Then & now: counter action
Few industries have benefited from an influx of mainlanders as much as the local pharmacy game, writes Jason Wordie
What businesses have boomed exponentially in recent years as a direct result of the increase in mainland visitors? Gold and watch shops, yuan/HK dollar exchange counters and luxury brand outlets in Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui are major – and obvious – areas of retail expansion. But probably the single largest increase over the past decade has been the humble yeuk fong (“local pharmacy”).
These outlets steadily expanded in the mid-20th century as Western medicine – long viewed with suspicion – gradually gained acceptance among the broader population. Lax (or non-existent) government regulation on many drugs meant prescription-only pharmaceuticals in other jurisdictions could be purchased over the counter in these shops.
After 1950, when, in the wake of the Korean war, a United Nations embargo on China trade was enforced, Hong Kong provided an opportunity for “parallel imports” – smuggling, by any other name – of scarce medicines into the mainland. The Hong Kong market allowed international pharmaceutical companies – United States firms were the most affected by the ban – to still (unofficially) sell their goods in China.
Most ended up on the mainland; several “patriotic” business fortunes evolved from investments in this latter-day drug trade.
Broader contemporary success for these businesses connects to various Hong Kong-specific factors, in particular growing public dissatisfaction with duopolistic retailing practices.