Newsgroups: soc.culture.hongkong
From: tlai@csri.toronto.edu (Tony Fu-Keung Lai)
Subject: Re: HK political groups
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Date: 17 Oct 92 00:17:23 GMT

In article <1992Oct16.231752.1535@dsg.tandem.com> leung@DSG.Tandem.COM (Steven Leung) writes:
>
>tlai@csri.toronto.edu (Tony Fu-Keung Lai) writes:
>
>> Before you do something, you must learn how to do it and understand
>> the consequence. Right? ...
>
>Not necessarily. Doing is also learning. Look at the infants,
>they don't "learn" how to walk before they walk. They just
>walk, and of course they'll make mistakes and fall down, but
>then just get up and try again. What is the big deal?

You compare a BIG CITY to a BABY? Oh, boy....
If a baby falls down, right, he/she can get up and do it again. But think
about a more important thing, like the future of a city. If there
happens to be another massacre, you still say we can try again?
There exists something that can't even try once.

>> ... As an analogue, if you don't study Architecture,
>> will somebody employ you to build a house (genius is an exception,
>> in this case.)?
>
>Forget about the genius part. "As an analogue," no employer will
>ask all his employees are architects or have studied architecture
>in order to build a house! But that seems to be what you are getting
>at: HK people are not mature enough to have this political change,
>right? BTW, you haven't answer my previous question: what is your
>criteria of judging "maturity" and "enough" and based on what facts
>you come to your conclusion. Could you kindly elaborate?
>

"Maturity" in this case is defined as the correct response to a such
change in the political environment. I consider HK people (in general)
are not mature, because they like to follow the crowd.
e.g. 1: Emmigration from HK, just because other people say HK will
        lose its freedom of whatever after 1997.
e.g. 2: A sudden withdraw of money from bank, after hearing from 
        "side news" that a bank is going to bankrupt. It happens many 
        times before.
...
So if I say China is going to send 100,000,000 troops to HK after 1997,
what will happen then? That is why there are many political "stars",
like Martin Lee, Wah Zeto, etc.

"Maturity" is "enough" only when people "wisely" respond to a certain
situation. One instance may be that this reponse may/can be worse than 
the current situation; but expects to have much better pay-off in the future.
People can expect to realize this.
 
>> Think about whether we need it first, before you think of any actions
>> to do that. ...
>
>That sounds reasonable. OK, I'm thinking ...
>
>> If we don't need that kind of democracy, there is no
>> point talking about whether it violates the Basic Law or Joint
>> Declaration.
>
>Yeah. ... still thinking ... Done!
>Now, after I think thrice, I realized how important that kind of
>democracy is to us. So, let's go back to this point whether Patten's
>plan has violated the BL/JD. Do you have any INFO.?
>
>Steven
>-- 
>328. Seek opportunity, not security. ...
>        - Life's Little Instruction Book by H. J. Brown, Jr.
>

I don't have the info. Actually I want to read the report to really
understand it. I got the news from a Chinese newspaper.

Tony