Yes, it's Fred Santa Claus Ma (he's got the build but he needs the beard) to the rescue with gifts for begging hands. I used to call him Freddy in this column, but he bought me a good lunch awhile back and so he gets promoted to Fred.

Fred Santa Claus has his work cut out, however, in helping Hong Kong companies affected by new Beijing rules that restrict low-value exports and exports by polluting firms. Our report counted about 30,000 Hong Kong-invested processing factories in the Pearl River Delta region.

Wow! I am impressed.

I say this because the closest equivalent figure I have from mainland statistical sources (end-2005) is 11,292 and this is for all of Guangdong, not just the Pearl River Delta. It also includes Taiwan and Macau-funded industrial enterprises.

Try it another way. We shall define the delta industrial zones as Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Zhongshan, which together have exports running at US$210 billion a year. Now divide this by 30,000 and you get annual exports of US$7 million per enterprise.

This should be enough to fill one container, perhaps even two, although it won't actually do so as our 30,000 is only for Hong Kong-invested processing factories and the delta has more than just Hong Kong ones.

Then again, the people who use this 30,000 figure may actually be referring to what is called the Pan-Pearl River Delta, which has grown so rapidly since the idea was first conceived that its borders, I believe, now extend to somewhere past the orbit of the planet Jupiter.

The truth of it is that most of these Hong Kong-invested factories are indeed tiny ones with very little capital.

But if good money is to be dished out for old rope, the numbers can easily grow to 30,000. We have seen it with our government's innovation grants. If you want one, just stick the word 'Technologies' into the name of the company you formed yesterday and send in your application.

For Fred's latest fund you would probably do best to make it 'High Technologies' as lo-tech is out of fashion for this one.

Lo-tech is for making money but we're talking of begging for money now. Better yet, make it 'Effluent-Control Technologies'. That should do well in these sweepstakes, a real winner of a name.

The straight facts of the matter are, as we all know, that the past 25 years have seen an exodus of low-technology manufacturers from Hong Kong to locations across the border. They went there because the wages are cheaper and because there were no restrictions on the way they polluted Guangdong's water and air.

Now, however, Beijing wants higher-tech exports and Guangdong wants to impose pollution controls.

This would not really matter to these manufacturers if they had spent the past 25 years investing their earnings into a move up the value-added ladder. They could then have moved with the times.

But by far the largest number of them never did. They put the money instead into golf every day, karaoke every night, a new mistress every month and a new Mercedes every year.

And now it has all come home to roost. Suddenly, the government imposes restrictions on their exports and deposits on their imports, and demands costly clean-ups. The resulting prospect is red ink and ruin. What to do? What to do?

Fred could have provided them with a simple answer: 'Go bust, fellas. Declare bankruptcy if that's what faces you. You wasted your time and money when you had the chance to do something and now you no longer have that chance. It's too late and we can't save you. Bye-bye.'

But no, that's not Fred's line. Instead, he is to give them a helping hand. Factory owners who could have controlled pollutant emissions but never bothered because they were cynically bent on exploiting a lax regulatory regime to make hay while the sun shone are now to be rewarded for their profligacy.

Do you want to know why we have growing income disparity in Hong Kong?

It is because our corporate welfare far exceeds social security assistance. The lesson is that if you want your begging bowl filled, you do best to grow rich first. Fred will be there for you, Santa Claus to the wealthy.