When I disclosed my metastatic prostate cancer in Jun-2020, I didn’t expect to live as long as I now have – the 5-year survival (which I am now approaching) is about 30%. However, after exhausting 4 lines of therapy and resorting to experimental treatments that are only available overseas, I have now reached the point where outcomes are measured in months rather than years and my symptoms and side-effects are making it harder to function. I hope to reach 60 in August and all I want for my birthday is another one, but before I become more dysfunctional, I need to make plans for the orderly conclusion of this pro bono, loss-making work rather than leave managing it as a burden for my family. One of the few benefits of knowing that you’re dying is being able to plan the end on your own terms.
The Webb-site Database has grown over the years to include an enormous amount of material. Much of it is collected by automated methods – I kept up my coding skills from the 1980s when I wrote books and games for the first generation of home computers. But even in the dawning era of artificial intelligence, there are some datasets which (so far) can only be accurately maintained by human judgment, for example, carefully parsing corporate announcements to determine which individual has been appointed to a board, as many individuals share the same name and no ID numbers are disclosed. Similarly, we track the membership of over 800 HK statutory and advisory bodies – everything from the Executive and Legislative Councils down to the Dogs and Cats Classification Board.
So a loyal assistant whom I have employed for 22 years has been maintaining anything that I can’t automate. All-in, I’ve spent over HK$10m since 2003 building and operating the database, not counting the considerable opportunity cost of my own time. I know that the database has been useful to journalists, regulators, researchers and of course investors, as they have often told me so.
A lot has happened since my cancer diagnosis, which came just after HK quarantined its borders for COVID. Since then, I deciphered the pseudo-disclosure on who received over HK$90bn of hand-outs under the so-called Employment Support Scheme, draining a substantial portion of HK’s fiscal reserves. I also tracked vaccination rates, immigration data and airport flight statistics, which we contine to collect. I’ve also been collecting data on HK prisoners, a record 39% of whom (at 30-Sep-2024) are unconvicted and on remand – presumed innocent under law. And I’ve built a complete history of the HKSAR Government Accounts from Apr-1998 to Mar-2024, with thousands of line items. Of course, I’ve also made more time for family, and managed to visit numerous places after the borders reopened. The bucket list is still long, but time is short.
In 2020, I did explore moving the Webb-site Database to the University of Hong Kong (our oldest university), where a fully-staffed “Webb Centre for Public Transparency” could build a much larger database around it, including datasets from PhD researchers on social, economic, health and legal matters in the Asia region. The Centre would have been apolitical, expressing no opinion other than to advocate accessibility of public data, and would have included representation from other HK universities to encourage collaboration. I and other donors would have made substantial contributions to the endowment needed to launch it. The relevant faculty heads were all in favour, but in a post-National Security Law environment, the detailed proposal was rejected by the university’s “Senior Management Team”. You can draw your own conclusions about why that might be.
In 2024, I launched a pilot project to crowd-source data collection on HK directors’ pay from annual reports stretching back to 2005. After an initial flurry of interest, a handful of diligent volunteers continue with this work, but it is clear to me that this is not a viable way to expand the data collection effort to other datasets that we manually maintain. Even if it were, someone would have to maintain the server and software and arbitrate disputes.
So that leaves me out of options and nearly out of time. Accordingly, I plan the following steps:
All manual data collection by my assistant on directors and supervisors of HK-listed companies and their advisers (bankers, lawyers, auditors, financial advisors etc) will cease, effective 31-Mar-2025.
The directors’ pay database project will continue for financial year-ends up to 31-Dec-2024 (the Listing Rules deadline for publishing the annual reports is 30-Apr-2025). I ask the volunteers to focus on completing and verifying the dataset from 2005 to 2024. I will then make the full dataset available for download.
Automated data collection (for example, the CCASS Analysis System, SFC licensees, HK law firms) will continue until the first annual expiry date (31-Oct) for the Webb-site server (in New York State) after my death, but individual datasets may cease earlier if the collection software breaks and I am either dead or too ill to update it.
When the server shuts down, Webb-site (including all the editorial content since foundation in 1998) will disappear, but most of our articles can be found in the Internet Archive, which will hopefully keep running for much longer.
Webb-site and I have, in my judgment, achieved a lot of what I set out to do when I founded it in 1998, but much remains unresolved and new economic problems have arisen in HK since then, particularly arising from excessive central planning, intervention and government spending in what was once a very free market economy, but also ongoing protection of vested interests which inhibits reforms that would benefit the economy and the people of HK. Much of this is in the subject archive, but I’ll try to leave behind some thoughts on this with a few more articles before I check out, health permitting.
