Just Saying | Hong Kong’s appalling wealth gap is a burning fuse for revolution
Yonden Lhatoo warns that the city’s income disparity has hit alarming levels, and letting it continue unchecked will lead to social unrest on a historic scale
It’s not that we haven’t seen shameful contrasts between grinding poverty and obscene wealth elsewhere around the world. It’s nothing new.
But there’s something about the wealth gap in Hong Kong that is extra jarring and unacceptable. It could have a lot to do with the fact that, in the most densely populated city in the world, the injustice feels so much more in-your-face and a lot harder to stomach. If you have a conscience, that is.
In the city with the highest number of Rolls-Royces per person, tycoons splurge HK$100 million on a wedding without batting an eyelid, or millions more on diamonds to name after their children, while some 300,000 kids can’t get three square meals a day.
Oxfam’s damning report out this week on poverty in Hong Kong is mandatory reading. Our wealth gap is officially the worst among all developed regions, and has widened to alarming proportions.
The richest 10 per cent of the population now earn nearly 29 times what those on the other end of the spectrum get. The city’s 18 richest people are sitting on a collective fortune of HK$1.39 trillion, exceeding the entire amount that our always-prudent government has been squirrelling away in reserves for that rainy day that never comes, while 1.15 million people adrift in a sea of poverty could really use a lifeline.