Just SayingIf China can eradicate poverty in three years’ time, what’s Hong Kong’s excuse?

While the central government sets ambitious goals on lifting people out of want, our extremely rich city shrugs at the problem

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At the last count, 19.7 per cent of Hong Kong’s population was in poverty. Photo: Bobby Yip

Published: 3:38pm, 28 Oct 2017Updated: 10:43pm, 28 Oct 2017

After the measured pomp and pageantry of China’s twice-a-decade Communist Party congress, President Xi Jinping now has just three years to accomplish an enormously ambitious mission to wipe out poverty.

Building a “moderately prosperous society” by 2021, the 100th anniversary of the party’s founding, is the first of the country’s two “centennial goals”. The second, even loftier, target is to become a “fully developed nation” by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

To give you an idea of the sheer scale of the task, more than 70 million people were estimated to be living in poverty in China in 2015, when Xi first launched his drive to lift them out of it.

Official statistics suggest the poverty-stricken demographic in rural areas shrank from 98.9 million in 2013 to 43.3 million last year.

The naysayers will tell you it’s an impossible task in the face of crippling obstacles such as corruption in the allocation of funds, fudging of figures to meet targets, and difficulties in setting up sustainable local industries that poverty alleviation schemes have to rely on.

However it turns out in the end, it’s a commendable cause, worthy of everyone’s support. Which is why I have to ask, where’s Hong Kong in all this?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While the central government sets ambitious goals on lifting people out of want, our extremely rich city shrugs at the problem

While the central government sets ambitious goals on lifting people out of want, our extremely rich city shrugs at the problem