The CE’s policy address reflects the usual paucity of ideas, or an inability to admit that old ones don’t work, or a dread of embracing new ones.
Eliminating subdivided apartments by requiring them to have a window, a toilet and an area of at least 86 sq ft and renaming them ‘basic housing units’ doesn’t really fix the problem. Why can’t or won’t officials just build more affordable housing?
Because they want ever-higher land valuations that by definition are accompanied by a shortage of homes. So let’s try to lure more suckers into buying overpriced apartments by allowing 70% mortgages.
The government will cut taxes on pricier booze to…
…[promote] the liquor trade and [boost] the development of high value-added industries, including logistics and storage, tourism and high-end food and beverage consumption…
Are any of these ‘high value-added industries’? Mass tourism certainly isn’t. Yet the government plans to expand Mainland individual (and ASEAN) visits in an attempt to push up tourist numbers apparently as an end in itself. Even though Hong Kong has a ‘projected shortage of 180,000 workers across different sectors in the next five years’.
(Fans of borderline irrelevant policy initiatives can find in-depth discussion of the impact of lower tax on fancy spirits here.)
And the government wants to develop local generative AI to help some of its departments in…
…writing drafts, translating, and the conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese characters…
Digital conversion between traditional and simplified has been around for decades. Still, at least it’s not crypto.
A full summary of the policy address proposals is here. The whole thing here. There’s little sense that Hong Kong policymakers recognize a need for major adjustments to the old model. Pandas, property and patriotism will fix everything.
Oh, and don’t forget the gold trading hub. (The list of Hong Kong’s ‘hubs’ is out of date already.)
Greater intoxication is a solution.
Just a hunch, but maybe people dropping $10k on a bottle of Moutai aren’t all that price sensitive?
Meanwhile the rest of us just have to sit back and see how high 180,000 new mainland ‘talents’ can push rents.
Some drink to remember, some drink to forget….
So the booze tax cut only benefits the relatively wealthy (by HK standards). Nosferatu looked pretty happy on the news last night.
The sooner we all understand that we’re on our own in HK (as individuals and businesses) until the Central Government takes action, the better. I’m still unconvinced that promoting the “low altitude” economy means something about drones and not encouraging tourists to arrive on foot or in dinghies.
Most of us assumed the government was using locally trained AI to write its drafts already. Its indignant press releases read like the work of a robot reared on a rich diet of mainland-style propaganda.
@GPT Chatman
That’s because they are. Ask your GPT to write a press release in the style of the HK government in response to, say, a negative report by the UN on human rights abuse in Hong Kong in relation to Jimmy Lai’s incarceration and trial. Then if you want the real thing, substitute “HK government” with “Chinese government.”
Then, if you wish to crank it up a little, add this sentence at the end of the instruction: “Use extreme language and be aggressive.” This additional sentence can then be fine-tuned to return the desired level of mouth frothing.
Arrived in That London
No body shouting
Got through LHR in 30 min and onto Elizabeth Line.
Consequently got to Euston too early for train to Stoke = pasty and three cans of wine
Station pub open at 8:45am. Civilised.
Getting rid of the subdivided flat problem by basically just renaming them reminds me of a splendid Trevor McDoughnut line in the 80s:
“The government announced that the Windscale nuclear power station will be renamed Sellafield because it sounds nicer. Also from now on, radiation will be known as ‘Magic Moonbeams’.”
three cans of wine?
Who drinks wine from a can?