Hong Kong is...just a bunch of business people calling the shots,” he added.Economist: Hong Kong’s tycoons ‘are the problem’ underlying recent unrest
Published Wed, Aug 14 2019 8:50 PM EDTUpdated 2 hours ago
- Civil unrest in Hong Kong stems in part from stratospheric housing prices that have locked many residents out of the market, says independent economist Andy Xie.
- Hong Kong property prices have risen over 300% since 2003.
- Beijing needs to stop consulting with property “tycoons” and take away their political power, Xie says.
Xie said real estate developers benchmark their prices against the salaries and big bonuses of those who work in the financial sector, but that has priced out the vast majority of the local population.
“For ordinary people, you make an income about 5% of a financial guy and they think you should get 5% of an apartment, so they create something like a ‘nano flat,’” he said, referring to tiny apartments in Hong Kong that can be the size of a parking space. “That is really crazy.”
“They think that people will just take it lying down forever, (but) eventually, it blows up,” said Xie, who was a former chief Asia-Pacific economist at Morgan Stanley.
“The key is that the political structure here is neither the Singapore situation where the government is on top, nor like Taiwan (where) it’s a democracy and people can vote,” said Xie, who recently penned an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post on the subject.
.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/15/hong-kong-protests-economist-says-tycoons-are-the-problem.html |
