Saturday, December 7, 2013 A13
Impressions count
Do no harm
Sam Winter says the social exclusion
and impoverishment that come with
denying transsexuals recognition of
their chosen gender can’t be justified
I
Dan Hough says despite maintaining its ranking in a
corruption perception index, China should brace for a
probable slide, given all the attention on its anti-graft drive
T
his week saw the world’s most
prominent anti-corruption
non-governmental organisation, the Berlin-based Transparency International, publish
its annual Corruption Perceptions Index,
the group’s best-known attempt to measure perceived levels of corruption around
the world.
As usual, it doesn’t take a great deal of
imagination to work out which countries
received the best and worst scores. The
Nordic states performed admirably, with
Denmark scoring 91(out of a maximum of
100) indicating that it is – according to this
measure at least – “the least corrupt country” in the world (alongside, to be fair, New
Zealand). Sweden and Finland were, however, not far behind, registering an eminently respectable 89 in joint third place.
At the bottom, it was a familiar tale of
woe for Afghanistan, North Korea and
Somalia which all ended up 175th (and
last) with a meagre eight out of 100. The
story wasn’t much more encouraging for
Sudan (11), Libya (15) or Iraq (16), all of
whom clearly have deeply ingrained
corruption challenges to deal with.
The index is, of course, not without its
critics. Indeed, many scholars write the
table off as being fit for nothing more than
discussions at middle-class dinner parties.
Methodologically problematic though the
data undoubtedly is, the figures nonetheless get noticed by both governments and
commentators. Going up or down in the
table will, in other words, be noted. One
suspects that applies to officials in Beijing
just as much as those elsewhere.
The 2013 index, nonetheless, won’t
make awfully pretty reading for Chinese
bureaucrats. In 2012, China ranked 80th
with a score of 39. So, above halfway in
terms of the rank order of countries, but
well below the significant score of 50 that,
according to Transparency International,
signifies that a state has systemic corruption challenges. In 2013, China actually
fared marginally better, remaining in 80th
place overall but improving its score marginally to 40. And that despite the highprofile anti-corruption drive launched by
President Xi Jinping
in recent
months. The picture, in other words, still
does not look great.
We should, however, be a little careful
before concluding (from this data at least)
that the current anti-corruption campaign
is not really bearing fruit. The drive might
well be going nowhere fast, but that’s not a
conclusion we can yet draw with any certainty. The very fact that corruption has
risen to the top of the political agenda in
Beijing means that more and more media
commentators are talking about it.
There are regular revelations of often
quite brazen corrupt practices and a significant number of high-ranking officials
have lost their jobs (not to mention their
liberty) as their activities have been
revealed. That, however, does not mean
more officials are actually acting in a
corrupt fashion – it could simply mean that
more seem to be getting caught.
Evidence of this sort of trend exists elsewhere, and in some ways the 2013 data can
be interpreted as offering at least a grain of
comfort to party officials in Beijing.
Britain polled scores of 86 and 87 (11th
and 10th positions) for the period from
2002 to 2006, but slipped significantly,
scoring 77 in 2008 and 2009, and then 76 in
2010 (20th position). Only this year did it
begin to recover in terms of ranking – 76
and 14th position overall. There may, of
The talk of fighting
both ‘tigers’ and ‘flies’
is admirable, but
actually achieving
change will take time
course, have been a significant rise in the
amount of corruption evident in the UK in
the late 2000s that could explain the poor
performance.
More plausible, however, is that Britons thought there was more corruption
about, largely on the basis of the unearthing of a large scandal involving the expense
accounts of British parliamentarians.
The sums of money involved were, in
the great scheme of things, relatively small,
but the impression left was one of snouts
well and truly in the trough. So, did corruption in Britain really get worse during this
period? It could conceivably have done,
but it is exceptionally unlikely that the data
in the index was actually measuring that.
China – with its examples of highprofile corruption appearing very regularly in the news – appears to have avoided
a similar fate. The talk of fighting both
“tigers” and “flies” is admirable, but actually achieving change will take time – if
indeed it ever happens at all – and it will, in
all likelihood, involve an increased perception of corruption before things get better.
Evidence of this cannot be found in the
2013 index, but it may well begin to appear
in 2014 and 2015. Come what may, achieving substantive change takes time, and patience and stamina are much more important in the long run than going up or down
in indices like this one.
n the past few weeks, individuals and
organisations worldwide recommitted
themselves to confronting two great challenges
facing humankind today – gender-based violence,
and HIV infection and Aids. Nevertheless, transsexual
women – who bear higher risks of HIV infection, Aidsrelated death and gender-related violence than most
women – remain largely forgotten.
Transsexualism is an internationally recognised
medical condition. Trans women grow up with a
deep desire to live and be accepted as female.
