Beneath the Peak

I’ll be speaking about self-publishing at a luncheon organized by the Forum for Corporate Communications on Friday, May 14.

The lunch is at the Chef’s Table in the French Kitchen of the Grand Hyatt, and is open to nonmembers.

Details and reservations are available here.

Landed: The guide to buying property in Japan has arrived from the printer.

Thank you to everyone who preordered the book, which will ship today.

The Canadian and the Australian and New Zealand chambers of commerce are jointly hosting a luncheon to launch Landed: Japan.

The luncheon is on May 11 at the Shangri-La Hotel in Tokyo. Registration and information are available here.

I hope to confirm several more events in the next couple of days, so stay tuned!

My second book, Landed: The guide to buying property in Japan,  is now at the printer, which means it’s time to start promoting it.

I’ll be on RTHK Radio 3′s The Morning Brew this Thursday at 11AM  (you can listen on line here), and there are several more activities planned for both Hong Kong and Tokyo.

For regular updates, see the Landed: Japan Facebook page.

Here are some immediate steps the Tsang administration can take to start improving our air quality.

1. Acknowledge that, while pollution from the Pearl River Delta is a problem, much of our pollution is created in Hong Kong.

2. Ban the import of all forms of diesel, except the ultra-low sulfur variety. Three months’  lead-time should be sufficient.

3. Within one year, all pre-Euro III heavy goods vehicles must be off the road. No exceptions. No subsidies.

4. End the “bridges to nowhere” infrastructure projects and concreting off our country parks. Instead, start build utility tunnels under Hong Kong’s main roads, so that gas, water, electrical and phone systems can be repaired and upgraded without repeatedly ripping up the street. This will reduce air pollution from traffic congestion and suspended particulates from construction dust.

5. Announce the terms of next scheme of control for Hong Kong Electric and CLP. The new scheme will include opening the market to competition,  lower guaranteed rates of return, strict emission caps and mandated use of scrubbers. No gold-plated “greenwashing” projects like wind farms are permitted under the fixed rate of return calculations in the new scheme.

6. End the government focus on climate change. Climate change isn’t killing the people of Hong Kong, suspended particulates are. Let’s address the immediate, tangible threat first.

7. Raise the fees for the Eastern and Wanchai Cross-harbour tunnels so that they are the same as those of the Western tunnel. Cars in traffic jams pollute far more than those that are moving. Do it tomorrow morning.

8. Stand up to the transport lobby and their stooges in LegCo. Commercial drivers are welcome to share their opinions in writing and in civilized dialog. But blocking traffic, like the taxi drivers did at the airport, and other forms of disruption  cannot be tolerated.

9. An immediate ban on idling vehicle engines. Other cities have made this work, there’s no reason why we can’t, too.

10. Prosecute the idiots who start hill fires during grave sweeping festivals. These fires kill and injure firefighters and pollute the air, so jail time is appropriate.

Air pollution in Hong Kong today topped 500 – the maximum value — on the government’s rigged scale.

What will it take to get our leaders to stop issuing inane statements and actually do something about this?

I was interviewed on TVB’s Money Magazine in a segment about re-purposing Hong Kong’s disused industrial space.

It’s not available online, but it will be rebroadcast on TVB Pearl on Saturday at 11:50 AM and on Wednesday at 12:55 AM.

Corporate media interviews in Hong Kong are usually pretty tame. Last night’s edition of TVB‘s Money Magazine, however, was an exception.

The program’s first segment was about Hong Kong people who had invested in a now-bankrupt resort in Thailand. In addition to interviews with unlucky investors, TVB send a video crew to the office of Colliers, which allegedly represented  the Thai project in Hong Kong. And that’s where things got interesting.

First, a TVB crew accompanied a disgruntled investor on an unannounced visit to Colliers’ office. This is a classic TV reporting technique, called doorstepping, but is uncommon in Hong Kong. Colliers’ receptionist and front-line staff were clearly unprepared for this.

Then — in a segment that was almost certainly shot first — TVB interviewed Colliers executive Darien Bradshaw, who had been given a list of questions for the interview.

Bradshaw fell into the neophyte’s trap of believing that a reporter can only ask “approved” questions, and was visibly uncomfortable when the journalist began asking him about Colliers’ role in the Thai development. He then indignantly ended the interview.

There are several lessons here:

• Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by Hong Kong’s usually meek media.
• As we like to remind people in our media training programs, reporters can ask anything they like. They are not obliged to stick to a script.
• Prepare for difficult questions. That means having intelligent, appropriate responses and being able to handle tough questions gracefully.
• If your business is likely to attract negative attention, brief your receptionist and office manager about how to handle uninvited media.

TVB doesn’t post its shows to YouTube and this segment doesn’t seem to be online. It will air again on TVB Pearl on Saturday at 11:50 AM and on Wednesday at 12:55 AM.

In the meantime, kudos to TVB for an entertaining piece of reportage.

Update: The second half of the Money Magazine segment is now available on YouTube.

In the 2010 budget speech on Wednesday, John Tsang said the administration would consider moving government departments from commercial buildings to industrial buildings.

I wonder how many of Hong Kong’s mandarins would agree to move into places that look like this?

This is the second move the government has made recently to address the issue of excess industrial space in Hong Kong.

In his 2009/10 policy address last October, CEO Donald Tsang:

• Reduced the threshold for compulsory sale of industrial buildings for redevelopment.
• Adjusted the premium system so that developers “pay for what they build” when they redevelop a building.
• Allowed owners to pay lease modification premiums in installments when they redevelop a building.
• Exempt some users from paying a fee for the change in land use if they perform a wholesale conversion.

All of this is good, but each of these measures targets whole-building conversions and redevelopment. That means, at a minimum, getting the majority of a building’s owners to agree to a conversion or redevelopment or selling the building to one of Hong Kong’s developers. In turn, that means a budget in the hundreds of millions of (Hong Kong) dollars and a multi-year time line.

What these plan miss are the small companies who might rent or buy a unit in an old industrial building to open a shop, a restaurant or a bar. These businesses can be opened quickly, for a much smaller investment–in the millions of dollars or less.

The relatively low costs mean that entrepreneurs can experiment. If the business fails, they can close it and move on with minimal loss. If it works, you have the beginnings of an organic, grass roots-level redevelopment.

The irony is that historically, Hong Kong’s success has been the result of entrepreneurs and small businesses that were will nimble and willing to take risks. Increasingly, that model is being pushed aside in favor of large, centrally planned schemes.

My review of Jake Adelstein’s book Tokyo Vice, from the January/February 2010 edition of The Correspondent, is now online.

More here [PDF].