Inside Out | Indifference to Hong Kong’s extraordinary wealth divide evident in civil service pay dispute

Hong Kong appears to be in a class of its own when it comes to the extremes of wealth and poverty

Although not in the ‘billionaire excess’ category, civil servants have nevertheless largely cruised through the pandemic, while working families have suffered stagnant wages, furloughs and pay cuts

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A homeless person sleeps in front of closed retail shops in Mong Kok on April 15. Hong Kong’s wealth inequality is growing worse as the pandemic drives people who were already struggling closer to the edge. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 9:15am, 18 Jul 2022

It is not just the arrival of our top-up consumption vouchers that has me thinking about poverty, inequality and how challenges are going to be shared as we head towards a perfect economic storm created by the pandemic, the Ukraine war, inflation, global warming and a looming recession.

Alongside the consumption vouchers, which will come and go quickly as I splash out on a dehumidifier for my sweltering home, there have been more significant reasons to pause for thought. On one hand, there is the controversy over pay increases for our civil servants and, on the other, Bill Gates saying he plans to slide out of the world’s billionaires list as he gives away “virtually all” his US$113 billion fortune to charity.

This toxic juxtaposition of extreme poverty and extreme wealth is perhaps nowhere more clear than in Hong Kong. Inequality expert Thomas Piketty says the city “really is in a class of its own”, which provides “a bedrock of economic and social conditions that have nurtured the development of social unrest”.

And Hong Kong really does seem to be unrivalled. As Piketty pointed out in a paper in June last year, our concentration of billionaire wealth is distinctive, perhaps unique.

We had 11 billionaire families for every million people in 2017, compared with just 5.3 in Switzerland, 4.5 in Singapore and a modest 2.3 in the United States. Piketty says the net wealth of these families was equivalent to around 85 per cent of Hong Kong’s GDP, while the level for every other country besides Georgia was less than 30 per cent.

While the controversy over the civil service pay review might not be in the “billionaire excess” category, it is significant as a vivid illustration of our leadership’s – and perhaps our entire community’s – indifference to our extraordinary wealth divide.

.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}Inside Out | Indifference to Hong Kong’s extraordinary wealth divide evident in civil service pay dispute

Inside Out | Indifference to Hong Kong’s extraordinary wealth divide evident in civil service pay dispute