Executive Presentation - Hong Kong Management Association: Fill & Download for Free

How do you think the Chinese Government will respond to the Hong Kong protests (2019)?The Chinese government won’t do a thing unless there’s a bloodbath on the streets.If you actually take the time to do some rudimentary research on Hong Kong’s structure, you will see that, in essence, Hong Kong is a Joint Venture of the UK and China, with the Local Tycoons (most of whom are citizens of UK and/or Canada) being the Management Team. This structure was outlined in the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, and subsequently legalized into the Basic Law of Hong Kong in 1997, when the sovereignty of HK was handed over to PRC. So how much do you think China will stick her neck out to safeguard the British and the Canadian money? I think they might be willing to risk a little sliver of her nail on her little pinky finger, but that’s about it.In 1984, when China was negotiating with the UK about the return of Hong Kong, and with Portugal about the return of Macao, the GDP of Hong Kong, with a population of 4 million, was about $34 billion USD. China mainland, with a population of 1 billion, had a GDP of about $260 billion. So HK alone was generating about as much as 15% of the GDP of China. Naturally the Chinese leadership considered themselves as very much the humble student, eager to learn all the great things Hong Kong has to offer, and fearful that they would ruin the place with their ineptitude. So China’s negotiation with the UK was in no way “just pack your bag and get out!” but more like “I must have the place back, but I also want/need to have your expertise with running the place.”So Hong Kong was essentially set up as a “joint venture” of the UK and China, with the local tycoons as the “management team”.Hong Kong’s sovereignty went to China.Tertiary education are all in English, with English textbooks and foreign professors. Not in Mandarin. Nor in Cantonese that the Hong Kong locals speak .The Hong Kong Legal system is entirely controlled by the British. 12 out of the 14 highest court of appeals judges are British Commonwealth citizens, not Chinese. The Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar association is a Brit trained in Lincoln's Inn. Hong Kong Bar AssociationThe Hong Kong financial system is entirely “walled-off” from China - different currency, central bank, tax laws, etc. All of these are codified into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution called the “Basic Law”. HSBC is the biggest bank in Hong Kong. Shanghai contributed a ton of tax money to help develop the poor interior provinces of China. Hong Kong, not a cent.The richest and the most influential Hong Kong tycoon is Li Ka-shing, a Canadian citizen living in the UK.The Legislature (which is staffed by Hong Kong tycoons’ pets) and the Chief Executive (who used to be appointed by Westminster) were all set up exactly the same way as under the UK, except now the CE is an elected position, and Beijing can veto a CE candidate if s/he is deemed to be entirely unacceptable.Strict border control and visa regime between Hong Kong and PRC.This is the simple fact. All these are encoded into the Basic Law and can not be changed until 2047. Frankly, the Iraqis literally got more “freedom” from the Americans after the occupation than the Hong Kong Chinese from the British. LOL. At least today the Iraqi universities don’t speak in English only, the Iraqi supreme court doesn’t have 90% of its judges being Americans, and the richest Iraqi is not an American! This is worse than the unconditionally surrendered Germans and the Japanese after WWII.Jokes aside, this situation was at most 30% a China-London influence thing, and 70% the local tycoon’s own doing. They wanted this. You see, both London and Beijing ended up having to put up with the tycoons, because they are the ones who can make new, constructive things happen. Those poor students, they can smash things up, but can they build something, such as finding a bed for the poor people to sleep at night? educating the poor so that they can have a future? Help your fellow students to get a job after graduation? Anything? Sigh. You see, this is why the Church can have long-term, loyal followings, and the Hong Kong students can’t. They don’t offer anything to people in need. The tycoons can. This is something the students need to provide if they want to become a viable political power. Well, there were twitter images of somebody provided truckloads of hardhats and face masks to the students for them to go trash the LegCo building with. Then what? What about food, clothing, and abode that people need? Well so far, that have to come from the tycoons.Nobody could collect taxes from the tycoons, and Hong Kong had “low tax” written into its constitution, and had the inheritance tax repealed in 2006. London tried for 50 years and couldn’t do a thing. Beijing had it for 20 years and couldn’t do a thing. Nobody is allowed to even talk about putting in a progressive income tax like all the other countries on earth. Like Voltaire said, the one you can’t talk about is the one who has power, and that’s neither London nor Beijing!With these things etched in stone until 2047, what it means is that Hong Kong became, basically, one of those former British colonies in Africa, where the local elites are most interested in wealth extraction while squirreling away their