Public Eye | If bankers and maids had same rights we'd fix racism

Racism is when one group is discriminated against due to its ethnic origin. This is now the charge against Hong Kong's top court, after it denied permanent residency to foreign domestic helpers. Maids were allowed into the city under very different immigration terms, but it is still racism to deny them the settlement right other foreigners acquire after seven years here. You can fix racism by giving maids the same rights. But the top court rejected that by ruling according to the letter of the law, despite its moral deficiency. The court of public opinion is dead set against granting residency rights to tens of thousands of foreign maids, which makes changing the actual law impossible. But there is another way to right this wrong: also deny permanent residency rights to all other groups - be they Westerners, mainlanders, Japanese, or Indians. It should be made clear to all who come here to work as bankers, chefs, bartenders, or whatever, that they won't qualify for residency rights simply by staying for seven years. It is ludicrous that even backpackers can drift into town, get a job teaching English without proper qualifications and get residency after seven years. What other place allows that? Public Eye can already hear the loud hollers of protest. But it is hypocritical to be outraged about the discriminatory treatment of foreign maids, yet reap the fruits of this unequal law. Let there be equality. And no more nonsense about Hong Kong collapsing without expatriates. That's racist talk.

Milk tainted with melamine, recycled "gutter" oil, hormone-filled "Frankenstein" chickens, pesticide-drenched vegetables, steroids in pork, and now even vitamin C supplements tainted with industrial sulphur. It's no longer a question of what's unsafe to eat in mainland China, but what's safe. How can China boast about being the world's second biggest economy when people don't even know if what they put in their mouths could make them sick? Where is the prestige of one day replacing the US as the top superpower when the milk you drink could kill you? Never mind landing a man on the moon. China needs to fix its image on earth first.