(See recent survey published by the HKU POP) ESWN brought my attention to this opinion poll conducted by the University of Hong Kong.
Other than that, what has been in the news lately?
– A queer histoire de moeurs involving the “Prince of White Flower Oil”, Stephen Gan, who was accused of sexual harassment on a local taxi driver.
– Ma Ying-jeou. The president-elect of the Republic of China (Taiwan) is always in the news. His vice-president visited Hainan province in the PRC, and met with Chinese president Hu Jintao in what was called the highest summit meeting between the two sides since 1949. We predict that Ma will visit the Mainland sometime during his first term. Major stuff.
– The open space debate has been raging for weeks before I arrived in Hong Kong. Private developers (housing, commercial) control land that does not belong to them, but that is rather considered “public space”. We talk about plazas, the pavement, the street and all that, which is normally “public”, but is under the jurisdiction of private companies that define rules for them as if it were their own. Times Square, a popular shopping mall in Hong Kong, is at the middle of the media storm.
It’s a shame that I don’t have the time to take more photographs of the South China Morning Post, the most-respected English-language newspaper in Hong Kong. I think that their editorials and opinion texts are 100 times more balanced than what we read in North America or Europe, with respect to particular current events. We also do take things with grains of salt, and hope that this will not degenerate into a new episode of the Clash of Civilizations.