Opinion | Wake up to the crazy rich-poor divide in Hong Kong, and the government’s role in perpetuating the misery

Alice Wu says some of the figures in Hong Kong are mind-boggling. One in five lives below the poverty line, while one in seven is a millionaire and the government has an embarrassment of riches. So why isn’t it doing more for those in need?

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An elderly woman collects cardboard in North Point. According to a recent survey, these “cardboard grannies” earn just HK$716 per month, on average. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 5:00am, 27 Aug 2018Updated: 6:14am, 27 Aug 2018

It’s rich – crazy rich, really – when Hong Kong’s third-wealthiest man Lui Che-woo, chairman of developer K Wah International Holdings, warns that speculating in property is “just like gambling when Hong Kong home prices surge to the world’s most expensive”. However, he says, it’s “fine to buy a home for self use”.

Well, it’s probably hard to see how bad things are when you’re “comfortable” – as Nick Young, the male protagonist of the hot new film Crazy Rich Asians, calls it. But buying a tiny home at a crazy price is not “fine”.

The Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report for 2016 puts one in five Hongkongers below the poverty line, amid the glitz and glamour of “Asia’s World City”. This is a record high. The government sees the rapidly ageing population and shrinking households as the main drivers of the poverty rate. Of the 1.35 million residents living below the official poverty line, 478,000 are elderly and 200,700 households are “working poor.”

Perhaps, in a city where one in seven people is a millionaire and the government has made a habit of hoarding ludicrous annual surpluses, some have trouble imagining how difficult life can be.

Look no further than our “cardboard grannies” – the elderly, mostly female, scavengers who scrape a living collecting discarded odds and ends in the streets. According to a recent survey, more than 80 per cent of them are aged 60 and above. Their average monthly earnings are HK$716. Worse, they face persecution by Food and Environmental Hygiene Department officers.

Last month, one such woman was fined HK$1,500 for “littering”. And it took a fully fledged public campaign – complete with an online petition – to get her off the hook. Others often have their trolleys confiscated by officers.

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