By Nathaniel Taplin Updated Aug. 8, 2019 5:07 am ET Hong Kong is in the midst of its worst political violence since the semiautonomous city’s handover to China in 1997. Defusing the crisis—and maintaining its status as a global financial powerhouse and conduit for capital into China—requires urgent action not only on grievances including police accountability and stalled electoral reforms but also on deep, festering problems with the city’s economic model.
Most of Hong Kong’s most urgent economic problems relate to land. Median income growth has been modest over the past decade, but residential property prices nearly doubled in real terms from 2010 to 2018, according to the Bank for International Settlements. That far outpaces increases even in other notoriously bubbly markets such as Canada, where prices are up about 40%. Hong Kongers live in tinier apartments and pay more for them than nearly anywhere else.
Hong Kong’s low tax rate and big fiscal surplus—the government over the past three years earned on average close to 20% more than it spent—is in fact funded largely by government land sales, which were 27% of total revenues in fiscal year 2017/2018. To make matters worse, the proceeds of land sales go into the Capital Works Reserve Fund, which is slated for infrastructure development. Hong Kong already has exemplary infrastructure.
'By some measures'? Who wrote that? The Communist Party? Yeesh. Give me a break. Enough! Schtinks! Obsession with 'equality' Yous must think we're Stoopid! ARF! Woof!
WSJ you just shut up that Hong Hong will be peace
and behind all the chaos...
YOU GUYS CEASE TO AMAZE WITH THESE RIDICULOUS PIECES...HK IS SCREWED! BEIJING WILL ASSIMILATE THEM INTO IT’S COMMUNIST REGIME ONE WAY OR ANOTHER...IT IS NO WONDER THE PAPER IS A 5th OF WHAT IT USED TO BE!
Might be nice if the White Supremacist supporting worry more about how America can be saved unequal wealth distribution.
Great wealth is accumulated through the suffering of those in poverty ! the less work youdo the more money you make , is only true in industrialized nations !
Americans too
They arr able ti take of themselves without the help of China. Is that why they want yo come off from China. I don't blame them. God help them.
You're right, because not only in Hong Kong, but people all over the world have been deprived of their money by greedy people like you on Wall Street.
US is the most free economy in the world - in theory. In reality, most residents struggle to get by, and have little say in their big corp lobbied political or economic future ?
I can’t believe I’m seeing an article in the WSJ that’s (rightfully) encouraging Hong Kong to curb poverty and extreme inequality by investing heavily in public housing, public assistance, etc. How did this slip past the elite conservative editors/whipmasters at the paper?
It’s same all around world . New York , London. Poor people have no say to everything.
May be this is all funded by your corrupt government to destabilize Hongkong's economic and political spectrum.
Worked there in the 90s. Was great place to be. Very prosperous. But that was under British rule.
一張嘴就說大多數，請記住你們自己的話，沒經過我同意沒有人可以代表我。
Seems like aggressive protests and an absolute, unbending stand against the communists in mainland China is a really good start.
WSJ, brought to you by the CCP
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