Worldwide, many young trans women pay a
heavy price for being who they are. They get rejected
by their families, encounter intolerance in school,
leave home and drop out of education, and find it
impossible to get a job. Daily, they encounter stigma,
as well as the exclusion, taunting, abuse, harassment
and violence that often goes with it. Many experience
depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.
Living life on the margins of society, many slide
into poverty and drift into sex work. Too many do so
without taking care to (or being able to) protect their
health. Health care services for trans women are often
ill-equipped to meet their needs. Health care
providers are sometimes downright hostile.
The consequence for many trans women
worldwide (and to a lesser extent trans men) is a slope
from stigma towards sickness and death. A Lancet
paper last year revealed an HIV prevalence rate for
trans women that is now 49 times higher than for the
general population. The Trans Murder Monitoring
project reveals at least 1,400 murders of trans people
worldwide since 2008. These are just the documented
cases. In almost every case, the victim was a trans
woman, killed because she was a trans woman.
So what does all this have to do with trans women
in Hong Kong? Thankfully, their HIV rates don’t
appear to be cause for alarm. And they don’t get
murdered.
That said, stigma is alive and well here. Stigma and
irrational prejudice prompts family rejection, school
dropout and barriers to employment – experiences
that blight trans women’s lives and push them out
towards the margins.
Sadly, our government perpetrates violence
against trans women (and trans men) by setting
genital and sterilisation surgery as preconditions for a
gender-affirming ID card; a card that helps get them a
job, open a bank account, get an apartment lease,
and have a chance of a normal life.
Across the world, one by one, governments are
enacting laws that provide gender recognition for
trans people, and do so without setting surgical
preconditions. In a landmark ruling by Hong Kong’s
top court in May, a transsexual woman known as W
won the right to marry as a woman. The government
now has an opportunity to enact a comprehensive
law that offers legal recognition in all areas (not just
marriage), covering all transsexual people (regardless
of surgery undertaken).
A properly drafted gender recognition ordinance
could end forever a bureaucratic practice that
arguably undermines the ability of trans people to
consent freely to medical procedures, and therefore
may be seen as a form of violence.
Professor Dan Hough is director of the
Sussex Centre for the Study of Corruption
at the University of Sussex, UK
Sam Winter, a member of the Board of the World
Professional Association for Transgender Health, has acted
as a consultant for the WHO and other UN organisations
Holistic, long-term thinking will help
Asia deploy its money for real growth
HK people must not stand
for political reform farce
Andrew Sheng says the region has to build a financial system able to cope with complexities
Stephen Vines says the process so far suggests a watered-down outcome
N
T
o answer to the future of
Asian finance can be
complete without some
understanding of where global
finance is going. Even more
important, can we predict the
future of Asia’s real sector?
These are big questions, and
they need to be framed properly.
Mainstream economics, at
least the neoclassical version,
assumes that there is an ideal or
first-best solution to every
problem. If you accept the view
that life and information are full
of uncertainties, then the world
is full of second-, third- and even
fifth-best outcomes – more
commonly known as “muddling
through”.
First, we need to think about
the whole ecosystem of the
economy – politics, finance,
society, culture, philosophy and
history – because each of these
parts affects the other. One
reason we ran into problems
was because the economics
profession thought it had the
business cycle figured out and
central bankers thought their
models could handle
downturns.
Second, adopting a systemwide framework of analysis
means recognising that
regulating only parts of the
system could leave us with
worse outcomes. One must be
humble enough to admit that
there can be no one-size-fits-all
solution for this complex and
dynamic world.
To think that there could be a
global government, a global
central bank, or even one set of
standards and rules to solve all
problems, is a pipe dream. A
centralised system may become
such a large uncontrollable
bureaucracy that it would add to
systemic problems.
The world has become
globalised through trade,
investments, migration of talent
and the internet. But law and
regulation are still national in
scope and power. The
inconvenient truth is that world
trade and power will remain
divided by national perspectives.
Third, we have learnt that
when you over-regulate,
business and transactions drift
into the shadow or informal
The good news
is Asia as a whole
is not short of
savings, and
does not rely on
external funds
area, such as shadow banking.
Of course, formal regulators will
demand more power to also
cover the shadow areas, but,
since they did not prevent the
past crisis, what makes you think
that giving them more power to
generate more complex
regulations will solve or even
prevent the next crisis?
Fourth, the real problem with
the current global financial
system is that it is “long debt and
short equity”. In the 30 years
since financial liberalisation
opened up financial innovation
and globalisation, the overall
leverage (financial asset size
relative to gross domestic
product) has risen from 100 per
cent in 1980 to 370 per cent last
year.
There are two reasons why
the current financial system is
debt-driven. The first is that the
stock market is geared to raise
funds for large corporations,
rather than small and mediumsized enterprises. Equity funding
is more costly to raise than
borrowing.
The second is that tax
incentives are biased towards
debt rather than equity. Interest
paid on debt and losses on bank
loans are tax-deductible, but
capital losses are not and,
effectively, dividends are taxed
at source.