own money in London. Hong Kong is everybody’s hotel and nobody’s home. Singapore may have its own set of problems, but it is somebody’s HOME. This is the biggest difference between the two.So now you have someone who murders his girlfriend in Taiwan and stuffed her body in the suitcase, running free in Hong Kong Hongkonger killed, put girlfriend in suitcase, Taiwan police suspect, and the fourth richest tycoon, a UK citizen, caught red-handed writing a $1.4 million dollar check to a Macao government official to get a piece of land, for which he was convicted in absentia of bribery and corruption, Joseph Lau running free in Hong Kong Hong Kong fugitive tycoon seeks to block extradition. What’s the solution? Ah, Hong Kong youngsters demonstrating in the street and trashing the LegCo building to make sure these guys will NEVER be tried, because it’s all the fault of the CCP - when the CCP is an illegal, proscribed political party in Hong Kong and has been banned since the 70’s. That’s the solution! Good grief! I mean, if you write it into a movie script, Hollywood would have laughed itself silly because the plot is sheer lunacy. If you want to trash some property, go trash some tycoons’ property. They are the ones who are making 50% of HKers paying 70% of their income to rent. Nearly half Hong Kong flats rent for more than US$2,550 a month Why trash the pitifully few public property that you own a share in? How many South Koreans are educated by public universities? 80%. How many Hong Hong youths? 18%. The HKers really don’t have much “public goods”. Still, what happens when the youths want to vent? They go trash public properties! This just proves that Hong Kong is all British and not a single drop of French in it! A bit of French-ness would have been more healthy. Wealth gap in Hong Kong hits record high But no. In Hong Kong, chickens cry out for the predatory freedom of the fox.The Murder Case That Lit the Fuse in Hong KongAnd a lot of media screaming “the sky is falling! China scary! Emotion emotion emotion!” But actually, when Hong Kong demonstrators draped the British colonial flag over LegCo, they are actually making a presentation closer to the present reality than they know. Why should the tycoons be the only ones allowed to trash the place anyway? What do you think China will do about this? Well she published a letter, saying “Dear Hong Kong, you have made a nice nest egg, but with the current trade tension and uncertainly all over the world, I don’t think you can afford to squander all your money.” 人民日报评论员：坚决支持特区政府对严重违法行为追究到底--观点--人民网 This is basically a venture partner doing the “corporate talk” to the Tycoon Management team. Why would you expect anything else? China doesn’t have enough skin in the game to care too much about it. Neither does the UK government, which is why they won’t actually do a thing either, other than some cheap talk. The Tycoons have skin in the game, but they are all citizens of some other Anglo countries, and they are pretty much unmanageable, so…But what about this notion of the British being the “victim of China’s bullying”? Well, they could have easily give anyone who asked a British passport, if they believe that they are British citizens. Portugal gave far higher percentage of people in Macao Portuguese passports than UK did with her Hong Kong colony, so that those who want to live in Portugal can go live in Portugal, and those who stayed in Macao like to live in Macao. Everybody’s happy. But no. No one, absolutely no one on earth, can play the “victim” card better than the Brits. They have in the past invaded practically every single country on earth, and they were the “victim” in every single case, so they say. Right now the Brits are busy being the victim of EU bullying, after they unilaterally decided to leave the pact. Being a joint-venture partner with the Brits has historically been a high-risk position for the last thousand years or so.You may wonder exactly what the Chinese got out of the Hong Kong handover. Well the biggest thing the Chinese wanted, was to get to KNOW the Hong Kong administrative system and the industrial know-how, figure out what’s useful, and what’s junk. Setting 1.4 billion minds on a piece of knowledge is actually a thing that’s both awesome and scary - in no time at all they’ll come up with a whole basket of things that are better, that are cheaper, that are more convenient, that are different! Thus China thoroughly digested that knowledge, then used it to develop itself, and to set up special trading zones everywhere to attract foreign collaboration. Hong Kong is also a great zip code for moving product and money to other English-speaking countries such as the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and former UK/US colonies in South East Asia.Shanghai’s GDP exceeded Hong Kong in 2009, and Shenzhen did the same in 2018.The knowledge transfer was extremely successful, so successful that Hong Kong’s economic contribution, as a percentage of China’s GDP, dropped precipitously, as other Chinese cities caught up. By 2015, Hong Kong’s share of China’s GDP has dropped to a mere 3%.Hong Kong’s significance as “China’s portal to the world” is no longer true. Today most Europeans prefer Shanghai and Beijing. The Japanese command entire neighborhoods in Shanghai, and South Koreans have their own neighborhood in Beijing. Hundreds of thousands of Africans live in Guangzhou, and Macao, as a Hong Kong-style joint venture between the Chinese and the Portuguese, has been far more successful. China not only got to learn everything she could learn from Macao, but she was able to leverage Macao as the “portal” to reach out to all Portuguese-speaking countries. such as Portugal and Brazil.And China is trying to set up the whole Hainan province into a destination and free trade zone for the Scandinavians and the Russians. They are from the far north, so they have an inordinate fondness for the sun, the ocean, and the beach. China's Hainan eyes tourists from Nordic countries and RussiaOpinion | Why China No Longer Needs Hong Kong

