The View | Hong Kong's billionaires need to raise their philanthropic goals to a world-class level
The city needs to explore use of large-scale philanthropy as a way to recycle capital back into the economy and society
Reading what Hong Kong Tatler extols about its chic crowd can inflict a crippling sense of inescapable ennui.
A recent issue where the theme was philanthropy only served to show how our local elite have misinterpreted the responsibility and difference between charity and philanthropy.
More importantly, it demonstrates how the business of philanthropy has a long way to go in Hong Kong before it can become a powerful enterprise solving the city's problems and quality of life.
Tatler is the mouthpiece for Hong Kong's elite. So when it starts publicising the philanthropic efforts of high society, one must examine what it means in the post-Occupy Hong Kong society and economy.
Strangely enough, Tatler is probably Hong Kong's only major English-language publication that has not taken an editorial position on or mentioned the city's most controversial civil protest in its pages.
Perhaps Hong Kong's establishment believes that some charity balls and donations (or what the government calls "sweeteners") are what it takes to tame disenfranchised young people and dispel the myth that Hong Kong is facing an irreversible disparity of wealth and economic opportunity that threatens its stability.