Wednesday, May 27, 2015 A17

Turning tide?

Gift of friends
Kelly Yang says a story
about a great friendship
has inspired her to pay
more attention to
deepening ties outside the family

Paul Letters says whether refugees

cast adrift in regional seas are
persecuted Rohingya or economic
migrants, we all have a duty
to ensure they are rescued
from their desperate situation

he waves of refugees and

economic migrants attempting
to cross the seas has too often
been seen as a threat to be
repelled. Now, certain key
countries are suddenly implementing progressive policies for helping rather than
turning away desperate individuals and
families smuggled across the seas. This
needs to be the beginning not the peak
of regional and international cooperation
on what is fundamentally a humanitarian
issue.
UN figures suggest that 25,000 refugees
and migrants left Myanmar and Bangladesh in the first quarter of this year, double
the number over the same period in 2014.
The region has been slow to act. Aseans
motto of One Vision, One Identity, One
Community hardly stands up in the face
of its members turning away boatloads of
human suffering. The Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, currently
chaired by Malaysia, has had nothing to
say about Myanmars persecution of its
Rohingya minority.
However, last week, following the Philippines announcement that it is prepared
to receive up to 3,000 potential refugees,
Malaysia, together with Indonesia and
then Thailand, announced a reversal of the
policies of turning away boats. Malaysia
and Indonesia agreed to temporarily
receive up to 7,000 Rohingya and Bangladeshi people, and offers of resettlement
are dripping in from countries as far flung
as Gambia in West Africa.
Recently, the Thai government has
targeted the human trafficking gangs with
action that the Asian and international
community must develop into a broader,
coordinated approach against this dirty
business. One boatload of desperate people can be sold to Thai smugglers for
US$30,000. Smugglers then hold these
people prisoners, often around the ThaiMalay border where mass graves have
been found and demand over US$1,000
per person in ransom from their families.
The effects of cracking down on the
smugglers have resulted in the gangs now
abandoning refugee boats far out to sea.
The Thai authorities need support from
the international community.
Now, even Myanmar is changing its
stance. It has long refused to participate in
any talks that threatened to mention the
Rohingya people by name. But it is sending officials to Bangkok this Thursday,
when Southeast Asian nations will discuss

the human trafficking crisis. According to a

Myanmar government spokesperson,
assurances that the term irregular
migrant will be used instead of Rohingya have brought them to the table.
The US is also getting involved, offering
financial aid and indicating a willingness
to receive some of the Rohingyas permanently. It would be gratifying to see Beijing
step up and offer assistance: that could
only help reduce the impression that
China tends only to get involved in Southeast Asia when seeking opportunities to
advance territorial claims.

The US is also getting

involved, offering
financial aid It
would be gratifying to
see Beijing step up
What has prompted certain nations to
act for the good of humanity now? Moral
leadership had been at best ignored and, in
some quarters, utterly lacking including
from Aung San Suu Kyi herself. Myanmar
nationalists in the 90 per cent Buddhist
state depict Suu Kyi as the Muslim lover
in a country where public sympathy for
Rohingya Muslims is conspicuously
absent. But now that Myanmars government has finally acknowledged the issue
exists, Suu Kyi should take the risk of losing
some votes in Novembers election and

speak out. The reasons for the improved

efforts lie more internationally, with
prompts coming from recent UN condemnation of the refusal of Southeast
Asian countries to rescue those adrift at
sea, together with unprecedented media
reports. Last week, the BBC showed the
world footage of life on board: throngs of
increasingly sick people live for months in
filthy conditions, stacked on overcrowded
wooden shelves in the hold a sight painfully reminiscent of the Atlantic slave
trade, something we thought had been
consigned to history.
Last month, boats carrying almost
2,000 people from Africa to Europe sank in
the Mediterranean Sea, with over 1,200
lives lost. The European Union is now
planning military operations to inspect,
seize and dispose of vessels involved in the
smuggling of migrants.
UN Security Council permanent members China, Russia and the US are also in
on these EU negotiations. We need to see
the UN and its member states take a global
view of this issue: the underlying causes of
poverty and persecution which drive people from Africa and the Middle East to
make the harrowing journey to Europe are
similar to the issues Southeast Asia is now
confronting.
Last week, in rejecting Indonesias
direct request for assistance, Australian
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop seized upon
the Indonesian governments claim that
only 30 to 40 per cent of people rescued
from the Andaman Sea are Rohingya
asylum seekers. In response to developments in Southeast Asia, Prime Minister
Tony Abbott said, I dont apologise in any
way for the action that Australia has taken

