We have always believed that Hong Kong must make all efforts to retain its international status to remain relevant in China's economic development.
It has been said time and again that Hong Kong has no asset but its people.
Movie stars, pop idols, teenage heartthrobs and party-hopping socialites, move over. Here comes the professor.
Hong Kongers take pride in being cool-headed, savvy consumers. But when it comes to buying their homes, the most important purchase a consumer is likely to make in his lifetime, caution and decorum are often thrown to the winds.
Ask a mainland business leader what his biggest ambition is, and he is likely to say, at least in public, that he wants his company to make it into one of those world-wide corporate ranking lists.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption, or ICAC, is one of the most revered institutions in Hong Kong. Its record of combating corruption, which was at one time the curse of Hong Kong, has been well documented and widely studied by law enforcement agencies in various other jurisdictions, including the mainland.
In the course of editing a four-part property series last month, I was shocked to read how recklessly mainland homebuyers, especially those in Shanghai, could talk about their mortgage commitments. They seem to believe that a drop in price of the properties they bought is justification for them to renege on their loan obligations.
Three years into journalism at a Hong Kong newspaper, I thought I was one of the greatest writers in the profession. My world came crashing down the first day I went to work for a large US newspaper. It was actually the first night when I got a call from an editor. His first words were: "We've got a lot of problems with your story."
Singapore's progress from a British naval base and a tiny trading outpost to an international financial centre has often been held up as a model for developing countries around the world. Its stable government and orderly society have been the envy of citizens in some neighbouring countries suffering rampant corruption and frequent civil strife.
It's too bad that we have to repeatedly visit this goods and services, or sales, tax issue. Don't you get it? It's a bad idea for Hong Kong, born out of desperation in an economic slump that is pretty much history by now.
We journalists hate big words. But sometimes we can't really avoid them because too many politicians and commentators love to use big words to cover their inadequacies or, worse, lies.
Coming from Hong Kong, I find it rather difficult to sympathize with the moaning and groaning of the mainland's "mortgage slaves."
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