ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 4 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
February 20, 2017
Hong Kong ivory trade faces uncertain future as bans loom
By Kelvin Chan
AP Business Writer
ONG KONG — Wong Lai-ngan
hunches over a battered work-
bench, his electric rotary tool
whining as he carves two phoenixes facing
each other into a smooth white tusk.
Decades ago, Wong’s canvas would have
been elephant ivory. But since a 1990 ban
on international trading, Hong Kong’s
dwindling tribe of ivory carvers has
switched to the tusks of extinct woolly
mammoths.
The decline of the city’s once-flourishing
ivory business is set to speed up after the
Hong Kong and mainland Chinese
governments announced in December
plans to restrict local ivory trading.
Wildlife activists hailed the news, saying
domestic markets must be phased out to
reduce the demand for tusks driving an
epidemic of poaching that is decimating
Africa’s elephants.
It also signals the end for Hong Kong’s
ivory craftsmen and traders.
“It’s pretty much all dead now,” said
Wong, 77, who started carving ivory more
than 50 years ago. “The government has
pretty much killed it all. There are no more
ivory imports and there’s no business
going out,” he said, working in flip-flops
and wearing a flimsy face mask to guard
against the fine white dust spewed out by
his drill, coating his jeans.
Beijing plans to start shutting China’s
ivory carving factories and shops by March
and ban local sales by the end of 2017.
Hong Kong’s blueprint would end local
trading by 2021. Those moves are raising
pressure on European countries to do the
same.
Researchers say Hong Kong is the
world’s biggest retail ivory market. It’s
also a hub for illicit trading of all sorts of
endangered wildlife. Customs officers
make regular busts of illegal shipments of
ivory, rhino horns, and pangolin scales
destined for the Chinese mainland.
The crackdown on ivory is driven by
concern over the mass slaughter of Africa’s
H
elephants to meet demand from China, the
world’s biggest ivory consumer. According
to one recent study from 2007 to 2014, the
continent’s savannah elephant population
fell 30 percent, to 352,000.
Chinese traditionally have prized ivory
carved into bracelets, chopsticks, and
figurines. Rising demand from the
country’s growing middle class has driven
up prices, earning it the nickname “white
gold.” A one-off auction of African ivory to
Japan and China in 2008 also
unintentionally helped fuel demand.
Hong Kong has 72 shops whose licenses
to sell ivory were obtained before the 1990
ban, according to a 2015 survey by Save
the Elephants. Most buyers are mainland
Chinese, who smuggle it back home, it
found.
There are also 386 legally registered
ivory traders in the city, according to
government data. Activists suspect some
traders use their legal stockpiles to
“launder” illegal ivory. They worry that
the
four-year
gap
between
the
enforcement of China’s ban and Hong
Kong’s could encourage this.
The problem “will be even more serious
because as China is squeezing out their
domestic trade, Hong Kong is still having
2016 Exemplary Community Volunteer Award Recipient:
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FAAV
The Filipino-American Association of Vancouver, Washington (FAAV) — formerly known
as the Filipino American Association of Clark County and Vicinity (FAACCV) — was founded
in the early 1980s to preserve the Filipino culture and promote camaraderie among Filipino
Americans in the Vancouver, Washington area. The organization, led by 18 officers and board
members, maintains a list of barkadas (friends) from Vancouver, Portland, and other areas of
the Pacific Northwest to aid in its mission to engage in humanitarian, civic, educational,
cultural, and charitable activities that preserve, promote, and share the customs, values, and
heritage of the Filipino culture. In the past year, FAAV’s activities have included sponsoring
Philippine Consular outreach in Portland, the Fil-Am Vancouver basketball team, and
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supporting a social business conference; and more. The organization also maintains a
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The Asian Reporter Foundation’s 19th
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Silent auction
an open market,” said Cheryl Lo, a wildlife
crime officer at the World Wildlife Fund.
Traders in mainland China could use
Hong Kong to liquidate their stock or to
ship it to other markets such as Myanmar,
Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, which have
fewer restrictions, she said.
The time lag “will become a severe en-
forcement headache for Chinese customs
officials along Hong Kong’s border,” said
Alex Hofford, a campaigner with WildAid.
“So it’s up to the Hong Kong government to
decide if they want to align with Beijing, or
risk undermining mainland environ-
mental policy from 2018 onwards.”
Hong Kong’s traders say five years is not
enough time to sell off their inventory.
They want compensation if they have to
give up their 75-ton stockpile of legally
registered ivory worth billions of dollars.
Officials have indicated that’s not an
option.
