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Greed is consuming Hong Kong. The overwhelming share of the city’s wealth goes into the pockets of a minority of the population. Hongkongers are obsessed with money and money alone. Financial success polarises the city – it has been this way since the end of World War II.
Hong Kong is one of the wealthiest cities in the world yet most families live in cramped quarters measuring around 200 sq ft on average, many more in cages. What “world city” are we? Hongkongers are not known to be political – politics is not in our DNA – but now young people are taking to the streets in droves to vent their anger because they simply see no hope and no future.
Police officers block the road as anti-government protesters gather in Tin Shui Wai on September 14.
Without a comprehensive plan to address housing, the government may be at a loss over how to end the protests. Photo: Reuters
Livelihood is the issue, not the proposed extradition bill. It is too late for dialogue. Our city is too sick for cough medicine. It needs wide-spectrum antibiotics.
The cure: the top 10 property developers and the middle and upper-middle-class folks who have made bundles from real estate and a zillion other forms of the speculation Hong Kong is famous for collectively cough up HK$100 billion. The government matches the “New Hong Kong Endowment Fund” dollar for dollar. With HK$200 billion, it starts building subsidised flats and selling them to first-time young buyers at HK$8,000 per square foot or even HK$5,000 square foot, the cheaper the better. These flats must not be 150 sq ft pigsties, but 600 sq ft, decent-sized flats because we are not animals but human beings.
If the Hong Kong government does this, it will see a brand new Hong Kong with vibrant energy and renewed prosperity – and no children will be interested in taking to the streets ever again.
Philip S.K. Leung, Pok Fu Lam
Published: 6:10am, 17 Sep, 2019
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