And here is the Hong Kong news this Friday the 13th…
A 30-year-old studio unit measuring 150 square feet at the Cheung On Estate in Tsing Yi in the New Territories has been advertised for HK$3.2 million (US$408,000) … “It will sell quickly,” said Calvin Leung, a sales manager at Centaline Property …
The story adds that this is US$2,735 per sq ft, compared with US$432 for a public-estate flat in Singapore. And it quotes a property guy’s explanation – young people with limited money are rushing to grab a home as they do not see an end to rising home prices.
One question: why not just leave your HK$3.2 million in the bank? Another: if the Communist Party had a strategy to squeeze the young out of Hong Kong, wouldn’t it look something like this?
I declare the weekend open with well over 150 sq ft of links…
Could the ‘new’ Malaysia that just elected Mahathir make Singapore look outdated? (My hunch: it depends whether ‘new’ Malaysia eradicates pro-Malay discrimination and supremacism and attendant corruption and toxic Salafi Islamism. Or in short, nope.) But the list of Singapore’s shortcomings sounds familiar to Hong Kong: elite, out-of-touch rulers, dependent on infrastructure/immigration, creating high costs and inequality.
One difference is that, unlike Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore are free of colonial domination. Behold the thin-skinned Chinese reaction to a Singaporean ex-diplomat’s comments on Beijing’s interference and bullying in the region.
At the Jamestown Institute, Willy Lam on the decreasing cuddliness of the Panda, and Miguel Martin on Sinified Buddhism’s part in China’s United Front work overseas.
Meanwhile in Africa, China’s Belt and Road Vision-Concept is not winning hearts and minds in Kenya and is getting into evangelical Christianity (it couldn’t happen to a nicer win-win Vision-Concept).
For hardcore enthusiasts only: a very lengthy history of the CCP’s use of hyperbolic language and propaganda, including the recent official attempts to back down from excessively bombastic nationalistic rhetoric. On a lighter note, a review of a book about the Opium Wars featuring ‘villains, like the Scottish drug lords William Jardine and James Matheson, worthy of soap opera’. I’ll never think of Wellcome supermarkets the same way.
Finally, out-of-area Sobering Big Picture – an expert ponders Trump scrapping NATO.
For today’s young folks, there’s 3 choices: go into absurd debt for a glorified prison cell, fork over rent for a glorified prison cell and have to move every 2 to 4 years when your landlord wants to flip it, or live with mum and dad until the age of 38.
As Monty Python would say:
150 square feet
Luxury!
The originator of the Miner’s sketch John Cleese is leaving Britain. He can’t stand the UK newspapers, constantly rated the most unreliable in Europe.
How is Soho? I hear that Kevin Egan dropped dead.
@Cassowary: So it would, in essence, be like buying your OWN cell in preparation for debtor’s prison?
Also…more like until 48!
Might I add to Dr. Lam’s piece that there are record numbers of PRC immigrants to the US that have taken to joining the US military, most likely with the desire to attain the generous education and home loan benefits as well as a fast track to citizenship. Totally understandable.
That aside, it cannot be discounted that some have been co-opted by the Greater Han/CCP Prosperity Sphere to get some nice stealthy secrets for Uncle Xi.
“If the Communist Party had a strategy to squeeze the young out of Hong Kong, wouldn’t it look something like this?”
Oh where do you live, my brown-eyed son?
Where do you live, my darling young one?
I live in a flat with partitions divided.
I hear the old air-con eternally rasping.
I smell the old concrete and garbage and drainage.
I look through my window at alley disgusting.
I listen to flat-sharers coughing and fucking.
And it’s a high, it’s a high, and it’s a high, it’s a high,
It’s a high rent’s a-gonna pay.
Oh, what’ll you do now, my brown-eyed son?
What’ll you do now, my darling young one?
I’ll flee to the leafy green suburbs of Sydney.
I’ll chill in the temperate air of Vancouver.
I’ll mellow in love by the Bay San Francisco,
I’ll ramble and dream in the New Zealand meadows.
I’ll hustle and bustle in Taiwan’s brave cities.
And it’s a long, it’s a long, and it’s a long, it’s a long
It’s a long way’s a-gonna go.
[Bob Dylan : ‘A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall’]