to preserve safety at sea by turning boats

around where necessary. He described
that as necessary if the scourge of people
smuggling is to be beaten.
Indonesia and, by implication, Australia, estimate that 60 to 70 per cent of those
stranded at sea are illegal labourers from
Bangladesh who seek jobs in Malaysia. If
such an assumption is correct, so what? So
what if some are political refugees and
some are economic refugees? These Bangladeshi are still in desperate need, like the
Rohingya, but for different reasons. People
and that is the key word, whether they be
Bangladeshi or Rohingya are duped by
criminal gangs who extort quantities of
extra cash from the families of their prisoners and hold them in appalling conditions.
Over the past week, at a time when Australia once presented as a beacon of
democratic light and civilised development in a region of unsavoury regimes
has pointed the finger at those stranded at
sea as economic imposters, Myanmar has
taken a progressive turn. Last Friday,
Myanmar which at 150th on the UNs
Human Development Index is ranked
below every Asian nation bar Yemen and
Afghanistan (whereas Australia is ranked
second in the world) performed its first
rescue of a migrant boat. Over 200 people
all Bangladeshis, apparently have been
saved by Myanmars navy.
We can only hope governmental talks
in Bangkok bring more progress. Its time
all players in the region and beyond
stepped up to the mark, for the good of
humanity.
Paul Letters is a freelance journalist
and novelist. See paulletters.com

wo weeks ago, I came across the most

extraordinary essay by Matthew Teague in
Esquire magazine. Teagues wife was diagnosed
with stage four cancer at the age of 34. The cancer was
everywhere; like somebody dipped a paintbrush in
cancer and flicked it around her abdomen, he wrote.
He and his wife have two little girls. To help him get
through this devastating situation, Teagues best
friend quit his job and moved in.
The first thing I thought after reading this
extraordinary story was, Wow, thats an amazing
friend. That was followed by: I dont have a friend
like that.
Ten years of being out here in Hong Kong will do
that to a person. Ive missed more weddings, baby
showers and reunions of friends back home in the
United States than I can count.
And while I do have friends in Hong Kong, here,
we are tied together by geography, rather than
mutual interests.
These days, hanging out with friends in Hong
Kong consists of three or four people slumped on the
couch or at a restaurant table, all checking their
iPhones. Any talking that gets done takes place over
WhatsApp and usually involves a multitude of
emoticons. Why articulate your feelings when you
can just slap on a smiley icon?
Not that any of that bothered me. But when I read
Teagues article, suddenly, I got a gnawing feeling in
my gut, a worry that if I didnt start making time for
friends real time, not just WhatsApp time it was
going to be too late for me.
To my surprise, when I showed my teenage
students the article, many did not share this fear. I
asked them how many of them, if they knew for sure
they could end up with a friend like Teagues
someone who really steps up for you would put the
time and energy into cultivating that friendship. Very
few people raised their hands and the ones who did
quickly yanked them back down.
Friendships are overrated, the kids informed
me. They said very matter-of-factly that the chances
of them ever needing such a level of emotional
support was low. One even asked, Is this friend really
smart or something? Is he rich? Apparently all that
factored into their decision.
I stared at them in disbelief. What had happened
to them? I remember being a teenager once. My
friends meant so much to me. Theyre what got me
through some of the hardest times of my life.
Interestingly, a study recently found that rats also
treasure friendships. When rats were given a choice
between saving another rat who was drowning and a
piece of chocolate, they chose to help the rat.
That these pesky little critters could be so
compassionate gives me hope. Im confident that if
rats can do it, so can we. Its going to take the
reshuffling of our priorities and putting down our
phones, but it can happen.
I hope to follow in the kind rats footsteps, starting
this summer, relaxing with friends as I take in the
beach and the sun.
Kelly Yang teaches writing at The Kelly Yang Project,
an after-school centre for writing and debate in Hong Kong.
She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School.
www.kellyyang.edu.hk

