Commentary: Hong Kong’s shoebox housing is a disgrace that must end

This general view shows an exterior of a residential building in the Jordan area of the Yau Tsim Mong district of Kowloon in Hong Kong on Jan 22, 2021. HONG KONG: What can Hong Kong do to get its mojo back? That is the question on everyone’s lips, particularly asof the assertion that Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu made late last year when the city was close to reopening - “Hong Kong always bounces back, better than ever”.

The Hong Kong government is under mounting pressure to remove property market curbs to stop the rot and has set up a task force to review stock market liquidity. In these 30 years, I have read so many reports about the city’s political and business elite lamenting the lack of easy solutions. Ironically, although some of these individuals have been looking to Beijing for guidance in the past few years, they have failed to learn anything meaningful.In 2015, when President Xi Jinping vowed the mainland would eradicate absolute poverty by the end of 2020, about 70 million people lived under the poverty line.

Xi has urged Hong Kong to solve the housing problem and Xia Baolong, the top official in charge of Hong Kong, even challenged the city to get rid of cage homes and subdivided flats by 2049. But Hong Kong can’t really afford to wait that long. Equally important, Hong Kong must do more to explain the beauty of “two systems” to the outside world, including even Beijing, so as to robustly defend the city’s autonomy and freedoms. The city must do a better job of using its influence on Beijing and lobbying the central government to rethink the policies which directly impact Hong Kong.

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