©GettyCrowded in or crowded out? High and low-rise Hong Kong
Early in his ill-fated campaign to become Hong Kong’s chief executive, Henry Tang told the city’s young people to stop complaining about property prices. Local tycoons were not born with billions of dollars, pronounced the magnate turned politician in a newspaper interview last year. Those unhappy about the success of Asia’s richest man should ask: “Why can’t I become the next Li Ka-shing?”
The response – in a city where the median home price is 13 times annual average household income, the highest multiple in the world – was derision. Just months before, a Catholic priest sparked a furore on Halloween by saying: “Ghosts and spirits are not scary. People like Li Ka-shing are the real man-eating devils.” Both incidents highlight a widening inequality that is generating anger among ordinary residents. Many feel a cosy relationship between government and business in one of the world’s most liberal economies is benefiting a handful at the expense of the bulk of the city’s 7m-strong population.
Looking back to the “Hong Kong dream” of the 1970s and 1980s, Vincent Lo, chairman of Shui On Land and one of the city’s wealthiest men, says there were “lots of opportunities for everyone. Now, young people just don’t feel they have any possibility of ever getting there themselves, of ever becoming a tycoon.”Leung Chun-ying, the man who beat Mr Tang to office in March, says he will change this. He has promised a more interventionist government that can make life better for the vast majority by supporting smaller companies and making housing more affordable. Backers of big business, however, worry that he will hurt the free market model that has turned Hong Kong into a leading financial centre. Either way, on his success hangs Hong Kong’s future as a leading financial centre.
Property has long been the key to economic power in Hong Kong. The British government put in place a system where most public expenditure in the colony was paid for by proceeds from land sales, allowing the city to become the low-tax regime favoured by global investors. For decades, the business landscape has been dominated by the four biggest property developers.
Since the handover to China in 1997, the government has kept to the same policy. As the sole freeholder of land it sells leaseholds at high prices, making them affordable only to developers with very deep pockets, who transfer the cost to home buyers. Because it has until recently refused to increase the supply of land, property prices have climbed more than 70 per cent since 2009. This has been compared by local residents – who have gone from typically spending about a third of household income on housing to nearly half – to de facto high taxation. Average income tax, the primary levy in the territory, is 17 per cent.
Three events in the past two months suggest the golden age of tycoons is under threat. First it emerged that an illegal basement with a vast wine cellar had been built beneath the home of Mr Tang, initially Beijing’s favoured candidate. This stirred up anti-tycoon sentiment, ultimately handing victory to Mr Leung, with his grassroots background, who takes office on July 1. Public opinion swayed the decision of an election committee of just 1,200, or 0.02 per cent of the population, selected mainly from the business and professional elite. It also influenced Beijing; though China has no official say, some of the committee say it made its choice known to them.
Then, last month, the Kwok brothers who head Sun Hung Kai Properties – Asia’s largest developer by market value – were arrested for suspected corruption in an investigation also involving a former senior official.
Refugees who built empires but leave a patchy legacy
Hong Kong’s wealth lies in the finely manicured hands of a few tycoons who made their fortunes overwhelmingly in the property market, writes Henny Sender. They remain the beneficiaries of a system whereby the local government makes most of its money by selling land development rights at auctions in which only a few have the resources to bid. With supply tightly controlled, prices remain high and both sides prosper.
It was not always like this. Hong Kong is a city of refugees. After mainland China fell to the communists in 1949, the most successful of the refugees who ended up there were initially the industrialists of Shanghai, many of whom had made their fortunes in textiles. Recreating their manufacturing empires in their new home under the British flag, many turned to Standard Chartered for finance, helping that institution to become the colony’s pre-eminent bank.
Over time the more flexible business refugees – such as the families that controlled the Nan Fung and Wing Tai groups – transformed themselves into property developers.
But ultimately the biggest fortunes were made by refugees from neighbouring Guangdong and Fujian, who arrived in the colony with none of the industrial baggage of those who came from Shanghai. The standard-bearer for this group is Li Ka-shing, the ports-to-property tycoon who is Asia’s wealthiest man. He and others among that later wave of refugee tycoons often obtained finance through HSBC, boosting the fortunes of that bank, part of whose roots lay in Shanghai.
