Kapok: It's the politics, stupid!

The news on Wednesday that a parking bay had been snatched in Hong Kong for the modest amount of HK$7.6 million had me gaping at the newspaper for a few seconds. That went beyond cognitive dissonance: It was bewilderment mixed with incomprehension and a sudden surge of indignation. How on earth could someone pay more than HK$600,000 per square meter to park a car in a spot of roughly 12.5 square meters of bare concrete? This is three times the median price of a flat in Hong Kong, whereas the median price of a flat is in itself 21 times the median salary!

We are talking about parking a car here! Sure, the parking lot is situated in the very heart of the city, in a building aptly named The Center, which served as the main decor for Batman: The Dark Knight. The building was up to last year the property of Asia’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, before being sold to a group of tycoons including the richest lady in Hong Kong, Pollyanna Chu, and the owner of the parking bay that was just sold, Johnny Cheung. But then, the same amount of money would buy a nice 80 square meters flat in Paris, and even a 55 square meters 2-bedroom cozy retreat next to the iconic Jardin du Luxembourg, one of the most expensive area in the French capital city, or even 500 square feet in downtown Manhattan in New York City.

Yet, at the same time, we are being told that because of the protests, landlords “are getting desperate in their attempts to attract tenants” in their offices of Central Hong Kong, so much so that they are offering symbolic rents of HK$1 for the first three months of occupation! Some are even agreeing to leases starting after Chinese New Year, that is four months away!

Are we talking about the same landlords and real estate developers who stand accused by Beijing of being vastly responsible for the political turmoil that has engulfed the city for the past four months? Aren’t these the same people who keep the best economic opportunities to themselves and make it impossible for the younger generation to “own” a flat? And wasn’t the diagnostic confirmed by Carrie Lam when she announced in her policy address last week that credit would be made more easily accessible to Hongkongers and that 700 hectares of land would be seized to help build new housing programs addressing the current shortage?

Interestingly enough, the announcement made by Mrs Lam boosted the shares’ value of property developers. And then, the land that is going to be “seized” had been purchased as cheap farmland by developers and will be paid at current market price by the government, allowing them to make comfy profits. It is also estimated that the four biggest developers alone in Hong Kong — Sun Hung Kai, Henderson Land, New World and Cheung Kong — sit on more than double the floor area of agricultural land that will be “taken” back by the government. Moreover, past governments bear the main responsibility of the shortage of land supply that led to a shortage of housing land and the dramatic drop in housing completion after 2003/2004, in the wake of the SARS crisis. For a decade, starting in 2006, the completion of housing, whether public or private, was more than halved compared to the previous ten years!

Because they make up a significant portion of the 1,200 people who elect the Chief Executive, it is thus clear that any measure taken by the government will give the developers the advantage over ordinary citizens. Should we then be surprised when people declare that they are far more dissatisfied with the political environment (more than 80%) than they are disgruntled by the present economic situation (less than 40%)?

At the end of the day, it makes the demand of true universal suffrage for returning both the Chief Executive and the legislators a very legitimate one if the intent is indeed for the government to be less dependent on a small coterie of ever more profiteering landlords.

Published in Macau Daily Times on October 25, 2019

Kapok: Too late and too little

When on September 4 Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam finally decided to officially “withdraw” the Extradition Bill, the overall reaction in the pro-democracy camp was to say that the move came “too late” and amounted to “too little”.

At the time I felt that the government’s announcement was rather a substantial achievement to be indeed credited to the ever-evolving “Be water” movement. At long last a political response of sort was somehow and somewhat addressing a political challenge that had been dragging for far too long. How could that not be an achievement, far beyond the “suspension” of the Bill on June 15 or any claim the Bill was “dead” on July 9? Neither the temporary shelving nor the burial of this piece of legislation had ever been on the list of demands formulated by the demonstrators — moderates and radicals alike — but the “withdrawal” had been the core, and until June 12 the only demand of the protestors. So yes, politics was back, especially after all the fantasies fueled by saber rattling moves across the border and ill-designed martial video clips hastily cooked up by Communist propaganda.

In my mind, the rebuttal was meant to be temporary, and after a period of adjustment during which things would turn worse before getting better — and how could it be otherwise after three months of resolute and unabated fight — the path for a more rational and possibly peaceful settlement would start to shine again. Things would take time and trust had to be rebuilt: a survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong in early September was showing that about 69% of the people did not trust either the government or the police, and if about the same proportion of people believed that the principle of non-violent action should be upheld, still 56% considered that violent action was understandable if the government failed to respond to large-scale peaceful demonstrations. Moreover, almost 71% still considered that the demand to set up an independent commission of enquiry looking into police violence and other incidents was a requirement.

More than one month after the announcement of the withdrawal which will be effective only when the LegCo reconvene next week, are we finally seeing a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel? Clearly not. While professing to initiate a dialogue, Carrie Lam made it clear that there would be no other concession, and that contradictory move immediately gave rise to a new show of unity among the protesters, best encapsulated by the defiant slogan “Five demands, not one less”. A butchered 2-hour encounter with district councilors supposed to kickstart a dialogue on September 18 turned into disarray when only 98 out of 458 councilors decided to show up. A subsequent community dialogue with 130 citizens held at Queen Elizabeth Stadium on September 26 turned into a real agony for the Chief executive and her principal officials when participants mostly vented their frustration and anger at the inability of the government to resolve the crisis.

Following further defiance of infuriated and ever younger protesters on October 1, the “Chief Executive in council” decided to invoke the Emergency Regulations Ordinance on October 4 to ban masks at unauthorized protests. The problem is, supposedly because of security concerns, that most marches have not been authorized since August 18, meaning that people cannot even vote with their feet anymore, as marches are banned, the MTR closed at sensitive times and the police being given excessive leeway in the interpretation of the new ban. Things will get worse before they will worsen even more!

Meanwhile in Macao, a decision rendered by the Court of Final Appeal on September 27 states that the Macao police was right to forbid demonstrations in Praça do Tap Seac and da Amizade aimed at denouncing police violence in Hong Kong on the basis that publicly allowing these to happen would have amounted to interfering with the internal affairs of the Hong Kong SAR, and thus violating the Macao Basic Law. As clearly stated by lawyer Jorge Menezes, with this decision, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression are all but history in Macao, despite them also being entrenched in the Basic Law. Will freedom of conscience be next?

Published in Macau Daily Times on October 11, 2019