In fact, Hong Kong did have a well worked-out public housing policy at the time when the British returned Hong Kong to China in 1997.When Tung Chee Hwa was chosen to be Hong Kong's first Chief Executive after the handover, he and his team announced the “85,000 policy” in Oct 1997 as part of the Hong Kong government’s Long Term Housing Strategy. It stated that no less than 85,000 public and private flats would be built annually starting in 1999.However, it was not meant to be. A year after the announcement, Tung scrapped the plan. In fact, Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong's 3rd Chief Executive who served between 2012 and 2017 blamed Tung for scrapping the housing plan and not standing firm. Leung was working under Tung and known for being an advocate for the “85,000 policy” during Tung’s tenure.Leung told the media in 2018 that Hong Kong’s present housing crisis could have been averted if the “85,000 policy” had stayed in place.Leung blamed the opposition parties blocking the “85,000 policy” during the first post-handover administration. Leung also said that, contrary to popular belief, the policy did not cause the 1997 housing market crash.“If Tung’s 85,000 policy had the acceptance and cooperation of the public, including those in the legislature, today’s housing problems would not exist,” Leung said. “Because people at the time widely believed that the 85,000 policy was responsible for the fall in prices, the government decided to cancel the goal, and you can see the effect today."“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.”Collusion between officials and property tycoons in HKIt's no secret that Hong Kong property market is controlled by a minority of rich property tycoons in Hong Kong.For example, Lam Woon-kwong who was the Convenor of the Executive Council between 2012 and 2017, once lamented to the media that the biggest land bank was not owned by the government, but was in the hands of property tycoons.Naturally, a policy like Tung's “85,000 policy” flooding the market with property units would be detrimental to the interests of those property tycoons. It has thus been speculated that the scrapping of the “85,000 policy” was in-part linked to pressures from the tycoons.Eurasia Review, an independent Journal and Think Tank, wrote an article some years ago pointing to collusion between officials and property tycoons in Hong Kong."The collusion outcry definitely fans the popular speculation that the economy of this Special Administration Region is de facto ruled by the four major property tycoons in Hong Kong. By virtue of their riches, they command the attention of senior politicians in public office, to such an extent that policies are usually formulated with their best interests in mind and preference treatment or direct favoritism are granted to them from time to time either above the law or below the table," it said.Publicly, there have been numerous allegations of favoritism, conflicts of interest and suspected bribery with property tycoons by public officials that lend credence to the above speculation.Such speculations were especially heightened when Hong Kong was shaken by the arrest of Sun Hung Kai Properties (SHKP) Executive Director Thomas Chan by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on 19 March 2012. Co-chairmen Thomas and Raymond Kwok and five others were later also arrested as part of an extensive corruption probe. Rafael Hui, former chief secretary of Hong Kong, was taken in for questioning. In December 2014, Thomas Kwok and Rafael Hui were convicted of the HK$8,500,000 bribery, and Hui was convicted of four more charges relating to misconduct in public office.In addition to being the Chief Secretary, Hui was also the managing director of Mandatory Providence Fund (MPF), and the chairman of the steering committee on the development of western Kowloon, a mega project valued at USD 1.0 billion involving cultural facilities and real-estate development. Even before the corruption case erupted, Hui was seen as a close friend and business associate of Kwok’s brothers. In 2003, after his resignation from the MPF Office, Hui set up a consultancy firm dedicated to providing political and economic consultancy services. The following year, while serving as a director of the Kowloon Motor Bus Company, a corporation under the SHKP Group, Hui was offered to live in a luxurious apartment in Leighton Hill which is worth about HK$ 150 million and apparently at the expense of the Kwok’s brothers. In 2005, Hui was invited by the former Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, his long-term alliance in the government, to become the Chief Secretary for the Administration. But instead of moving into the official residence at Barker Road, Hui insisted to stay in Kwok’s luxurious Leighton Hill apartment. This