Bob the Blogger

The two English-language dailies in Hong Kong, the South China Morning Post and The Standard, are both good sources of information for the District Council elections. Unfortunately the SCMP requires a subscription for access to their site so I tend to use an online database like Lexis-Nexis or Factiva.

In fact, SCMP ran a three-part series on the elections on 6-8 August, featuring a few of the candidates likely to contend for seats, which included Star Ferry protester Ho Loy, environmental activist Paul Zimmerman and conservationist Judy Love-Eastham. It seems the issues likely to get the most attention will be those that translate across districts like the environment, the wealth gap and conservation versus development.

Also reported by the SCMP in the same series was that the Democratic Party would field around 110 candidates, whereas the Liberal Party would support about 60, the Civic Party around 40 and the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong nearly 200. The DAB is the largest political party in Hong Kong.

Some of the websites that can provide context on the broader political issues in Hong Kong are the Hong Kong Journal, Association for Asian Research, Asia Sentinel and Asia Times Online. The Hong Kong Journal is only a quarterly publication but it has contributions from some well known journalists like Danny Gittings and Frank Ching.

Hong Kong related blogs containing both insightful commentary and links to more information includes:
- EastSouthWestNorth, a blog that regularly translates and compares the Chinese media’s reports on Hong Kong political affairs in English. This can be an invaluable insight for the non-Chinese speaking media;

- Learning Cantonese, a blog by Daisann McLane, who is a journalist that resides in both Hong Kong and New York. She makes regular contributions about Hong Kong affairs in Slate Magazine;

- Alice Poon, a blog by a person of the same name, who is also the author of Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong, available at Bookazine and Dymocks;

- Mister Bijou, a blog commenting on a number of Hong Kong related issues. I haven’t found any background information on him or her yet.

The Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor could prove to be another source of information or interesting quotes. During the previous district council elections in 2003 they stated their position quite clearly in a press release entitled: Stop Wrecking Elected Representation.

As the project of covering the District Council elections develops so too will the sources of information. An example of this was an article I just found entitled Brave New Word by Hamish McKenzie in BC Magazine profiling even more Hong Kong blogs.

District Council member Cyd Ho Sau-lan