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Hong Kong has sold its soul, says Shanghai Tang creator
2007-06-29
David Tang has just had a meeting with Hong Kong's tourism chiefs and he is not happy. Hong Kong's best-known entrepreneur believes his home city's rich heritage is being destroyed by "uneducated and soulless" bureaucrats who lack the vision that could have secured its place as Asia's world city. As creator of the Shanghai Tang fashion boutique chain, Tang built his fortune exporting a certain vision of China to the West. He has homes around the world and, until his 50th birthday two years ago, was a fully paid-up member of the international jet set, partying with the likes of Kate Moss, Elle Macpherson and Sarah, Duchess of York. But he regards Hong Kong as home and says his love of the city is the reason he is so angry about the way it has been managed in the 10 years since the handover. "Hong Kong has sold its soul," says Tang as he reclines in a leather sofa in his city centre office, exuberantly packed with art works, books and mementos. "The government's biggest achievement (since 1997) has been to subsidise Disneyland with half a billion dollars-worth of infrastructure, when they're probably going to build another one in Shanghai in a couple of years' time anyway. "I went to a meeting of tourism advisors this morning and they talked ad nauseam of 'branding Hong Kong'. Do they realise that Hong Kong looks so parochial to the rest of the world? It's not cutting edge. The way we brag about our fireworks being the most expensive in the world -- so what? It's a terrible testament." The post-handover Hong Kong Tang describes is an unappealing place. The giant shopping malls, with their expensive designer stores, are "pathetic" and "ghastly" and the people too "myopic or blind" to notice that their heritage is being bulldozed in the name of progress. The eccentricities that made Hong Kong so appealing to the overseas visitor -- the 24-hour suits and the knick-knack stalls -- have largely disappeared, and plans to build a new cultural centre are "in the doldrums," pending endless public consultation. The world's great orchestras and ballet companies now head to China rather than Hong Kong, which can no longer claim to have the most impressive skyscrapers -- Shanghai's towering Pudong district, built from scratch in the 1990s, has put paid to that. But with all the innate competitiveness of the successful businessman, Tang refuses to accept that the fate of his home town is to be China's "poor cousin." "This is my home. I want it to be at the cutting edge, in the forefront of China. I don't want to talk Hong Kong down, but isn't it better to be truthful and pull our socks up and do something about it?" He accuses the territory's leaders of having "frittered away" the first 10 of the 50 years it has under the "one country, two systems" plan agreed by Britain and China but says it still has one huge advantage -- its freedoms. "The 50 years is what Deng Xiaoping thought it would take China to catch up with Hong Kong. In fact if you look at how China has gone in the last 10 years, it's gone like a rocket. The 50-year predicate is actually shortening, which means if we in Hong Kong want to be ahead or to be special in any way then by the time China catches up we ought to have the advantage of being something distinctive, rather than just another city. "Already people are saying that Shanghai has overtaken us, but I don't agree with that for one reason, which is freedom. We have the freedom here that people in Shanghai don't have. "But what is it that we have done that has taken advantage of our freedom?" Tang makes a credible advisor on how to appeal to the West. Shanghai Tang, the fashion boutique he launched in 1994 and sold to Swiss fashion giant Richemont in 1998 for an undisclosed sum, now has more than 20 stores worldwide, including outlets on London's Sloane Street and New York's Madison Avenue. It is arguably responsible for making cheongsam dresses and Mandarin collars fashionable in the West. He is a renowned collector of Chinese art, runs successful private members' clubs in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore, and has recently opened a high-class Dim Sum restaurant in London's Dorchester Hotel. Some of his views come across as contradictory -- he believes Britain is now completely irrelevant in Hong Kong, yet his hopes for the territory's future lie in the wealthy Hong Kong Chinese educated, as he was, in England. He says the problem with Hong Kong's leaders is that they are not prepared to take a stand, forced without a democratic mandate to rule by "consensus and consultation." Yet he dismisses the people who would presumably make up Hong Kong's electorate as "myopic." But there is no doubting the passion that fuels his criticism of those in charge of this city. At the end of the interview Tang hands over a signed copy of his book, a collection of his weekly columns for the Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily. His inscription reads: "Thank you for interviewing someone who is not blind."
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