Hong-Kong Protests

K

KYli

Brigadier
t2contra said:
What were the reasons the HK government never acted to solve the problem?
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Tung Chee-hwa tried to tackle the housing issue with the 85000 new housing per year. However, due to the Asia Financial Crisis and SARS, Hong Kong housing price was down about 70%. So many Hong Kongers were under water which forced the Hong Kong government to abandon the plan.

After Tung Chee-hwa was forced to step down early, Donald Tsang basically collaborated with the tycoons and ended almost all public housing projects. Hong Kong housing prices started to rise again in late 00s and early 10s. When Leung Chun-ying was elected, he tried to tame the price by proposaling many housing projects including the early version of Tomorrow Lantau but at that time the oppostions have grown very powerful during the Donald Tsang reign. The oppositions fought Leung Chun-ying in every steps and the useless pro-establishment legislators were no help either.

Not much was accomplish during Leung administration, the central government decided to elect Carrie Lam to make amends and hope to diffuse tensions. The oppositions took Carrie Lam's goodwill as a sign of weakness and decided to force more concessions from the central government. Then the extradition law came along and the riots and protests were turned to violence and then the crack down from the central government.

Of course, the tycoons were behind many of the protests including the 04 protests that forced Tung Chee-hwa to resign early. And all environmental groups have received fundings from these tycoons. But since these tycoons have always operated behind the scene, the central government didn't even take a hard position to rein them in.
 
T

Tyler

Captain
Registered Member
KYli said:
In the next few years, major public infrastructure projects in HK are waning down as most of them would be completed. Even if there were no Tomorrow Lantau, HK government still would pursue other infrastructure projects.

Hong Kong government can afford the $500 billion HKD price tag as Tomorrow Lantau would provide 260,00 to 400,000 homes to 700,000 to 1.1 million people. The land sales alone from the land reclamation should generate enough revenue for the HK government to pay for the project.

If oppositions didn't derail the project, the first phase of the project would have completed in 2025-2027 and people should be able to move in 2027-2029. Due to delays from funding, the HK government still expects new apartments in 2034. Kai Tak runway is too little and too late. The legal and financial hurdles need to jump through to make changes to the Kai Tak would be costly and not worth it. The HK government has already announced to add 12.600 more public housing units in the Kai Tak area. In addition, Kai Tak runway just won't solve the long term housing problem in HK.
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There are already a lot of residential construction going on within Kai Tak runway. What I mean is increasing the building density in Kowloon's urban areas. In these places, the density has not been increased by much even after Kai Tak airport was moved.
 
K

KYli

Brigadier
Tyler said:
There are already a lot of residential construction going on within Kai Tak runway. What I mean is increasing the building density in Kowloon's urban areas. In these places, the density has not been increased by much even after Kai Tak airport was moved.
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As I said before, the land plots have mostly been sold. The HK government was only able to squeeze 12600 more housing units from its plots that were set aside for public housing. If you wanted to increase the building density, then the property conglomerates would be the sole benefactor.
 
T

Tyler

Captain
Registered Member
KYli said:
As I said before, the land plots have mostly been sold. The HK government was only able to squeeze 12600 more housing units from its plots that were set aside for public housing. If you wanted to increase the building density, then the property conglomerates would be the sole benefactor.
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They should speed up the redevelopment of older areas with higher density.
 
Mr T

Mr T

Senior Member
weig2000 said:
It's ironic that HK government probably would have acted more decisively during the British colonial era, because the major decisions were made in London (whether British would act or in whose interest it would act is a different matter altogether). Today's HK government has no political leadership. In the end, Beijing would have to make the tough decisions for Hong Kong, as it has been shown so far.
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For avoidance of doubt, Westminster did not set housing policy for HK. That was an issue firmly in the Governor's remit and something he consulted local HKers over, including the local politicians, housing associations and construction industry.

HK's problem post-1997 was that Beijing overly relied on rich executives and pro-establishment politicians for their views. It was in their interests to keep housing prices high because that in turn meant rents were high. Cheaper housing would have meant lower rents and less profits for them.
KYli said:
When Leung Chun-ying was elected, he tried to tame the price by proposaling many housing projects including the early version of Tomorrow Lantau but at that time the oppostions have grown very powerful during the Donald Tsang reign. The oppositions fought Leung Chun-ying in every steps and the useless pro-establishment legislators were no help either.
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I appreciate you're spreading the blame around, but I don't think you can lay even part of the blame at the HK Opposition's door. They never once had the opportunity to choose the Chief Executive, and despite always having a majority of the geographical LegCo seats they never had a majority in LegCo as a whole to block housing policy.

The reason a lot of housing projects received opposition was because of the eyewatering projected costs. The issue was not building more public housing, it was using taxpayers' money to fatten the profits of the construction sector and pay landholders unreasonable sums. Opponents of the schemes said that more affordable ways of building housing existed, but it would have been less profitable so big business wasn't interested.

In any event, whether the political opposition to these projects was reasonable or not, the Chief Executive always had the power to push them through via the general budget and his/her pro-establishment majority. It's not the job of the Opposition to support projects of questionable value just because the pro-government majority has cold feet and is worried about losing the odd seat in elections.

Also now that the Chinese national security law has effectively ended organised political opposition in HK, there is no excuse to not get on top of the housing situation. Whatever the Chief Executive/Beijing proposes will simply be waved through.
 
V

voyager1

Captain
Registered Member
HK should just eminent domain the properties held by the tycoons at low prices to reduce the costs.
And if the tycoons have any complaints, label it as a national security issue (which it is for HK stability) so that the gov can do whatever it wants

And if they still complain then open tax investigation on these so called tycoons going back 20 years or more. No one with this kind of money has a clean income.

All this is quite tiring, time for the HK gov to do its job and deliver the basic needs to its people. Anyone resisting to this should get steamrolled.
 
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