Kenny Hodgart

Off Centre | Hong Kong may be a little insecure, but it's no 'slave'

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With a history as a British colony that roots itself deep in Hongkongers' hearts, the city prides itself in being a westernized city within Asia. Photo: Edmond So

Kenny Hodgart

Published: 7:00pm, 23 Nov 2015Updated: 7:02pm, 23 Nov 2015

On these webpages recently, and in print, Yonden Lhatoo, a Senior Editor at the Post, let rip at what he perceives to be “white worship” in Hong Kong – and, worse, the “slave mindset” underpinning it. Couching any argument – and Yonden's were largely framed around half-told anecdotes – in such explicitly racialist terms was always going to generate more heat than light. Predictably enough, opprobrium flew promptly in all directions.

READ MORE: White worship in Hong Kong: you can't end it if you refuse to acknowledge it even exists

I don't much care to weigh in on the subject of Hong Kong remaining a place where non-Asians are able to prosper – if that's a problem, then it's not, surely, one of Hong Kong's most pressing. Whether it's colonialism to blame, or something else, though, I don't think Yonden was necessarily off the mark in identifying a certain pedestal-isation, if you will. Not of white people per se, but rather of aspects of western culture. Which ones? Well, this is where I think the dynamic gets more interesting than any gripes about recruitment in a global city.

Without wishing to digress, I was reminded of Yonden's deliberations when I read about how the Thai-Chinese Reignwood Group is going about running Wentworth, after buying the championship golf club, outside London, for £135 million (HK$1.6 billion) a year ago. Reignwood announced the other week that, from 2017, members will have to pay a debenture of £100,000, rising to £125,000 for new members, while annual fees are to double, to £16,000. According to reports, the move could see all but 250 of the club's 3,000 existing members “culled”. “This is absolutely monstrous,” commented one, displaying the careful sense of perspective we know to expect of those who pay £8,000 a year to play golf in Britain, i.e stockbrokers. “I don’t have a spare hundred grand. One of Britain’s finest golf clubs will become the preserve of Chinese billionaires and Russian oligarchs.”

Yonden, I note, is “no fan” of Britain. He does not make it clear which countries he is a fan of. No doubt, though, it will come as a great relief to his countless British readers that Britain's policies on equal opportunities win his seal of approval. And one supposes that such policies must extend as widely as possible – applying especially, perhaps, to Chinese billionaires. After all, they have long found their efforts to play golf in mainland China complicated by the fact that golf courses there are technically illegal. (Why, only last month, Xinhua included playing golf on a long list of violations, alongside “extravagant eating and drinking”, communications which “support bourgeois liberalisation” and – hell, who knows? – breathing too much in the vicinity Uncle Xi.)