The commanding position of real estate in Hong Kong business meant others were often crowded out. Twenty years ago, big manufacturers such as Patrick Wang of Johnson Electric could not borrow from banks without property as collateral, regardless of how robust their order books and cash flows were.
But that grip appears to be loosening. While some of the property empires – such as Mr Li’s Cheung Kong – remain in their founders’ grasp, some are in the midst of raging family battles for control in the wake of the demise of the patriarch, such as at Sun Hung Kai, the group currently the subject of a judicial investigation.
Many smaller property developers have been squeezed out as the government has put ever larger lots of land up for auction. As a result, some prominent figures in the industry – such as Ronnie Chan, who inherited the Hang Lung group from his uncle – backed the campaign of Leung Chun-ying, the “anti-tycoon” candidate, in his successful bid for election as chief executive of the Hong Kong administrative region.
It may seem curious that tycoons have gone from role models to reviled. Hong Kong’s free-market reputation, intact 15 years after its return to China, has been a keystone of its economic boom. Unemployment is a mere 3.4 per cent and the economy has grown 17 per cent over the past two years. The government has US$285bn in reserves – almost as much as Indonesia, a country with 240m people. Per capita gross domestic product is about US$35,000,
But the fruits of prosperity have gone to a small group. The bottom 10 per cent of households ranked by income make less even in absolute terms than 10 years ago. The city, according to a UN study, has the developed world’s widest income disparity, making it just a little less unequal than nations such as Ecuador and Cameroon. One in four children in Hong Kong live below the poverty line and the situation has not improved in the past decade.
“We all hear about the amazing growth in GDP, but none of us ordinary people feels the benefit,” says Cheung Yuet-ling, a civil servant in her 30s. “Average pay has not kept up with inflation and there is no end to the increase in rent and property prices, which suck up most people’s income. It’s the big developers who get richer and they are not sharing with the rest of us.”
Not for much longer, according to the incoming chief executive. In his first interview with foreign media since his victory, Mr Leung said Hong Kong must pull away from a “small government, big market” model, and that he would address imbalances in the economy and make companies “pay for their costs to the community”. Though details remain scarce, proposals include forcing business to provide more subsidised housing.
If his more hands-on government can improve the lives of the thousands of families packed into dangerous and often illegal cubicles, known as “cage homes”, without harming economic growth, Mr Leung will knock a hole in the non-interventionist model laid down by Sir John Cowperthwaite, the city’s financial secretary, in the 1960s. Treated as sacrosanct by successive governments, it prompted economist Milton Friedman to write an article entitled: “If only the US were as free as Hong Kong”. If Mr Leung takes his campaign too far, critics say, the city will lose ground to Singapore and Shanghai as wealth and power shift to the east.
Mr Leung has close ties to China. Years before handover, he started building ties with mainland officials and, by the time he was in his 30s, in the 1980s, he had been appointed by Beijing to a powerful committee that drafted the territory’s constitution.
Some in Hong Kong’s business elite describe him as “a dangerous communist” – though he denies persistent rumours that he is a party member – who could destroy the city’s free-market foundations, which have generated so much wealth. His strongest critics are close to the tycoons. “This is an earthquake, given the backdrop of the general feeling that the tycoons have had it too good for too long,” says a former senior police official.
Nothing illustrates this more than the arrests of Raymond and Thomas Kwok – who between them have a fortune estimated at US$18bn. They have not been charged and insist they are innocent. But their arrests by the Independent Commission Against Corruption on March 30, along with Rafael Hui, former head of the civil service, galvanised public anger about perceived government and business collusion.
This week Joseph Lau, another developer, has been asked to give evidence in a corruption trial in neighbouring Macau. In February, Icac launched a separate investigation into whether Hong Kong’s outgoing chief executive Donald Tsang received illegal favours from business people after local press reports that he travelled on yachts and private jets owned by tycoons. After stepping down, he had also arranged to move into a penthouse renovated by a wealthy developer but abandoned the plan in the face of mounting outrage.
In the small world that is Hong Kong, Mr Hui had been appointed to his civil service post by Mr Tsang. Mr Tsang’s brother, a former police commissioner, is a board member of an arm of New World Development, a property developer.