insistence of maintaining a close tie with the Kwok’s brothers, along with the suspicion that he was granted an overdraft privileges at banks without collateral so as to maintain his lavish style of living eventually aroused the suspicion of corruption. Hui became the highest ranked civil servant in Hong Kong history to be put behind bar for bribery.The collusion of Hui with the Kwok’s brother undoubtedly has helped SHKP to dominate the Hong Kong property market. During the period Hui was in various senior public offices, it was believed that he had revealed substantial confidential information to his related parties with regard to government policies, internal planning on land sales and zoning, and accorded these parties preferential treatments in exchange of the favors and benefits he received from them.Rafael HuiThen there was a controversy involving another senior civil servant, Permanent Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands, Leung Chin-man, and the New World Development Group (NWD). In the year prior to 2004, Leung acted on behalf of the government to sell a never-occupied high-rise complex called the Hung Hom Peninsula, which was built under the Private Sector Participation Scheme project, for a below-market land premium of HK$864 million to NWD. The latter subsequently sold off half of the share to SHKP. In late 2004, the consortium announced the demolition of these buildings to make way for luxury apartments. Their plan was eventually withdrawn due to the huge public outcry against this needless destruction of “perfectly good buildings” to satisfy “corporate greed”.Leung was also involved in another case of suspected preferential treatment granted to property developer Henderson Land Development (HLD), which had won a tender for a site in Sai Wan Ho for Grand Promenade with a land premium of HK$2.43 billion in January 2001. Six months later, the developer successfully applied for and was granted permission by Leung to exclude the public transport terminus from the gross floor area in its building plan. This exclusion was akin to granting HLD an additional 10,700 square meters to the project, doubling the number of apartments from 1,008 to 2,020, and resulted in lost revenue to the government amounting to HK$125 million. A 2005 Audit Report criticized Leung for having exercised his discretionary power before conferring with other government departments, thus handing to the developer additional revenue of HK$3.2 billion in exchange for a land premium of $6 million. Leung tabled a judicial review to justify his discretionary power and eventually forced the Government in May 2006 to drop the legal proceedings. The government drew severe criticism for not pressing the case in court, despite of wide suspicion that conflict of interest was involved in Leung’s dealings with NWD and HLD.The public outcry was soon proven well founded. In July 2008 after his retirement, Leung was offered a post as deputy managing director of New World China Land, a subsidiary of NWD. It turned out that after one year ‘sterilization period’ after retirement, Leung obtained approval from the Civil Service Bureau to take up employment with New World China Land. This job offer immediately provoked public uproar amidst widespread suspicion that it was a quid pro quo for the favors he apparently granted to NWD in 2004 for the Hung Hom project.Controversies surrounded not only the suspicions of Leung’s own conflict of interest, but also of the insensitivity of the committee which recommended the approval for him to take up his new job with a HK$3.12 million pay packet in less than two years after his official retirement. Under public pressure, NWD announced on 16 August, 2008 that Leung had resigned from his post. The Secretary for the Civil Service apologized for the poor handling of the case, which seriously undermined the authority and credibility of the Civil Service Bureau.There were more precedents in favoritism towards property tycoons behind the scenes than meets the eye. One of the most conspicuous one is the Cyberport Project. This project has been conjured up to build a physical hub for information technology on 26 hectares of prime land in Hong Kong Island. The development was announced by Donald Tsang, then Financial Secretary, in his budget speech on 3 March, 1999. The project was awarded to the Pacific Century Group (PCG), with no tender called. PCG is a private company controlled by Richard Li, younger son of Li Ka Shing, who is a long-time friend of Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa. The Cyberport project was described in the budget on March 3, 1999 as being a “HK$13bn development, mostly from private investment”. A statement from the Information Technology and Broadcasting Bureau (ITBB) the same day said “the Government will provide the site as its equity contribution while PCG will make a capital contribution of about HK$7 billion to the whole development”. From this one could infer that the government values the land merely at HK$6 billion, a valuation believed to be much lower than its fair market price.Upon public disclosure, it turned out that over 75% of the developed area is residential, whereas the office space allocated for the Information Technology firms represents only 17% of the total. And the purported “shared facilities” such as “demonstration facilities”, a “media laboratory”, and “exhibition and trade show facilities” make up