The Deluge Ahead
Jack So, Convenor of The
Working Group on Convention and Tourism Industries (“WGCTI”) under the Economic
Development Commission (“EDC”), has forecast that Hong Kong’s hotel capacity in
the next decade will have to double to meet with expected surging demand.
Of the four working
groups formed at the beginning of this year under the EDC, the WGCTI is the one
that stinks of developers’ interests. Everybody in Hong Kong knows who stand to
benefit most from unchecked mainland tourist inflows. More tourists from up
north mean more retail rent and hotel dollars will flow right into the pockets
of gargantuan retail-landlords-cum-hotel-owners, who incidentally are the
mammoth developers. As for job creation, which tourism promotion is supposed to
bring about, university graduates had better get psychologically prepared that
their best job prospect will be to become retail salespersons or hotel page
boys or chambermaids or security guards. One caveat is that if they don’t speak
Putonghua, they are not even competent enough for the said posts.
Did anyone notice that
no similar ambitious plans have ever come forth from the Working Group on
Manufacturing Industries, Innovative Technology, and Cultural and Creative
Industries, which at least sounds just as important, if not more, as the WGCTI?
This other Working Group might well be in a position, if they are in their
right mind, to help Hong Kong move away from the parasitic rent-seeking
industry towards a more diversified, enterprising and creative economy that can
offer diversified jobs or self employment opportunities for young and old. A
prerequisite of course is the abandonment of the high land price policy. In
fact, the WGCTI does not need to exist at all because Hong Kong doesn’t need to
promote its tourism industry, which is in fact an alias for the property
development industry.
When government announced the establishment of the EDC on
January 17, 2013, it was stated that:-
"’The establishment of the Commission and
its Working Groups reflects the Administration's determination to continue to
make the best use of Hong Kong's existing edges and also explore new advantages
and develop new strengths. We are looking forward to the wise counsel of the
Commission for drawing up an overall industry policy with a view to creating
jobs and improving people's livelihoods,’ a Government spokesman said.”
The goals are clear
enough: create jobs and improve people’s livelihoods.
Jobs that tourism can
possibly create are at best dead-end low-paid jobs as mentioned above. Would parents
in Hong Kong like to see their educated children stuck in such jobs?
As for improving
people’s livelihoods, it’s clearly one big joke. Money from the north has
already pushed property prices and rents, both residential and commercial, to
such preposterous levels that more and more low-income Hong Kongers are being
forced to live in subdivided flats and more and more local neighborhood shops
are being forced to close to give way to jewelry and luxury goods shops
catering for mainlanders. Subsidized public rental and HOS flats would take
years to complete. Subdivided flat rents are set to soar higher and eventually
throw renters out on the street because government refuses to impose rental
control. Closing of small neighborhood shops means middle- to low-income people
lose the cheaper choices in daily necessities ranging from a simple
cha-chaan-teng (café) meal to groceries to household equipment to household repair
services. The individual-visit scheme, over which the SAR government seems to
have no control regarding the number of mainland tourists that can be allowed
in each day, is one big culprit for the dire situation Hong Kong now finds
itself in.
As one blogger points out: by all means build more hotels, but
what about the overcrowded MTR train cars and roads? What about the day-to-day
nuisance that floods of jostling, luxuries-or-safe-product-seeking mainland
tourists cause the locals, not to mention the impudent rudeness and uncivilized
habit of some of these tourists from up north?
Can Hong Kong possibly
satisfy even a fraction of 1.3 billion people’s need for safe products
(obviously not limited to milk powder)? The ultimate answer obviously is for
the mainland government to better monitor their own safety standards of food or
other products. As for their demand for luxury goods, the solution is easy
enough. Either the mainland government lifts their import duty or the HKSAR
government slaps such a duty on luxury goods. Problem solved if they will only
do it.
If the WGCTI expects to
double Hong Kong’s hotel capacity in the next 10 years in anticipation of a
surge in the number of incoming tourists, it probably means that it will also
want more mega shopping malls. Thus, there is an imminent competition for a lot
more commercial-zoned land at a time when land supply is said to be short for
providing public housing.
So, when CY Leung’s administration
talks about improving people’s livelihoods, whose livelihoods are they really talking
about? Those overpaid senior government officials and the business big shots
sitting on this and that Commission have no idea what it’s like to be squished
in the MTR train cars on sweltering summer days. They in their chauffeured cars
don’t know how it feels to be shoved about by boorish mainlanders and to have
luggage wheels run over their feet on the streets day in day out. So they come
up with ludicrous policies in their ivory towers with their minds and hearts
shut.
It always comes back to
the same big important question: is the HKSAR government accountable to Hong
Kongers or to mainlanders?