For example, in China, only
2,500 companies are listed on
Chinese stock exchanges in
Shenzhen and Shanghai. In
contrast, there are 12.65 million
companies registered in China.
Last year, IPOs in Shanghai
and Shenzhen raised US$16.4
billion, whereas private equity
funds invested in 680 projects
with a total value of US$19.8
billion. This suggests that
informal capital markets are
beginning to be more significant
than formal markets in injecting
long-term funding into projects.
Asia is short of long-term
funds and equity capital,
because the system relies largely
on short-term bank loans.
Asia will be moving from an
old industrial structure of
manufacturing towards a
knowledge-based, servicedriven economy, with domestic
consumption supplementing
the export engine of growth. This
requires considerable upgrading
of skills and resources, which the
financial sector will have to help
fund and nurture.
The key drivers of the Asian
economy will be SMEs working
hand in hand with
multinationals within global
supply chains. The Asian real
sector will be driven by huge
investments in green
technology, infrastructure
linking disparate parts of Asia,
such as the inland routes
between China and India via
Myanmar. Intra-Asian trade is
growing in leaps and bounds.
The good news is the region
as a whole is not short of savings,
and therefore does not rely on
external funds. The key question
is how to deploy these excess
savings within the region to help
improve overall resource
allocation.
In short, Asian finance will
have to focus on the long term,
moving from debt to equity,
concentrating on social impact
investing, better wealth
management, and financing
SMEs, trade and infrastructure
more effectively.
A new report by Oliver
Wyman and the Fung Global
Institute called “Asian Finance
2020” explores these issues and
discusses what can be done to
strengthen Asia’s financial
architecture.
Andrew Sheng is president
of the Fung Global Institute
> CONTACT US
Agree or disagree with the opinions
on this page? Write to us at
[email protected].
If you have an idea for an opinion
article, email it to [email protected]
he government is yet again
threatening to give farce a
bad name with this week’s
launch of its constitutional
reform consultation. We now
more or less know the outcome
of plans for the next chief
executive election, and so
pretending to seek public input
is little more than a distasteful
joke.
Let’s set aside the minor
absurdity of starting off the
consultation exercise with a
booklet full of caveats about
what can be achieved.
We know that, when the fine
people in Tamar finally get
around to making their own
proposals, they will have
ensured that: first, there is little
time left for discussion; second,
the supporters of the least
democratic scheme will have
been mobilised to send in pro
forma comments that can be
dressed up as majority opinion,
and; third, this whole farce will
be hailed as a great example of
democracy at work.
The central government has
already decided that Hong Kong
will not be allowed to elect
anyone who is not to its liking. In
order to achieve this end,
measures will be put in place to
exclude candidates who do not
meet this important criterion.
There is the small matter of
fulfilling promises of achieving
full democracy but we have
already been told that this is
really not suitable in Hong Kong.
However, the word “democracy”
will be freely bandied about by
those who despise this concept.
What is really fascinating is
the way all this will pan out,
because it follows a pattern
established by China’s
policymakers in the handover
negotiations, where
expectations were whittled
down and Beijing’s key
objectives achieved.
First comes a declaration
from one of the important
people in Beijing stating, in the
most general terms, a
commitment to a certain goal –
in this case, democracy. We’ve
had this from every party leader
from Deng Xiaoping
downwards.
The alleged commitment to
The way this will
pan out follows
a pattern
established in
the handover
negotiations
universal suffrage was
incorporated in a National
People’s Congress declaration
back in 2007.
As the time for
implementation drew close,
lesser officials started drawing
strict parameters within which
this goal of democracy could be
realised. The recent visit to Hong
Kong by Li Fei
, chairman
of the Basic Law Committee, was
accompanied by the clearest of
indications that the goal of
universal suffrage was to be
confined to a contest between
those who had received Beijing’s
seal of approval. It became clear
that this would be achieved by
narrowing the base of those able
to nominate the candidates.
That brings us to where we
are now, a period in which Li’s
general statements are being
used to damp down
expectations of how democratic
the next chief executive election
can be expected to be.
At this point, the usual
chorus of sycophants has been
mobilised; some will go even
further and call for an
outrageously rigged election
while the majority will simply
provide an echo chamber for the
views expressed up north.
Then, almost certainly at the
last minute, we shall finally see
proposals supposedly
originating from the Hong Kong
government, which will outline
plans for a limited form of
election. This will possibly be
followed by some kind of
“concession” that will be hailed
by the government as a
generous move to achieve a
reasonable compromise
between extremist views.
Fatalists will simply shrug
and ask, “What more can you
expect?”
History shows us that even
dictatorships can be swayed by a
really massive public response.
This almost certainly will not be
delivered by plans of the Occupy
Central organisers, who focus on
minority action by a hard core of
democrats.
However, a more extensive
response can still come from
Hong Kong’s freedom-loving
people.
Stephen Vines is a Hong Kong-based
journalist and entrepreneur