part of a small 18,000 sq. m. block which includes houses and apartments, so even if half of this block is shared facilities, it would only account for 1.7% of the development, amounting to a shared Laundromat in a housing estate! Hence, it becomes obvious that the so called Cyberport project is in fact a residential development project in disguise, and it was granted exclusively to the company of property tycoon Li Ka Shing’s son without any formal tender process.Finally, one mustn't forget about Donald Tsang, the 2nd Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2005 to 2012. In the last months of his term, Tsang was embroiled by various corruption allegations. He was discovered to have received favours and hospitality from the tycoons on various occasions, including private jet and yacht trips and was labelled as "Greedy Tsang". He was subsequently charged by the Independent Commission Against Corruption and was found guilty of one count of misconduct in public office in February 2017 and was sentenced to a 20-month imprisonment, becoming the highest officeholder in Hong Kong history to be convicted and imprisoned. The Court of Final Appeal unanimously quashed his conviction and sentence in June 2019, ruling that he had already suffered a “just punishment” by being jailed 12 months.HK protests stem from stratospheric housing pricesIn Aug 2019, renowned economist Andy Xie opined that at the root of the civil unrest in Hong Kong actually stems in part from stratospheric housing prices that have locked many residents out of the market.Xie pointed out that HK property tycoons ‘are the problem’ underlying the unrest. Property prices in Hong Kong have appreciated over 300% since 2003 but wages have largely stagnated in the same period, so “it’s very difficult to see how young people can feel hope. They know they’ll never be able to afford a place, so they cannot start a family. How can they get ahead in life? Desperation, and really a deep sense of unhappiness, is driving this unrest,” said Xie.Xie attributed the sky-high property price to the housing market being lead by local business leaders. “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,” said Xie.Although the Hong Kong authorities have changed housing policies several times, “in the end, they favor tycoons, giving the land to the tycoons,” the economist asserted. But private developers “hold the land, not building much and they just try to squeeze the market and push the prices as much as possible,” he said.“For ordinary people, you make an income about 5% of a financial guy and they think you should get 5% of an apartment, so they create something like a ‘nano flat,’” he said, referring to tiny apartments in Hong Kong that can be the size of a parking space. “That is really crazy.”Nano flat“They think that people will just take it lying down forever, (but) eventually, it blows up,” said Xie, who was a former chief Asia-Pacific economist at Morgan Stanley. “The key is that the political structure here is neither the Singapore situation where the government is on top, nor like Taiwan (where) it’s a democracy and people can vote,” said Xie, who also writes for South China Morning Post from time to time. Hong Kong is “in between — just a bunch of business people calling the shots,” he added. He said that Beijing needs to distance itself from the tycoons in Hong Kong.“Every time, there’s a disturbance in Hong Kong, Beijing goes to these business guys for advice; you know something’s very wrong,” said Xie. “These guys are causing the trouble in Hong Kong, why are you going to them for advice every time?”“They are the problem; they need to become regular business people, not having political power (and) running the place,” said Xie.Echoing what Xie said, Simon Lee from the Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School also opined that while the protests were squarely directed at the controversial Extradition Bill in the beginning, it became clearer over time that there was deep dissatisfaction over the administrative failures of the Hong Kong government in meeting its people’s needs, especially on housing, which of course, is the bread and butter business of the property tycoons in Hong Kong.In the 5000 year history of China, every time corruption permeates and, officials and business people start to collude to fleece and oppress the peasants to such an extent that they have to sell their wife and daughters to survive, revolution will surely follow resulting in chaos and deaths for everyone. Wasn't that how the Communist Party of China was founded? To build a new China and take down the landlords aligning themselves with the Nationalist warlords, who were all colluding to oppress and fleece the peasants in order to enrich themselves further?Ref:https://www.hongkongfp.com/2018/06/13/ex-hong-kong-leader-cy-leung-defends-controversial-1990s-housing-policy-says-crisis-averted/Property market in 'dangerous situation', warns Lam Woon-kwongHong Kong: Revelations In SHK Bribery Case; Collusion Between Politicians And Property Tycoons – OpEdSun Hung Kai Properties - WikipediaDonald Tsang - WikipediaEconomist: Hong Kong's tycoons 'are the problem' underlying recent unrestUpdate (17 Sep 2019):On 12 Sep 2019, the People's Daily published an editorial piece (解决住房问题，香港不能再等了!) urging the Hong Kong authorities to act on the housing problems in Hong Kong. The title of the article read, "Fix the housing problem, Hong Kong