Wong’s
employer,
Daniel
Chan,
managing director of Lise Carving and
Jewellery, says he doesn’t know anything
about illegal ivory. Chan’s workshop is
filled
with
hundreds
of
unsold
shrink-wrapped ivory carvings of dragons
and Buddha figurines.
Department stores stopped selling
DYING ART. An ivory sculpture of the Chinese
goddess Guanyin is displayed at Lise Carving and
Jewellery workshop in Hong Kong. The decline of
the city’s once-flourishing ivory business is set to
accelerate further after the Hong Kong and mainland
Chinese governments unveiled plans to restrict local
ivory trading. Wildlife activists hailed the news, saying
that phasing out domestic markets is a key step in
reducing demand for tusks fuelling illegal poaching
of Africa’s elephants. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
Chan’s ivory on consignment after protests
by conservation groups, he complains. He
denies the ivory industry is responsible for
elephant deaths in Africa, despite clear
evidence that poaching is the main factor.
The ebbing ivory trade mirrors the
decline of other crafts that once helped
define Hong Kong’s identity but have been
pushed out by changing tastes, rising
rents, and new technology. Cheap and
efficient LED lights have replaced the
skyline’s dazzling handmade neon signs;
modern vessels have taken the place of
iconic wooden sailing junks; and
production of aromatic bamboo dim sum
steamers has moved to mainland China.
Lam King-leung, who sells name seals,
or chops, in the Sheung Wan
neighborhood, had a few dozen ivory ones
next to plastic and stone versions in his
alleyway stall’s display case. But he said
they weren’t hot sellers. The smallest ivory
chop cost 700 Hong Kong dollars ($90),
while plastic ones were HK$100 ($13), he
said, warning that ivory could not be taken
out of Hong Kong.
“No one’s buying,” he said. “In a year we
only sell three or four.”
In the ivory carving industry’s 1970s
heyday, Hong Kong factories employed as
many as 3,500 carvers. Only a half-dozen
part-time carvers are left, along with 10 to
20 full-time mammoth tusk carvers,
according to Save the Elephants. The
trade is about to disappear, Chan said.
“Young people, none of them want to
come into this industry,” said Chan. The
existing master carvers “have pretty much
all retired; there are very few of them left.
Even if they produce something, which
owner or company would buy it? There’s no
way out.”
North Korea says it will reject Malaysia autopsy of Kim half brother
Continued from page 3
arrest, describing her as a polite and quiet
young mother.
Between 2008 and 2011, she and her
then-husband lived in a home with flaking
red paint in a narrow alley of Tambora, a
densely populated neighborhood in
western Jakarta.
Her former father-in-law, Tjia Liang
Kiong, who lives in a nearby middle-class
neighborhood and last saw Aisyah on
January 28, described her as respectful.
“I was shocked to hear that she was
arrested for murdering someone,” he said.
“I don’t believe that she would commit
such a crime or what the media says —
that she is an intelligence agent.”
Aisyah’s mother, Benah, said by
telephone that the family comes from a
humble village background and has no
ability to help her.
“Since we heard that from the television,
I could not sleep and eat. Same as her
father, he just prays and reads the holy
Qur’an. He even does not want to speak,”
said Benah. “As villagers, we could only
pray.”
According to Kiong, Aisyah only
completed junior high school and moved to
Malaysia with her husband in 2011 to seek
a better life after the garment-making
shop they ran from their home went out of
business. The couple left their nearly
two-year-old son in Jakarta under the care
of Kiong and his wife.
She and her husband divorced in 2012.
Malaysia, which is approaching
developed-nation income levels, is a
magnet for millions of Indonesians, who
typically find work there as bar hostesses,
maids, and construction and plantation
workers.
The three suspects were arrested
separately.
The women were identified using
surveillance videos from the airport, police
said. Police took them back to the crime
scene at the budget terminal of the airport
“for further investigations,” Abdul Samah
said. Local media reported that police
wanted to re-create the crime scene to
establish new leads.
Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Ali
Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, and
Tim Sullivan in New Delhi contributed to this report.
q
Yuna Kim reveals Olympic
torch in countdown to 2018
Continued from page 2
international broadcasting center, and a
pentagonal stadium that will host the
opening and closing ceremonies are
expected to be finished by September.
The political turmoil surrounding
President Park has been a massive
distraction that slowed the efforts of the
organizers to stoke lukewarm public
interest, and also rattled the country’s
ministry of culture and sports, which
oversees Olympic preparations.
Lee said the recent political situation “to
a degree” negatively affected preparations
for the games, but said such impact could
be overcome with more help from
government organizations and the
business community.