Rural committees must serve all

residents, not just indigenous villagers

To know China, we must

understand the party ruling it

David Newberry says the interests of all homeowners and the common good are unfairly neglected

Robert Lawrence Kuhn urges study of a series of Communist Party books

n Thursday, the
Communist Party is
publishing in English an
unprecedented series of books,
titled Understanding the CPC.
The launch, at BookExpo
America in New York, where
China is the featured country of
honour, is a milestone, marking
the partys dual commitment to
domestic renewal and
international outreach.
China is at a crossroads, and
the outcomes will affect the
entire world. The only way to
grasp its current conditions and
anticipate its future prospects is
to understand what the party is
and how it works.
These books are the
Communist Party explaining
itself philosophies and policies,
organisation and governance,
vision and challenges. These are
not dispassionate, academic
critiques, but real-life
expositions of how the party
interprets itself. It is good to
know what the party wants the
world to know. Understanding
the CPC is the story of the party,
told by the party. This is how the
party thinks.
President Xi Jinpings
Four Comprehensives, his
overarching political theory,
elevates strictly governing the
party to the highest rank (along
with building a moderately
prosperous society, deepening
reform, and governing
according to law). It has become
Xis transformative hallmark.
Although previous leaders have
stressed party discipline, none
has done so like Xi.
Wang Qishan
, the
partys anti-corruption chief,
declared that one cannot

he rural representative
elections took place in the
New Territories in January
this year. Since 2003, there have
been two elected positions for
each village the indigenous
village representative, elected by
descendants of families which
lived in the village in 1898, and
the resident village
representative, elected by
permanent Hong Kong identity
card holders who live in the
village. These elections are
controlled by the Rural
Representative Election
Ordinance, and the
representatives are elected to
serve on a rural committee, of
which there are 27.
The committees are
influential and are used by the
government to assess village
sentiment; the chair of each
committee serves on the Heung
Yee Kuk and is an ex officio
member of the relevant district
council. Crucially, the
committees fulfil a pivotal role in
the administration of the small
house policy.
So, how do these committees
work? Recently, a registered
elector wrote to the Home
Affairs Bureau asking for details
of the meetings of the rural
committee serving his village.
The reply from the district office
was that the dealings of the rural
committees were not open to
public for enquiries. It
transpires that that the
committees are merely
registered societies, with no
requirement to be transparent,
or even to publish a constitution.
So, although members are
elected, there is no requirement
for the representatives to be

accountable to their electorate

or anyone else not even the
Home Affairs Bureau knows
what goes on at the meetings.
Although the process of electing
members is controlled by the
ordinance, the rural committees
themselves are uncontrolled.
They are funded by the taxpayer
members receive a small
stipend with no requirement to
account for this money.
What do the committees see
as their role? When the outline
zoning plan was being drawn up
for the Hoi Ha enclave, the Sai

Rural
committees
operate without
regulation
and without
accountability
Kung North Rural Committees
only comment was that more
land should be set aside for
building small houses.
The large majority of the
actual residents of Hoi Ha 35
people wrote to the rural
committee asking that it should
also express residents concerns
over sewage facilities, parking
and other infrastructure
problems, should the village be
increased significantly in size.
The reply made it clear that nonindigenous villagers were, and
always would be, outsiders,
and that the primary aim of the
rural committee is to look after