Many in business maintain that only big developers need worry about the plan to increase the supply of affordable housing, and that the tenets under which the territory has functioned will be protected. Christopher Pratt, chairman of local conglomerate Swire Pacific, says: “Hong Kong is still so useful a financial centre to the rest of the country” that Mr Leung is unlikely radically to change its free-market economy. Despite the rise of Shanghai as a financial centre, Hong Kong remains China’s biggest capital market because it has its own fully convertible currency and sound infrastructure.
Businesses engaged in industries outside property are hoping the chief executive will address a loss of competitiveness against Singapore in recent years. Hong Kong has lost its dominant position in sectors such as shipping and logistics. Commodity suppliers including BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Vale have moved the bulk of their shipping operations to Singapore, where there are tax incentives and other policies to boost the industry.
In a city the British took over in 1841 to provide a free trading port on China’s doorstep, business and government have always been close. Previously, says Leo Goodstadt, a policy adviser to the colonial administration, Chinese members of the elite were to some extent seen by the majority as a protector of their interests against the British. There is no longer the same sense of “them and us”, he says.
Grassroots disillusionment is linked to the fact that more than 90 per cent of GDP is generated by the services sector, especially finance – which offers few opportunities to those with little education and skills. “More business is moving to the mainland and there is no need to recruit in Hong Kong,” says Mr Lo, who has backed Mr Leung since early in his campaign, one of the few tycoons to do so.
Adding to the resentment is the fact that many tycoons receive most of their income from tax-free dividends. For example, the family of Raymond Kwok received dividend payments last year of HK$1.36bn ($175m) compared with his salary of HK$2.52m, making taxable income less than 0.2 per cent of the total.
