This story had me puzzled.

More than 100,000 foreign nationals work as maids in Hong Kong, and most of them are from the Philippines. But for how long? The labor ministry in Hong Kong says there were 155,470 Filipina maids in Hong Kong in 2001 but only 123,189 in 2003. At the same time there was a sharp increase in hiring of maids from Indonesia.

The ministry said unofficially confirms that there some sentiment in Hong Kong that maids from democratic nations are harder to manage than maids from other societies.

This makes no sense to me at all (even allowing for the mangled English). Am I missing something?

If there is a preference in Hong Kong for Indonesian maids I thought it was because they are more willing to work for lower wages. I can't imagine that the political system of Indonesia or the Philippines comes into at all, but I must say I thought that both countries were democracies. Very puzzling.

UPDATE: A slightly more coherent account of this nonsense can be found here. There's a quote from what I assume to be a Philippine government official, trying to explain the popularity of Indonesian maids over Filipinas:

Mr Julve also cited the Filipinos' assertiveness as a factor.

"Its a cultural clash because Filipinos are born, raised and educated in a democratic society while the Chinese with their Confucian values value discipline, order and hierarchy," he said.

No, I still don't get it. Hemlock has another take on this story, incidentally.