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Mike Rowse

If you want an argument, do something that upsets students on a point of principle. If you want a fight, do something that upsets workers on a livelihood issue. And, if you want a revolution, do something that upsets the value or security of middle-class property.
I should apologise to readers for starting a column with this elementary philosophical treatise.
But I am trying to get through to those who thought it would be a good idea to cut the compulsory purchase threshold from 90 per cent to 80 per cent just what a blunder it will turn out to be.
Already the first consequences have been documented. A developer who had been negotiating to acquire properties in Seymour Road in Mid-Levels at around HK$17,000 per square foot has taken all the offers off the table. 
He is expected to come back shortly with revised offers in the region of HK$12,000. There is a similar story from Kimberley Road in Tsim Sha Tsui.
And let us be clear: the buildings involved are not run down, shabbily maintained and in need of urgent urban renewal. At least one of them is very well maintained. But its owners suffer the misfortune of living in an older building on a site with considerable redevelopment potential.
In addition to the cases that have hit the headlines, there are doubtless many others at different stages of negotiation. But the tables are now firmly tilted in favour of the major developers, to the disadvantage of the individual owner. 
Already, the phrase 'make sure you are not one of the last 20 per cent' is beginning to come up in conversations over the lunch or dinner table. 
People realise - even if government ministers apparently do not - that once the big players have started on the acquisition trail, they only need to reach the 60 or 65 per cent level before they can start to squeeze the remaining owners. You can almost hear the conversation now: 'We are talking to your co-owners and are close to a deal with them. You'd better take our offer now or you'll be one of the last few who get compulsorily bought out.'
In light of the fuss that was beginning to be created as the legislation went through, there was finally talk of mediation and, encouragingly, even murmurs of 'flat for flat, shop for shop'. 
But these should have been made the default options, not last-minute verbal suggestions that will still, as things stand, be dependent on the goodwill of developers. 
It will not be part of the mediators' remit to try to get a better deal for the owners being forcibly evicted. Rather, their task will be to explain in layman's terms why the offer on the table is the best they're likely to get.
The great protest march of July 1, 2003, which brought some half a million people onto the streets, no doubt had many causes and these will be analysed by academics for decades to come.
But one of the underlying causes of the very large turnout  was undoubtedly the feeling of many middle-class homeowners that the value of the biggest asset most of them had ever acquired had been substantially reduced because of misguided government policies. (Whether that sentiment was logical and the blame correctly ascribed are other, separate issues.) 
It was undoubtedly the scale of this march that led inexorably to the loss of credibility and the fall of the Tung Chee-hwa  administration (albeit under the guise of a visit from the 'Zhongnanhai doctor' who found that the then-chief executive was unfit to continue in office, although the diagnosis was a political rather than a medical one). 
Now we have another misguided policy. Perhaps its full impact will not become apparent by July 1 this year, but who could confidently say the same about 2011 or 2012? 
At some point, there will be a substantial number of middle-class people who have been winkled out of their homes on disadvantageous terms, or with a genuine fear that they will be next. They will not forgive or forget and they, too, will march.
And if that coincides with controversies in other areas - over the minimum wage legislation, say, or the pace of political development - then the numbers will swell once again. 
And Upper Albert Road could be getting another visit from the doctor.
Mike Rowse is a retired civil servant  and an adjunct professor at  Chinese University of Hong Kong



Early rumbles from the compulsory-sale volcano