the traditional interest of the

indigenous villagers, particularly
to safeguard their traditional
rights on village houses.
The rural committee also
asserted that this right to build
a village house was absolute,
irrespective of where the
indigenous villager lived.
So, rural committees exist
primarily to safeguard the
interests of indigenous villagers,
most of whom do not live in the
village, and representing the
views of outsiders, who may
own property and have lived in
the village for decades, is not
part of their remit. Yet, the
ordinance makes it clear that
resident representatives should
not deal with the rights and
interests of indigenous villagers.
Surely, those representatives,
who now make up 50 per cent of
the committees, should be
speaking for all village residents,
including outsiders.
The rural committees were
set up during the Japanese
occupation for village heads.
This worked well when village
heads lived in their village and
were in daily contact with the
residents, all of whom were
indigenous.
However, with the advent of
the small house policy in 1972,
the demographics of villages
changed; the village head often
moved away and, in many
villages, the non-indigenous
population began to outnumber
the indigenous.
For this reason, the
government introduced the
resident representative in 2003
to serve village residents.
However, although the
ordinance was gazetted to

control the election processes,

no changes were made to the
status of the rural committees,
which continue to operate
without regulation and without
accountability to the electorate
or taxpayers.
The solutions to this
unsatisfactory situation are easy.
In the short term, the
committees should publish
agendas and minutes of
meetings; the meetings should
be open to the public and audio
recordings made. In the long
term, rural committees should
be controlled by legislation and
their responsibilities to
represent the residents of
villages, as well as non-resident
indigenous villagers, should be
clearly defined.
The present situation, where
rural committees are run so that
the indigenous villager diaspora
may make money out of the
small house policy, irrespective
of the social and environmental
damage this might cause to the
village, must be replaced with
one where the committees
represent equally the wishes and
views of the people who actually
live in the villages as well as
serving the cultural needs of
indigenous villagers.
David Newberry is co-founder of
Friends of Hoi Ha, an environmental
advocacy group, which recently
joined the Save Our Country
Parks Alliance
> CONTACT US
Agree or disagree with the opinions
on this page? Write to us at
letters@scmp.com.
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article, email it to oped@scmp.com

understand China without

understanding the Communist
Party. The essential
characteristic of socialism with
Chinese characteristics, he said,
is the leadership of the
Communist Party. Building a
moderately prosperous society
would be impossible, Wang
continued, without party rule.
Understanding the party
addresses three fundamental
questions. First, why has China
opted for one-party rule; by
what right does the party hold
perpetual rule? Second, what is it
about party structure,
organisation and governance
that enables it to endure as the
ruling party; how has it brought
about Chinas remarkable
development? Third, what
challenges does it face in the
future, amidst increasing
domestic complexity and
international volatility?
For the world to understand
the party, the heart of the matter
is to explain why and how it
avers that its one-party system,
under current national
conditions, is optimum for
China.
All systems of governance
have trade-offs. The benefits of a
one-party system include the
capacity to implement critical
policies rapidly, such as the
stimulus package during the
financial crisis of 2008 that
insulated China from the worst
of the recession. A one-party
system can also assure that
strategies which require longterm commitment have longterm commitment (for example,
Chinas western development).
The cost or danger of a oneparty system is that society is

much more dependent on the

quality of its leaders, and much
more vulnerable to their
vicissitudes and excesses. While
Chinas one-party system has
had great success during the
period of reform, in decades
prior, when leftist ideology was
enforced with oppressive
zealotry, waves of political mass
movements decimated the
country and impoverished the
people.
There are trade-offs, too, in
public restrictions, particularly
in the media. Although some
believe China would be more
stable with a multiparty system,
such a forecast seems wishful
thinking, disconnected from
Chinese realities.
While I agree that China
today is best served by its oneparty system, for the party to
retain its ruling status, it has a
higher obligation to enhance
standards of living and personal
well-being, which includes
increasing democracy,
transparency in governance,
public oversight of government,
various freedoms, rule of law,
and human rights.
If the world does not
understand the party, it is its
responsibility to reach out to the
world. Thats what this series of
books is all about. Foreigners
may disagree with the party, but
all who need to know China, all
who think they know China,
must understand it.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn is an
international corporate strategist
and political/economics
commentator. This article is
based on a keynote speech he
will give at the book launch