe-shining”…

    Please, using the word ‘elite’ takes the parasite’s point of view. Let them call themselves ‘elite’. The rest know that they really are parasites. And they are not ‘Hong Kong’s’. We owe them nothing.

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