Trumping the Race

Trump makes his victory speech much to the shock of people in Hong Kong

There was shock and disbelief in Hong Kong watching Donald Trump take the presidency today. The Hang Seng index fell as much as 951.76 points or 2.2 percent to 22,415.19 points.

All my colleagues and friends couldn't believe it, and much like when the Brexit results were announced, we were all dazed and wondered if it was all a bad dream.

Several hours later we are still processing it, much like the rest of the world.

Clinton's camp will be soul searching much like the rest of us

People in Hong Kong thought common sense would prevail, and despite her flaws, Hillary Clinton would win by a decent margin because who would vote for a man who has never done any community social work, not donated to charities, treats women like sex objects, cheats people in business deals and doesn't pay taxes?

But a good number of the 250 million eligible voters did.

He blames China for taking America's jobs away and yet he has his own ties made there.

Trump has managed to tap into the ugliest side of the United States, where people are racist, isolationist, small-minded and hateful.

During the campaign he spread vicious lies about Clinton, but also a lot of misinformation that his supporters believe. That is what is scary.

The media is also wondering how they got it so wrong. Elections aren't about hard numbers. It's about talking to people and finding out what they think, not just poll results.

The new First Family-elect greets supporters

In a recent BBC documentary about the US presidency, some media outlets admitted they gave Trump too much coverage, particularly when he could get away with doing telephone interviews on television, when the previous practice was that the guest had to come into the studio.

They admitted he found his remarks so off-the-wall and entertaining that they did it for ratings. Is this how journalism should be conducted, particularly in election coverage?

Everyone -- not just those disappointed in the US, but everyone around the world -- is doing some soul searching. How did we go down this path?

But more importantly where do we go from here?

In his victory speech Trump conceded it was time to heal deep divisions and come together. How can we when his platform was about divide and conquer?

Remembering Harry Wu

Harry Wu was a tireless critic of China after he became an American citizen

I read in the International New York Times yesterday that human rights activist Harry Wu had died last Tuesday. He was 79.

Wu had a very compelling story -- at the age of 23 in Shanghai he was accused of criticizing the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and being insufficiently supportive of Mao Zedong's regime.

He was forced into hard labour in farms, mines and prison camps for 42 years and was released three years after Mao died.

A picture of Wu paraded on TV in 1995 after he was arrested

In 1985 Wu moved to the United States and after becoming an American citizen in 1994, he began exposing the laogai or "reform through labour" system. He compared them to the Soviet gulag and Nazi concentration camps, claiming hard labour caused the deaths of many political prisoners.

A year later he returned to China undercover many times to expose prison conditions as well as the sale of organs from executed inmates. He was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison, but thanks to pressure by human rights advocates and then First Lady Hillary Clinton, Wu was released after 66 days.

Soon after he was released, I was in Vancouver trying to bide my time as my Hong Kong employer applied for my work visa. To keep myself occupied, I tried to pitch the odd story and one of them was an opportunity to interview Wu.

I called long distance to ask my colleague if someone would be interested in the story and I could hear him relay the message to a senior editor.

One of two books Wu wrote about China

That editor said something to the effect that Wu was not a big deal -- that even he had Wu's number in his wallet and could call him at anytime.

I just remember my heart sinking, because I had thought it would have been a good story, and it was shot down as a silly notion.

Was it because Wu was overexposed in the media? Did he make comments that people considered were outrageous and over the top?

And so reading his obituary, I remember wanting to do a story on Wu, but was denied the opportunity. It's one of the few times I regret not being able to talk to him.

Wu may have been what journalists call a "media whore", for doing whatever it took to get press attention, but no one can deny that he made the world more aware of human rights violations that happened then and are still continuing in China.

Zaijian, Mr Locke

Gary Locke with his family when they first arrived in Beijing

US Ambassador to China Gary Locke has tendered his resignation and will leave the post in January to join his family in Seattle.

He was in the job for two years and it must have been interesting for the third-generation Chinese-American to see his grandparents' homeland.

Locke quickly endeared himself to the ordinary Chinese when he was spotted flying economy class, carrying his own luggage and trying to pay his Starbucks coffee with coupons.

But his tenure quickly escalated into international news -- twice.

He endeared himself to the Chinese for being humble

The first was in November 2011 Locke visited Chongqing where he met the then party chief Bo Xilai. Three months later Bo's right hand man Wang Lijun fled to the US consulate in Chengdu and told of the story of a murder that implicated Bo and evidence of corruption in the hopes of receiving asylum in return.

In the end there wasn't enough justification for the US to take him in and this led to Bo's downfall which we saw a few months ago.

Then last May blind activist Chen Guangcheng managed to escape illegal house arrest in Shandong and fled to Beijing and sought refuge in the US Embassy.

This created a huge diplomatic crisis for the US, as then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was about to arrive for scheduled talks and didn't want this incident to anger the Chinese.

At first the embassy didn't want to confirm Chen was there, but in the end said it accepted him on humanitarian grounds and medical assistance.

He will be forever remembered in helping Chen Guangcheng

Perhaps Locke's misstep was leaving Chen alone in a Beijing hospital to get his foot looked at because he broke it while escaping; as a result Chinese security stepped in, and Chen was unable to contact the embassy, nor were US diplomats able to see him. This made Chen anxious and felt abandoned, even betrayed.

In the end negotiations were made for Chen and his family to go to New York.

Some speculated that Locke is leaving because of the increasingly bad air quality in Beijing, but the consulate denies this. Nevertheless his family has already moved back to Seattle and so it would only be a matter of time before he rejoined them.

So what's next for Locke? Surely he won't be out of the headlines for long.