can no longer wait!"The People's Daily (人民日報) is the largest newspaper group in China and is an official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Hence, it provides direct information on the policies and view points of the Communist Party of China.The editorial noted that the housing problem in Hong Kong is becoming more serious. The average waiting time for public housing applications has increased to 5.4 years, with 100,000 people living in “coffin rooms” and subdivided flats."This situation is incompatible with the internationally renowned metropolis and is in stark contrast to the mansions on the Taiping Mountain (where the rich lives)," it said.Having a house, clothing, and food is the most basic human right and the most basic dignity one should have, it added."There is no reason for Hong Kong to wear a glamorous coat such as 'the most competitive economy in the world' when it embarrassingly fails in housing."The editorial also reiterated that the crux of Hong Kong's housing problem lies in land supply. It noted that it isn't the case that Hong Kong has no land but the Hong Kong government has too little.It further noted that Hong Kong property developers have been hoarding most of the land and not developing them. It opined that the Hong Kong government could consider taking the land back from the developers after compensating them with the amount "equivalent to the actual value of the property at the time", under Article 105 for the Basic Law.The editorial then turned to the developers, saying, "In public interest, in order to solve the livelihood of the people, it's time for the real estate developers to release the greatest goodwill, instead of being selfish, hoarding land and earning the last penny.""We can understand that some Hong Kong people are worried that the increase in supply of land may result in a rapid depreciation of assets in the short term. It is also understandable that real estate developers are concerned about not making money," it said."But this is precisely the time to re-examine immediate interests against long-term interests, and re-balance personal interests against the greater societal interests.""Once the Hong Kong society is deadlocked and loses competitiveness, the value of everyone's property will depreciate; as long as the Oriental Pearl continues to remain competitive, then the beneficiaries must be Hong Kong enterprises and its people."The editorial also opined that a large part why the Extradition Bill was able to rope in many of the young people, who originally didn't care about politics, to protest was because they feel despair of the future of Hong Kong, and housing is an important reason.It went on to criticise the previous and current Hong Kong Chief Executives, Tung Chee Hwa, Leung Chun-ying and Carrie Lam, for failing to carry out their promises to fix Hong Kong's public housing problems. Many of their plans ended sloppily, were heavily discounted or stalled altogether, noted the editorial.It further criticised the opposition parties in the Legislative Council opposing for the sake of opposing, crippling some of the Hong Kong government's housing plans. It also criticised the property developers, "There are property developers for the sake of profits, coerce the Hong Kong government and shackle public will, causing the entire Hong Kong society to fall into a mess where housing prices are beyond public reach but at the same time cannot afford to fall, where housing are insufficient but not built.""And some members of public neither understand nor trust the SAR government's ability to improve Hong Kongers' livelihood," it added."Hong Kong can't wait any further," the editorial ended with a warning.More Updates:About 2 weeks after the publication of an editorial piece from the People's Daily urging the Hong Kong authorities to act on the housing problems and singling out Hong Kong developers for not doing enough to alleviate housing problems, Reuters reported (25 Sep 2019) that New World Development had declared that it would donate 3 million square feet of its farmland reserves for social housing. This constitutes about one fifth of its land bank with an attributable total site area of around 16.9 million square feet.The Chengs of New World Development is one of the big 4 property oligarchs controlling most of the residential land bank in Hong Kong. The other 3 are:Kwoks of Sun Hung Kai Properties which owns an estimated 30 million sq ftLee Shau Kee's ('Uncle Fouth') family of Henderson Land Development which owns about 45 million sq ftLi Ka-shing's ('Superman Li') family of CK Asset which owns about 9 million sq ft.Hong Kong political parties have called on the government to make more use of an ordinance to resume agricultural land from property developers to build public housing, instead of letting them sitting on it. To maintain the high property prices in Hong Kong, the big 4 have been controlling the housing constructions and limiting supply.The People's Daily criticised the Hong Kong developers for hoarding land and said it was time for them “to release the greatest goodwill, instead of just playing their own calculations, smashing the land, earning the last copper plate”.Facing increasing pressure from Beijing, Adrian Cheng, executive vice chairman of New World Development, has assured in a press conference that his company would adopt an open attitude if the HK government needed to look for land for public housing.

