Hong Kong’s Billionaires Should Give Up Power to Save the City

• I am not sure the HK press dares to say what this article says for fear of offending the billionaires. Young HKers don’t have a bright future because of the control of the billionaire oligarchs. HK is really a place for the very very rich, not for the middle income. Housing is unaffordable. The HK government is partly to blame, so HKers are correct to protest against their government in this aspect. But the HK public must shoulder some blame for the property crisis also.
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  No Hong Kong housing crisis if ex-leader Tung Chee-hwa had stuck to goal of 85,000 flats a year, Leung Chun-ying says
  … Hongkongers would not be facing a housing squeeze today if the city’s first chief executive after its return to China in 1997 had stuck with his original goal of producing 85,000 flats a year, another former top official said on Tuesday.
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  Leung Chun-ying, the third city leader between 2012 and June 30 last year, criticised Tung Chee-hwa as caving in to public pressure and said his capitulation illustrated how public opinion was biased.
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  Ex-Hong Kong leader CY Leung defends controversial 1990s housing policy, says crisis could have been averted
  … “Tung and others wanted to enact the 85,000 policy, but popular opinion – especially the opposition faced in the Legislative Council – made it impossible,” he said. “It was the same over the past few years: we tried to increase the land supply, but we could not get it passed because the opposition parties control whether the budget gets approved.”
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• But they are not protesting against the root cause of the problem: inequality due to oligopolistic control of real estate and critical infrastructure by private corporations. China is not the cause of this. I would argue that China with its communist policies can ‘resolve’ this problem conclusively. This problem is the result of the British colonial government favouring these billionaire oligarchs without regard for the future of HK.
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• Hong Kong’s Billionaires Should Give Up Power to Save the City
  by William Pesek, https://asia.nikkei.com/
  Government must act to reduce oligarchs’ control in face of protests
  If ever billionaires faced a no-win situation, this is it for Hong Kong tycoons. For two months, the elite stayed eerily silent about the biggest protests in the city’s history. Crossing political benefactors in China could be bad for their fantastically profitable monopolies.
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  There is also risk in appearing to oppose the democratic aspirations of young Hong Kongers. Becoming targets of popular ire in the long run may be worse than stomaching a short recession.
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  Now, Hong Kong’s overlords are beginning to speak up, and it is no surprise they are siding with their political contacts in Beijing. Money talks. Property magnate Peter Woo last week said protesters should not “purposely stir up trouble” and called for an end to demonstrations. Sun Hung Kai Properties, Kong Kong’s biggest developer by market value, issued a statement condemning violent protests a day later. So did other property bigwigs, looking toward Xi Jinping rather than in the mirror.
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  They probably fear the fate of Cathay Pacific Airways. Earlier this month, Cathay came under intense pressure to stop aircrew from supporting protests and suspend those who were. Now China Inc. has closed ranks. On August 13, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China’s biggest lender, slapped a “strong sell” rating on Cathay shares, citing “management’s poor crisis management.”
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  The shares fell to a 10-year low last week as executives struggled to balance the conflicting demands of protesters, its own staff and China. Then, on Friday, CEO Rupert Hogg fell on his sword, resigning “to take responsibility as a leader of the company in view of recent events.”
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  Cathay’s Hong Kong employees might have expected to be able to express their views in an unfettered manner — “unfettered” has long been Hong Kong’s raison d’etre. It routinely shows up in the Heritage Foundation’s accolades when, year after year, the right-wing Washington think tank names Hong Kong the world’s freest economy.
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  Of course, Hong Kong topping its Index of Economic Freedom is an exercise in compartmentalization. With its leader chosen by Beijing, a pegged currency, a government-backed Disney theme park and a rigidly controlled property market, Hong Kong’s economy is actually as oligarchic as they come.
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  Yet that arrangement is backfiring. Economist Andy Xie, the former Morgan Stanley bigwig, has argued that the tycoons “are the problem” underlying the tensions tearing Hong Kong apart.
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  “The Hong Kong government is not really in charge [even though] most people think that they need to listen to Beijing, but perhaps more importantly, they are really influenced by the big property tycoons,” the Shanghai-based Xie told CNBC on August 14.
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  Like all Hong Kong leaders, Chief Executive Carrie Lam will probably eventually be replaced by another pro-Beijing apparatchik. But the tycoons who profit from engineering sky-high property values will still be acting in ways that worsen inequality. “This is crazy,” Xie said. The tycoons, he noted, “think that people will just take it lying down forever, but eventually it blows up.”
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  Though Singapore has housing affordability problems, the government does not coddle a handful of billionaires. In Taiwan, the people can vote out any leader acting against their interests. By sharp contrast, Xie argued, Hong Kong is “in between — just a bunch of businesspeople calling the shots.”
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  Hong Kong rents have been racing ahead of wages for many years now. Since 2003, residential property prices have risen more than 300%, according to the Centa-City Leading Index. Real estate company CBRE ranks Hong Kong the world’s priciest real estate market. It is no coincidence that Oxfam last year warned Hong Kong has a “particularly severe” rich-poor divide.
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  read more.

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