My Take | The ‘bad boys’ theory of Hong Kong business
- Obsequious property barons took message from Beijing as a signal to make obscene profits with the support of the city government – and we are all paying the price
As a businessman and newspaper owner, no one can doubt Shih Wing-ching’s acumen.
To this day, I still think his advice to Hong Kong people in 2014 – for which he coined the Cantonese phrase “pocket it first” – to accept the government’s political reform package was right on the money; and that it was a mistake of historic proportion for the opposition pan-democrats to have vetoed it.
But his latest defence of local developers is either wrong, self-serving or both. He made known his stance after Beijing rounded on Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, for calling on the local government to treat young protesters leniently.
Mainland state-owned news organs went into overdrive to denounce Li and the role he and other big developers played in creating, and profiting from, the housing crisis in the city.
Shih dismissed the criticism. “You can’t blame developers for high property prices,” he said. “It’s the fault of government policy. Developers are businessmen [who] used objective conditions to profit within the law. If what they do is legal, no one can accuse them of wrongdoing.”
No doubt many economists and businesspeople would agree. But I was reminded of what British historian Peter Hennessy has called the “good chap” theory of government.