Singapore vs HK bloggers

From Simon World, "Lions versus Lychees (Updated)":

Singapore and Hong Kong are well known rivals. Usually Hong Kong has the upper hand. But when it comes to blogging Hong Kong is, let's be honest, woefully behind Singapore. Singapore blogs have bigger readerships, are more diverse and more interesting.

Why?

There is a whole exchange between Mr. Brown and Simon, which should be read in full. The comments are interesting too. But I'll quote Simon's own conclusions:

1. The language factor is key. Hong Kong is dominated by Cantonese speakers with English quickly being relegated to the third language after Mandarin. Much to the elite's chagrin English proficiency is decling in Hong Kong. Thus those that feel most comfortable in writing in English are expats or "international Chinese". The downside to this is my inability to read Chinese excludes me from much of what happens locally in both the media and out there in the real world. On the other hand in Singapore English is a primary and commonly used language.

2. The nature of blogs in the two places is also shaped by the social and political environment. That's what Mr Brown was getting at and I can only agree. I have nothing against personal diary style blogs and indeed enjoy reading many of them. but the potential for blogging as a new medium and political tool is vast and only just starting to be realised.

3. Blogs themselves often reflect their setting. Singapore seems a more collegial place compared to the individuality of Hong Kong. And so it is with blogs.

I don't read enough HK blogs--English or Chinese--to be able to arrive at a comparison. The greatest part of my own blog reading is either American or Singaporean. Even Simon World, which I follow regularly, is not read primarily as a HK-centric blog as much as an Asia-centric one. And really, a proper comparison of the relative proportions of political vs. personal blogs will have to take the language issue into consideration. HK'ers, from my own experience, do not use English as their primary language. In comparison, a very large proportion of Singaporean Chinese do (which is a reason why other Chinese--mainlanders, Taiwanese and Hong Kongers--often fail to understand us Singaporean-Chinese...but I'll leave that for another day).

That said, the general observations about Singaporean blogs appears true enough, but I'm not totally convinced by the political explanation of why there are so many personal-journal type Singaporean blogs. It might explain why there are fewer blogs of an explicitly political orientation. Blogs are not inherently political in nature.