What Kills Us This Week!

Again, for the second week in a row, an almost entirely panic-free week. This is most unHong Kong behaviour.

Sure, there is news: hundreds protesting outside banks wanting their money back. Lots of shouting about how they were coerced into buying American shares when they really wanted Chinese, and now that America's folded bigtime they've lost all their life's savings. Naturally they are angry and, taking full advantage of our Constitutional Right to Assemble and Be a Pain in the Bum, are gathered in numbers around the Central banks, weeping and wailing and harassing HK Bank workers.

And, what do you know, HK Bank has promised to investigate their coercion claims, and, believe it or not, is actually thinking about returning money to everyone who doesn't have anything left. Gosh, I do so like Hong Kong! We may not have Welfare (all that kind of stuff is done by various Christian Charities) but we certainly do take care of our own!

But the really big news comes from China. The folks up there who lost kiddies to melamine poisoning have had their litigation cases thrown out of court. Yup, Sanlu Corporation, the uber-pigs behind all this, has sought and got immunity from prosecution ... and they've been given government support with a media blackout thrown in for good measure.

But, you know, because they're nice guys they say they may just pick up the monstrously high hospital bills ... or not, depending on how they feel about it later!

But you'll be pleased to know that over 30 dairy-workers and several lowly dairy-industry officials have been arrested over the poisonings, and, yes, they are all now facing the death penalty. Oh, and they've sacked the head of China's Consumer National Quality Watchdog, although I'm not sure how that solves anything.

As you can imagine, folk up there are very angry and are now saying that the solution to their constantly contaminated food is Capitalist-style brand competition (corporate integrity driven by competition, they call it), an advertising watchdog-style body - to check veracity of claims - media freedom so these things can be reported, and accountability through independent courts. But since these are all things that the Chinese Government won't allow, I guess we're going to be seeing a lot more contamination in our futures!

It's just a pity they're allowed to export the stuff to the rest of the world! Oh, China! China! China! Way to take care of business!

Later:

HK Magazine didn't have a Threatdown Column this week. Either they've canceled it because, you know, Generation Millennium-ers don't have sustainability, or they too noticed that HK is being unaccountably uncharacteristic and didn't panic about a single thing.