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about Asia Buzz
Heads I Win...
How to have your cake and eat it too!
By TERRY McCARTHY
September
20, 2000
Web posted at 3:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 3:30 a.m. EDT
You've got to love the story of the policeman in China's Jiangsu province who
was arrested recently for running a brothel? He was running an ingenious scam,
until he was accidentally caught. He had set up a restaurant, with rooms at the
back for customers who wanted "further entertainment" with the waitresses, all
of whom were chosen more for their looks than their culinary knowledge. Then
when his hapless clients were in sufficiently compromising positions, he would
storm in, catch them in flagrante, and arrest them for consorting with
prostitutes.
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Large fines were levied--presumably on top of the restaurant bills they had
already paid--and they were allowed to go free. It all worked well until the
scam master in question was arrested for some other offence, and the whole
affair came to light. Nice one...
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ASIAWEEK |
Intelligence
The story behind today's news from the editors of Asiaweek
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But thinking of such a wonderful system of having one's cake and eating it made
some comparisons come to mind. Like Tony Blair, whose government levies the
highest fuel taxes in Europe, facing down protesters against the high prices
with the beautifully self-serving argument that the government cannot possibly
give in to the pressure of protesters. Full stop. And so the tankers started to
roll again. Has Blair never heard about the French air traffic controllers, who
get the government to back down and increase their pay every summer, just as the
holiday season is starting? No Gallic lily-livered behavior from the fecund
young Blair, though--the government needed the tax levies because they needed
the tax levies, and the protesters couldn't change that self-evident fact. So
there.
The flip side of this, of course, is Philippines President Estrada, who lost his
cake before he had a chance to eat it. Having allowed that champion of human
rights, Muammar Gadaffi, to steal the limelight on the hostage situation in the
southern island of Jolo (by bribing a bunch of murderous loonies in speedboats
to give up some of their hostages), Estrada was left with no glory, and more
hostages. So he gave the order for the armed forces to go in against the rebels.
(As this goes to press, it is not clear how it is all going to work out, but
they have already been fighting for five days. This is slightly clumsy when
compared to the 20 minutes it took British paratroopers to get their seven
hostages from another bunch of equally murderous loonies in Sierra Leone.)
The biggest cake of all this week, however, has to be WTO membership for China.
And sure enough Beijing wants to have this and eat it too--by maneuvering to
change the original deal under which Taiwan would gain WTO membership soon after
Beijing got the green light. Now China's negotiators are saying Taiwan can join
as a part of China--something that Taipei clearly won't accept.
At the same time trade negotiators are busy polishing the clauses in the
agreement that China signed with the U.S., allowing certain "transition periods"
before China fully opens its markets. The likelihood now is that China's markets
will be closed for as long as it takes the U.S. to build its missile defense
system, which will close the U.S. to unwelcome ballistic imports. Then a new
treaty will have to be negotiated, opening up each countries' borders anew. That
is, if there is any cake left for anyone to eat by then.
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