“The fact of the matter is, Hong Kong is part of China and the CCP may do what it likes.”^^^The language of a fascist.To clarify, Hong Kong was not stolen, it was conquered. In the exact same way that China has claim to all of its territories, so did Britain claim ownership over Hong Kong. By the way, colonialism is wrong. I am by no means an imperialist. I am simply stating the facts. But hey, if you also oppose imperialism like me, then I have some good news for you:In the latter half of the 20th Century, British parliament entered a period of “decolonization,” which was an effort to give back to the native populations the lands that had been taken by force.Since China somehow asserts that Hong Kong was stolen, they also argue that it should therefore be returned to the Chinese while simultaneously arguing that the Chinese have zero obligation to return Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, and other territories to their native owners. Despite this double standard, Hong Kong was returned to the mainland on the promise that the city would continue to enjoy its way of life.Thus, the Sino-British Joint Declaration was signed. Under international law, Hong Kong was promised a framework of "One country, two systems." This principle agreed between the United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China that the socialist system of the mainland would not be practiced in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong's previous capitalist system and its way of life would remain unchanged for a period of 50 years. Other important details include:HK will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defense affairs.HK will be vested with executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication.The laws currently in force in HK will remain basically unchanged.The chief executive of HK will be appointed by local democratic election.The current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the life-style. Rights and freedoms, including those of the person, of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of travel, of movement, of correspondence, of strike, of choice of occupation, of academic research and of religious belief will be ensured by law.Military forces sent by the mainland shall have the purpose of defense only, and shall not interfere in the internal affairs of HK.Those basic policies will be stipulated in a Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in the PRC by the National People's Congress and will remain unchanged for 50 years.Little by little, China began to go back on these promises by interfering in Hong Kong’s internal affairs. This culminated in 2014, when Chinese officials suddenly betrayed both Britain and Hong Kong by tearing up the agreement, violating international law, and declaring the Sino-British joint declaration “void.” Three years later, China not only tore up the agreement but burned the remains when Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang officially told the world:“Now Hong Kong has returned to the motherland’s embrace for 20 years, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, as a historical document, no longer has any practical significance, and it is not at all binding for the central government’s management over Hong Kong. The UK has no sovereignty, no power to rule and no power to supervise Hong Kong after the handover.”-Lu Kang, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson. 06/30, 2017.As China worked to make Hong Kong “just another Chinese city,” subjecting it to arbitrarily arrests and a complete mockery of the rule of law, Hong Kongers unsurprisingly took to the streets to protest.Cue the ever-present nationalist “counterargument”:“Hong Kong belongs to China. It is not up to Britain, America, the Western countries, or anyone else. Hong Kong is China’s territory and China may do with what it likes.”-Every wumao everHong Kong is indeed China’s territory. Does that mean the Chinese government has the right to do whatever it pleases? Does the state exist to support its people or do the people exist to support their state?The latter is called a dictatorship. If we oppose dictatorship, then logically we must also conclude that the land of Hong Kong should belong to Hong Kongers, and the CCP only has the right to govern them if they represent their interests, needs, and desires.The short answer to “why are Hong Kongers protesting?” is that there is no rule of law in China. No, this is not Western propaganda straight from CNN. These are facts openly admitted by the Party:“[China's courts] must firmly resist the western idea of “constitutional democracy”, “separation of powers” and “judicial independence”. These are erroneous western notions that threaten the leadership of the ruling Communist Party.”-Zhou Qiang, current Chief Justice and President of the Supreme People's Court of China. Supreme People's Court meeting, 01/14, 2017.Well there you go. If your Rule of Law was swept away overnight, I’m pretty sure you’d be out protesting too.