Fears that Mr Leung’s ties to the mainland will threaten civil rights and the independence of the judiciary mean he enters government with a public approval rating of just 40 per cent. He needs to gain support before the next election in 2017, when universal suffrage is promised. That is being taken as a source of hope that he will deliver on his campaign promises to draw a clear line between government and business.
Whether it is Asia’s richest man or an elderly woman living in a poor neighbourhood, he says: “I am the chief executive of the Hong Kong people, and each person has a special meaning to me.”
香港迎來梁振英時代
唐英年(Henry
Tang)在參加香港特首競選初期，曾告誡香港年輕人不要再抱怨樓價。這位投身政界的商業大亨在去年接受報紙采訪時宣稱，香港本地的大亨們也並不是一生下
來就擁有數十億身家，那些不滿亞洲首富的人應該捫心自問：“為什麽做不到下一個李嘉誠？”唐英年最終在競選中失利。唐英年這番言論引來了一
片嘲諷。在香港，樓價中值是家庭平均年收入的13倍，這個倍數是全世界最高水平。就在幾個月前，一位天主教神父在萬聖節前夜發表的言辭激起了一場軒然大
波：“邪靈惡魔並不可怕，李嘉誠這種人才是吃人的魔鬼。”這兩件事都顯示出日益擴大的不平等正激起香港普通民眾的憤怒。許多人覺得，香港作為全世界最自由
的經濟體之一，政府和商界之間的親近關係讓極少數人獲利，卻損害了這座城市700多萬人口中絕大部分人的利益。
在回顧20世紀70、80年代的“香港夢”時，香港大富豪之一、瑞安房地產(Shui On Land)主席羅康瑞(Vincent Lo)說：“那時每個人都有很多機會。現在年輕人根本不覺得他們有任何實現夢想、成為大亨的可能性。”
今
年3月擊敗唐英年當選香港特首的梁振英(Leung
Chun-ying)聲稱他將改變這種局麵。他向民眾承諾政府將更多幹預經濟，通過支持小企業，讓民眾買得起房，來改善絕大多數市民的生活。然而大企業的
支持者卻擔心他會傷害讓香港得以成為領先金融中心的自由市場模式。不管怎樣，香港作為領先金融中心的未來，都取決於他能否成功。
房地產長期以來一直是香港經濟實力的關鍵。英國政府在香港這塊殖民地建立的體製中，政府大部分公共開支來自賣地收入，使這座城市得以成為低稅率地區，受到全球投資者的青睞。幾十年來，四家最大的地產開發商在香港的商業版圖中一直占據著主導地位。
1997
年香港移交中國以來，港府一直沿用同樣的政策。作為唯一的土地永久產權所有人，政府以高價出售土地租約，隻有財力雄厚的地產開發商才買得起，而後者則又會
將成本轉嫁給購房者。由於港府直到最近一直不肯增加土地供應，因此香港樓價自2009年以來已經攀升70%以上。住房支出通常占香港居民家庭收入的比例，
已經從三分之一左右增加到了將近一半，香港市民將這種狀況比作事實上的高稅收。香港主要稅種所得稅的平均稅率為17%。
最近兩個月發生的三
起事件表明，商業大亨的黃金時代正麵臨威脅。第一起事件是，北京最初屬意的特首候選人唐英年在家中違規建造了一座地下室，其中包含了一個巨大的酒窖。這起
事件激起了反商界大亨的情緒，最終有草根背景的梁振英贏得了選舉，他將於今年7月1日就職。輿論的導向左右了選舉委員會的決策。這個委員會僅有1200名
成員，相當於香港總人口的0.02%，其成員主要從商業界和專業人士精英中挑選。輿論對北京也有影響。盡管中央政府並未公開表態，但是選委會的一些成員透
露，中央政府向他們表明了意向。
之後，新鴻基地產(Sun Hung Kai Properties)老板郭氏兄弟上個月因涉嫌腐敗被捕，這宗調查中還牽扯到一名香港前高級官員。新鴻基地產是亞洲市值最高的地產開發商。
商
界大亨從行為楷模變為千夫所指，這個過程值得玩味。香港自由市場的聲譽在回歸中國15年來一直未曾動搖，它一直是香港經濟繁榮的基石。香港失業率僅為
3.4%，過去兩年中經濟增長17%，政府外匯儲備達2850億美元，幾乎與有2.4億人口的印度尼西亞相當，人均GDP約為3.5萬美元。
然
而繁榮的果實落到了少數人的手中。收入最低的一成家庭的收入，即使按絕對金額計算，也比十年前更低。根據聯合國的一份研究，香港的收入差距是發達經濟體中
最大的，不平等程度僅略好於厄瓜多爾和喀麥隆等國。香港有四分之一兒童生活在貧困線以下，而且過去十年中狀況並未好轉。
