Hong Kong Cleans Up

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In 1895, British traveler Henry Norman pronounced Hong Kong “about as insanitary as any place in the world under civilized rule.” Though conditions have improved, the city’s Victoria Harbour remains unswimmable, its public housing is still a shambles and its back alleys provide habitats for rats. Now SARS has inspired the government to look for ways to spruce up the city’s streets—and its image. Led by bow-tied Chief Secretary Donald Tsang and his “Team Clean,” Hong Kong’s mandarins have settled on an approach that is down-right Singaporean. Last week, the government proposed raising fines for littering and spitting in public from $77 to nearly $200. Team Clean also formulated a point system designed to “encourage” good hygiene among residents of the city’s 700,000 public-housing flats. Tenants who accrue 16 points in two years could face eviction. The point system is itself littered with odd value judgments; boiling wax in public is worth five points, for instance, while spitting gets you seven. To enforce it, the government will ask tenants to inform on dirty neighbors. Critics question the attempt to modify behavior through legislation, and many residents plan to ignore the new system altogether. In April, a group of politicians led a scrubdown of some of the city’s filthiest alleys. A week later, however, vermin had retaken many of the alleys—and, presumably, they weren’t ratting on each other.