Bird Flu

Like most Asian people, Hong Kongers prefer to eat newly killed chicken ( huozhe ji ) for its flavour and freshness; they eat 100,000 chickens daily, bought from markets in cramped wickerwork cages. And the peak season for such feasting runs from the winter solstice - Chinese Thanksgiving - through Christmas and the calendar New Year to the major celebration, Chinese New Year, which came in 1998 at the end of January.

The lack of initial information about the outbreak from the government, the apparent indecision that ensued, then the botched slaughter of the territory's 1.4 million chickens - which took a week rather than the day originally announced, during which thousands of carcascs were left rotting in public places - reinforced the unaccustomed perception of administrative ineptness. The farmers themselves felt victimised and bereft, and protested with constant demonstrations about the level of compensation offered by the government. To this was added the faint but unwelcome whiff of mainland protectiveness. While the authorities over the border claimed no cases of bird flu were detected there, stories emerged of thousands of mysterious poultry deaths during 1997. Most Hong Kongers remain convinced, despite numerous denials, that this flu, like predecessors that proved far more deadly, originated from the mainland. Ultimately, six people died before the outbreak was considered over. The eventual, glorious return of Guangdong live chickens to Hong Kong, covered in a media blitz akin to a Roman triumphal procession, perhaps marked the bathetic highlight of the post-handover year for the beleaguered administration.

Four months later the bird flu was followed by the fish flu. Newspaper headlines such as ' Red Tide Engulfs Hong Kong ' would a year earlier have sent a shock wave around the world, arousing images of stony-faced People's Liberation Army troops massing menacingly on the border. But this red tide, a mighty mass of sea-dwelling micro-organisms, was the latest evidence that overpopulation combined with environmental neglect and strain pose the biggest threat to Hong Kong's future. The red tide surged through the shallows, carrying with it the fish flu, an eco-disaster that in a few days killed 1500 tonnes of fish - half of the total annual locally derived supply - in twenty-two of Hong Kong's twenty-six fish farms. Fish traders claimed losses of $US16 million.

Fish prices in this, one of the world's biggest seafood-eating cities, rose by as much as 70 per cent. Beaches too, already long regarded as too polluted for swimming by most Hong Kongers, were closed for several days, with the departments of Health and of Agriculture and Fisheries at odds over the danger to humans. The villain was the gyrodinium algae, which multiply at an extraordinary rate in certain conditions, including poor water aeration and a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius. The manifestation, a dark redbrown colour, was boosted by organic pollution, from sewerage - most Hong Kong human waste is pumped into the sea - industrial wastes, and from the nutrients fed into fish farms.

Compounding these two outbreaks of disease in 1998 was a government admission that pollution levels in Hong Kong's air are worse than previously announced, thanks mainly to the nearuniversal use of diesel by taxis and trucks, and the southwards drift of heavy industrial pollution from the factories of the neighbouring Guangdong province. Environmental issues, previously deemed marginal, have been pushed towards the front of Hong Kongers' consciousness. Meanwhile, the administration is planning for Hong Kong's population to increase from the present 6.7 million, higher than the Australian state of New South Wales yet with just 0.14 per cent of its land, to 8.1 million within thirteen years.

But it was the Asian financial flu that caused most distress in 1998. By showing up and exacerbating the territory's loss of price competitiveness, it led to unemployment in the dominant service sector, in financial institutions, in the media - especially TV, where hundreds of jobs went - in retail and in restaurants. Tourist arrivals in Hong Kong were down 25 per cent, year on year. Unemployment almost doubled over nine months to about 4 per cent. The government had said it would loosen restrictions on importing labour, chiefly in response to demands from the construction industry. This did not play well among nervous workers, and the plan was eventually suspended.