“我們都聽說GDP增長驚人，可是我們這些普通人一點也感受不到受益，”三十餘歲的公務員張悅玲（音譯）說。“平均薪水跟不上通脹，房租和樓價漲個不停，把多數人的收入都吸走了。大開發商越來越富，可他們並不會和我們這些人分享。”
. . .
不
過，候任特首梁振英表示，這種情況不會再持續多久了。梁振英在勝選後首次接受外國媒體采訪，他表示香港必須脫離“大市場、小政府”模式，並說會著手解決經
濟不平衡的問題，讓企業向社會支付它們應承擔的成本。盡管透露的細節仍然很少，但已經提出的措施包括供應更多的資助房屋。
如果梁振英所主張
的幹預色彩更強的政府，能夠改善成千上萬擠在“籠屋”（一種危險的小隔間，通常是違規的）中的香港家庭的生計，同時又不傷害經濟增長，那麽就會打破20世
紀60年代香港財政司郭伯偉爵士(Sir John
Cowperthwaite)確立的不幹預模式。曆屆政府都認為不幹預模式是不可動搖的，經濟學家米爾頓•弗裏德曼(Milton
Friedman)還為此撰寫過一篇題為《願美國像香港一樣自由》(If only the US were as free as Hong
Kong)的文章。批評人士稱，如果梁振英在他那條路上走得太遠，隨著財富和實力向東轉移，香港就會在與新加坡和上海的競爭中失利。
梁振英與中國內地有緊密的聯係。在香港移交之前，他就開始與內地官員結交。上世紀80年代，年過而立的梁振英就被北京委任進入了權力極大的香港基本法起草委員會。
香
港一些商界精英把梁振英稱作“危險的共產黨員”（但他否認了有關他是共產黨員的持續傳言），可能會破壞香港的自由市場基礎，而這一基礎為香港創造了大量財
富。他最主要的批評者都與商界大亨關係密切。一位前高級警官表示：“這是一場地震，因為現在普遍的看法是，大亨們享受的好處過多，而且時間也過長了。”
沒
有比郭炳聯(Raymond Kwok)和郭炳江(Thomas
Kwok)兩兄弟被捕一事更能說明這點的了，據估計，二人的財富總計高達180億美元。他們還沒有受到指控，並堅稱自己無罪。但3月30日，二人以及前香
港政務司司長許仕仁(Rafael Hui)被香港廉政公署(Independent Commission Against
Corruption)逮捕一事，激起了公眾對於顯而易見的官商勾結的憤怒。
最近，另一位地產開發商劉鑾雄(Joseph
Lau)在澳門被要求在一項腐敗庭審中作證。今年2月，香港廉政公署對即將離職的香港特首曾蔭權(Donald
Tsang)是否從商人手中收受非法好處一事單獨立案調查。此前有香港媒體報道稱，他曾乘坐屬於香港富商所有的遊艇和私人飛機出行。他還計劃在卸任後遷入
由一家開發商翻新的豪華頂層公寓，但麵對公眾日益高漲的憤怒情緒，最終放棄了該計劃。
在香港這個小小的世界裏，許仕仁被曾蔭權任命為香港政務司司長。而曾蔭權的胞弟、前香港警務處處長曾蔭培現在擔任房地產開發公司新世界發展(New World Development)旗下公司的董事。
……
很
多商界人士堅持認為，隻有大型開發商才需要擔心擴大居屋供應量的計劃，讓香港得以運轉的那些原則將受到保護。香港綜合企業太古股份(Swire
Pacific)主席白紀圖(Christopher
Pratt)表示：“香港仍是一個對中國其他地區有所裨益的金融中心。”因此梁振英不太可能從根本上改變香港的自由市場經濟。盡管上海已崛起為一個金融中
心，但香港仍是中國最大資本市場，因為香港擁有自己的完全可兌換貨幣以及健全的基礎設施。
房地產行業以外的企業希望，這位新特首將解決香港
最近幾年競爭力輸給新加坡的問題。香港已喪失了在航運和物流等行業的主導地位。包括必和必拓(BHP Billiton)、力拓(Rio
Tinto)和淡水河穀(Vale)在內的大宗商品供應商已將其大部分航運業務遷往新加坡，新加坡提供稅收激勵和其他政策，來促進該行業的發展。
1841
年，英國占領香港，將其作為中國大門口的一個自由貿易港口。在這座城市，企業與政府的關係一直很密切。香港政府前政策顧問顧汝德(Leo
Goodstadt)表示，以前，從一定程度上來說，大多數人認為這些中國的精英人士會保護他們的利益不受英國侵犯。但他表示，如今，“他們和我們”的關
係已經不再是以前那種感覺了。
在香港，90%以上的GDP都來自服務業，尤其是金融業，而對那些所受教育有限並且缺乏一技之長的就業者而
言，他們很難在這一行業找到工作，草根理想的破滅與這種現狀不無關係。羅康瑞說：“越來越多的企業遷往了內地，他們不需要在香港招人。”羅康瑞在梁振英競
選之初就對他表示了支持，這與其他大多數富豪形成了鮮明對比。
更令民眾不滿的是，許多富豪的大部分收入都來自可以免於交稅的紅利。比如，郭炳聯家族去年獲得了13.6億港元（合1.75億美元）的紅利收入，相比之下，郭炳聯的薪酬僅為252萬港元，應納稅收入僅占其總收入的0.2%。
由
於人們擔心梁振英與內地的關聯將對香港的民權以及司法獨立構成威脅，梁振英的入職民眾支持率僅為40%。他需要在2017年舉行下屆選舉前贏得更多的支
持。按照此前的承諾，香港屆時將實行普選。這也讓人們抱有期望，期待梁振英能夠兌現競選承諾，在政商之間劃出清晰的界限。
無論是亞洲首富，還是住在貧民區的老嫗，他說：“我是香港人民的特首，每一個人對我而言都有特殊的意義。”
譯者/何黎
