Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing lawmakers decide some xenophobia is in order. The New People’s Party’s Eunice Yung decides to attack brown people for cluttering up the city and causing hygiene problems. And her DAB colleagues warn that white judges newly appointed to the Court of Final Appeal could undermine family values by promoting gay marriage, not to mention threaten national security.
Complaining about domestic workers gathering on Sundays goes back decades – maybe back to when the Yung family’s helper was changing Eunice’s diapers. It hugely angers some grumpy, miserable and frustrated Hongkongers that far lower-paid maids on their day off have the nerve to be so vivacious and happy.
The fact is that without cheap Filipino and Indonesian servants, the economics of middle-class Hong Kong would collapse: mothers would have to stay at home, and it would be impossible for single-income households to pay their mortgages. (Correction – the economics of Hong Kong’s tycoon-cartel scam would collapse.)
The foreign judges/gay marriage issues are examples of a major contradiction the Hong Kong government must try to live with.
As an ‘international’ business hub, the city needs some foreign judges at least as a symbol to reassure companies that the colonial-era legal system with an independent judiciary is intact. And, to compete as a location for regional HQs, it needs to issue visas to partners of high-flying expat executives, even when the spouses are same-sex (arrangements Hong Kong doesn’t recognize).
But as the loyal puppet of a Communist/nationalistic dictatorship, the local administration cannot contradict Beijing’s official ideology – that foreigners in general are suspect (unless they wash dishes), rule of law is abhorrent, and fusses about gay (indeed, any) rights are a threat.
The Hong Kong government faces similar dilemmas with press freedom, and with the overall positioning of the city as simultaneously international/pluralistic and patriotic/obedient. In the long run, Hong Kong will be rectified. Meanwhile, the local officials must wring their hands while juggling the incompatible demands of international business and the CCP. (You can’t wring hands and juggle at the same time? Quite.)
Taken aback by criticism (and maybe nervous about rat poison in her dinner that night), Eunice has taken some selfies with happy smiling brown people. And the DAB lawmakers dutifully endorsed the new judges (the CCP has devised ways to override the courts anyway, so can live with them).
With pro-democrats being ousted from the legislature, the pro-Beijing quasi-politicians are presumably being told to increase their profile. But their populism-pandering skills clearly need work.
Whilst easy-on-the-eyes (as best a pro CCP flunky in HK can be), poor Eunice must be slightly regretful about her Faustian bargain with Vagina to be the “acceptable” and “least detestable” face/mouthpiece of her party.
Also…why isn’t she catching flak for being a “left over woman” and not contributing to HK’s glory by producing more little future private school urchins?? Difficult times when you need a sugar daddy and you’re over 40!
Anybody who is a solicitor should turn up at the Law Society’s AGM tonight, Thursday. There may be a bit of fun.
As usual, Junius has a selective memory of Chinese culture: it is only under the (evil, foreign) influence of Westerners that people in China have become officially monogamous, previously as many wives as one could support was the norm. Perhaps he is too busy with his political (buddy-buddy) dinners to watch the TVB historical dramas.
I doubt Eunice regrets hitching her wagon to Vagina. She’d enthusiastically done so when I met her a decade ago, long before anyone knew who she was. She isn’t obnoxious like the boss lady, and may be something of a misguided innocent, but she does seem to be similarly tone deaf. Ultimately, whether she’s nice or not, she’ll be judged on her policy positions, and history is unlikely to shower glory on those who stand with the authoritarians.
I refrain from commenting on her romantic entanglements as it got me censored last time (I don’t dispute the umpire’s call).
A question on Beholden Chow/Dubious Ho’s traditional Chinese family values — do those values include the traditional female infanticide by drowning, polygamy, concubines and foot-binding?
Or are we burying those traditional values in the same shallow grave we used to get rid of the 1967 riots and bombings by the FTU and that huge PLA massacre of students all over Beijing and other parts of China in 1989?
@Chinese Netizen
Nice catch Eunice Yung of The Racist People’s Party on her lack of marriage. Those who live by intolerant stereotyping should be crucified by intolerant stereotyping!
A more cynical person – such as myself – might have speculated that she was unmarried because she likes to cozy up to Vagina in more ways than one. Unleash Dubious Ho and the DAB hounds on her!
As one would expect, the comments section here is sometimes insightful, sometimes sycophantic, sometimes inane. It takes an occasional turn towards the purely offensive when some commenters decide that a lad mag perspective on female politicians would be a clever rhetorical strategy.
Listen up, boyos: The odious political views of Regina Ip and Eunice Yung have nothing whatsoever to do with their physical attributes, the nature of their sex organs, their relationship status, or their sexual preferences. To draw the obvious parallel, I don’t recall anyone hereabouts speculating about the size of Junius Ho’s penis as a form of political critique (which would be equally juvenile and jejune, of course).
Is it any wonder that very few women participate in these discussions?
@ steve : politics have always been a men affair, it is actually no wonder there are lots of women at the forefront in the pro-establishment camp (Lam/Ip/Yung/Cheng) as they are not there for politics and by conviction but to show a modern/pretty face on a retrograde dictatorship apparel. There is not a single woman where the power really is (sai wan/beijing).
I’m not saying having women in politics is the cause of the current lack of power of HK politics, it is more likely that having many women is actually the consequence of the absence of power in Hong Kong politics.
LOL…good one, steve, with the self righteous, holier-than-thou spiel. And now for something completely different…
I first met Euncie maybe 20 years ago, when she was pupilled (ie a pupil or trainee barrister) to a friend of mine.
Although he and I are not impressed by her political stance, and in particular her association with Regina, the fact is that Eunice even then was pleasant, bright, articulate and even sassy (in the British sense) rather than a facless clone as are so many barristers and their pupils .
She is one of the very few people over 15 years of asking the same question, namely how to improve my childrens putonghua actually tried to help.
I liked her then and when I occasionally come across her now still like her .
She is nothing like Junius Ho and has very little in personality in common with Regina.
Female reader here… I’d like to say bravo to Steve. He’s spot on.