Traces of Oliver

HK government encourages e-mail encryption

The Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department points out that e-mail is "vulnerable to third-party interception", encourages people to encrypt e-mail and makes the public key of the department's e-mail address easily available. Moreover, they will reply by e-mail only if you request this and give them your own public key. I'm really impressed!

"Godfather economies" in Asia

I started reading the excerpts from Joe Studwell's recent book, "Asian Godfathers: Money and Power in Hong Kong and South-East Asia". Fascinating reading - very illuminating. Helps me understand why Hong Kong (not to mention some South-East Asian countries) is in such a mess: why its economic and political system is so heavily biased in favour of the "happy few", and why this situation won't change a lot in the foreseeable future.

Thanks to Asia Sentinel for publishing the excerpts.

Martin Lee's WSJ article, and what happened next

What a sad story. Hong Kong legislator Martin Lee writes an article for the Wall Street Journal ("China's Olympic Opportunity", 17 October 2007) - which the pro-Beijing press and pro-Beijing political parties in Hong Kong take as a welcome pretext for attacking him in a huge smear campaign.

It's obvious how nervous the Communists are: a citizen makes use of his right of expression (and, by the way, speaks out against boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics!) and is immediately branded as a "traitor", an "unpatriotic" person, somebody who invites "foreign forces" to meddle with China's "internal" affairs. This from those who are constantly meddling with Hong Kong's internal affairs, showing no respect whatsoever for the autonomy granted to Hong Kong by the Chinese government. And as was to be expected, not a single word from the Hong Kong government in defense of a Hong Konger's right to free speech.