chong 的blog

Despite without a license, a group of activists have run the Citizen's Radio for one year. Last night police and government officers suddenly raided this independent radio stations. They arrested a man and confiscated most equipment.

In response to oiwan's letter, I would like to make some remarks on the situation of Chinese rural migrant workers. The China government recently collaborated with international NGO, including ILO, to produce a TV drama series about the success story of rural migrant labor in Sichuan province. During my field study of the Chinese rural migrants, I met a lot of small business owners. Many see it as the only way out of the difficult situations as a cheap labor in the "World Factory". I haven't watched that TV drama series but I doubt if it is necessary for the government and NGOs to encourage the migrants to run small business.

Yahoo! auction site is a very popular portal in Taiwan. With 3.7 million items and the annual transaction value of NT$22 billion (2005), it owns most of the local market. It recently announced that all users will be charged 3% of transaction fees on most of the items. It aroused users' severe complaints and they accused Yahoo! of violating the Fair Trade Act.

Lam Heng Chi, the Hong Kong famous columnist, said that Chief Executive Donald Tsang learned the wrong lesson from Singapore. Instead of the experience of training political talents, Singapore's management system of foreign currency reserve is something we should learn. According to his calculation, the investment company that handles Singaporean government's foreign currency reserve achieves an annual gain rate as high as 9.5%. Since 1997, Hong Kong's foriegn currency reserve has increased only at 3.65% each year, from 90 billion to 120 billion.