HONG KONG
In a narrow alley in the old
neighborhood of Sham Shui Po, a gray-haired woman surnamed Chan was busy
flattening cartons dumped by nearby stores before loading them onto her
tricycle.
At 58,
Chan ekes out a living by scavenging on the streets of Hong Kong. By selling
cartons to recycling stations at about 50 HK cents (6.4 U.S. cents) per kg,
Chan manages to earn 40 to 50 HK dollars a day.
"It is hard, but it is still
a job that brings food," said Chan, who considers herself luckier than
many. "Those who don't have Hong Kong residence permits are not even
allowed to do that here."
A paradise for billionaires and
well-heeled shoppers, the metropolis of about 7 million people is also home to
over 1.3 million residents trapped in poverty. Official statistics put Hong
Kong's poverty rate before government intervention at 20.1 percent in 2017.
Even more striking is its yawning
wealth gap. Hong Kong's Gini index, commonly used as a gauge of economic
inequality, rose to 0.539 in 2016, the highest in 45 years and far above the warning
level of 0.4.
The median monthly income of the
top 10 percent of Hong Kong's wealthy households was 43.9 times that of the
poorest 10 percent in 2016, up from 33.9 times a decade ago, according to a
report issued by aid agency Oxfam in 2018.
As wealth increasingly
centralizes in the hands of the few, the hardship of its impoverished
population remains salient. Many low-income earners are cooped up in rented
cabins the size of a toilet, and youngsters find it increasingly hard to move
up the social and career ladders.
Their rising discontent
and urge for change are believed to have fed into the recent unrest roiling the
special administrative region, prompting officials to promise greater attention
to social and economic problems.
Wong, who prefers going
by an alias, lives in a 37-square-meter public rental house in Choi Hung,
Kowloon, which has been her husband's home for 57 years. The family of four
sleep in two juxtaposed bunk beds, with curtains drawn to ensure the limited
privacy of their 18-year-old daughter.
Even so, Wong considers
herself as among the lucky few in Hong Kong, where houses are among the world's
least affordable.
According to Hong
Kong's Census and Statistics Department, around 209,700 locals resided in
so-called "subdivided flats" in 2016, with 66.9 percent of them
living in units with a floor area of 7 to 13 square meters.
Many
families are applying for public rental houses, which come with much lower
rents. But due to the slow construction of such houses, the average waiting
time for an applicant jumped to 5.3 years in 2016, according to Oxfam.
But after
being spared from exorbitant rents, Wong's family still struggles to make ends
meet. Nearly all of their monthly income of about 20,000 HK dollars, government
subsidies included, are spent to keep the family afloat and pay for treatment
for their young autistic son. Wong buys frozen meat instead of fresh cuts to save
money, and sometimes seeks help from her parents to make up any shortfalls.
When
asked if she was satisfied with the status quo, Wong nodded. But she had no
idea what would happen to her children.
"I
hope my daughter will leave this house to have her own one day, but that's a
long way off," she said. "My more immediate worry is that the old
building may be demolished and we will have to live in more expensive places in
remote areas."
The lack
of faith in a brighter future is shared by Ah-fung, a handbag peddler in Tai
Yuen Street who represents Hong Kong's many small retailers hit hard by the
skyrocketing rents and the onslaught of e-commerce.
Working
for others or being self-employed would be equally hard, said the 42-year-old.
"Being
a salary earner, you'll have little money left after paying the rent," he
said. "Doing business, at least 1 million HK dollars is needed to open a
shop. I haven't earned that much money for 20 years."
One
scourge of Hong Kong's wealth divide is the hollowing out of its industries, a
trend experts said could date back to the 1980s, when Hong Kong started to move
out labor-intensive manufacturing industries and reorient to a service-centered
economy.
"Hong
Kong's economy relies heavily on a few sectors like real estate and finance.
While businesspeople in these sectors accumulate vast wealth, the majority of
people are unable to get a slice of the pie," said Hong Kong-based economist
Liang Haiming.
Over the
past 22 years, the successive HKSAR governments have tried many times to tackle
these problems by rolling out affordable housing programs and narrowing the
rich-poor gap.
To carry
out major policies or push forward major bills, the HKSAR government needs to
garner the support of two-thirds majority at the Legislative Council (LegCo).
The HKSAR
government's previous motions, be it economic policies or fiscal
appropriations, were impeded by the opposition time and again at the LegCo.
"They
play both the angel and the devil," said Chan Yung, a deputy to the
National People's Congress and vice chairperson of the Democratic Alliance for
the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, adding that the opposition has kept
making trouble while blaming the government for achieving nothing.
Joseph
P.H. Fan, professor of finance and accountancy at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong, also noted that the HKSAR government's governance is constrained by
people with vested interests, and many measures designed to boost the economy
and improve people's livelihood are difficult to implement.
No
solution lies in the prolonged unrest, though, which has veered off its
original agenda to cause a split in society and disrupt the economy.
In July,
Hong Kong's retail sales plunged 11.4 percent from a year ago, with officials
warning the situation may deteriorate further if the violence continues.
To
prevent Hong Kong's economy from tanking, the HKSAR government in August
announced a package of economy-boosting measures with a total value of 19.1
billion HK dollars, ranging from waiving government fees and charges on
enterprises for 12 months to introducing a new loan guarantee product for
smaller companies.
 |
| An elder collects waste in Quarry Bay, south China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region |
To come
out of the economic difficulty, Fan suggested strengthening ties with the
Chinese mainland so as to gain more economic momentum. "Hong Kong owes
much of its prosperity to its role in bridging China and the world, rather than
laissez-faire economic policies," he said.
For his
part, Liang suggested that Hong Kong further participate in the development of
the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and take this opportunity to
bolster the science and technology industry.
Earlier
this month, Chief Executive of the HKSAR Carrie Lam promised to reach out to
the community to start a direct dialogue and to invite community leaders,
professionals and academics to independently review the society's deep-seated
problems.
"Let's
look for solutions," she said, urging Hong Kong to move forward from the
current turmoil. - Xinhua
No comments:
Post a Comment