8 Special reportAsian tigers The EconomistDecember 7th 2019
1T
he molotov cocktails, one blue, one yellow, arrive swaddled
in a towel and wedged in a backpack. Wearing builders’ gloves
and Guy Fawkes masks, the protesters balance them casually on a
railing, like mixologists in a bar. Then the bricks arrive, piled on a
trolley, hidden under a canopy of umbrellas. The protesters spend
a few exultant minutes hurling projectiles and insults down the
stairs of a subway exit at riot police below. A burst of flames adds
drama, and is enough to provoke a response: a canister of tear gas
rocketing up the stairs. The protesters disperse, and a row of police
march up behind a tessellation of shields, firing gas as they go.
Once renowned as a city of progress, Hong Kong is now known
as a city of protest. Bricks, cocktails and gas have descended on
some of the most expensive real estate in the world. The clash de-
scribed above took place in front of a Bulgari showroom and a
branch of Prada. Many analysts, including in Hong Kong’s govern-
ment, argue that the underlying causes of the city’s protests are
economic grievances, especially high housing prices, stagnant
wages and the suffocating ubiquity of dominant conglomerates.
The city is certainly home to vast inequalities. The watches on
display in Bulgari sell for more than most residents earn in a
month. And the trolleys that now carry protesters’ bricks more
typically carry piles of recycled cardboard
collected by poor old women, their backs
hunched with the effort. Property prices
are outlandish. A couple recently sold a
parking space in a luxury apartment block
for $760,000, equivalent to more than
14,000 parking tickets.
If economics is the underlying motive
for Hong Kong’s unrest, it ought to be pos-
sible to satisfy both the protesters and offi-
cials in Beijing. A programme of rapid
home-building and more progressive tax-
ation would reduce Hong Kong’s inequal-
ities without ruffling China’s feathers: it
would, after all, make Hong Kong look
more like the mainland. Pro-Beijing legis-
lators in Hong Kong have backed proposals
to buy up to 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of
land from private developers whether or
not they want to sell.
In a similar vein, many analysts hanker
for a Singaporean solution to Hong Kong’s
problems. The city-state realised early on
that widespread home-ownership was es-
sential to social peace. Over 80% of the
population lives in homes built by govern-
ment agencies, sold at subsidised prices.
Phang Sock-Yong of the Singapore Manage-
ment University says that, as far as housing
is concerned, Singapore approximates the
“ideal society” envisioned by Thomas Pi-
ketty in his book, “Capital in the 21st Cen-
tury”. The bottom half of households own a
quarter of Singapore’s housing wealth.But glaring inequality and unaffordable housing are old pro-
blems in Hong Kong. They have not prompted mayhem in the past.
Why now? And if economic grievances are driving the protesters,
they are remarkably silent about their true motives. They typically
complain about police brutality and the erosion of Hong Kong’s
autonomy before they mention jobs or inequality. “We see the
darkness of the government,” said one protester at the Chinese
University of Hong Kong (cuhk), angered by the shooting of a vo-
cational student on November 11th. Francis Lee of cuhkand his
colleagues surveyed thousands of protesters over the first three
months of unrest. Over half identified themselves as middle or up-
per class and about 75% had received a higher education.
China would never admit it, but there is a parallel in Taiwan.
Wages have stagnated for two decades. Housing in Taipei is among
the least affordable in Asia. But one of Taiwan’s biggest political
earthquakes in recent years was the “sunflower” protests of 2014,
by students opposed to closer trade links with China. Their cause
arguably harmed their own economic interests. But it both reflect-
ed and fuelled Taiwan’s distinct national identity.
Although Hong Kong’s economy is not the principal cause of
the city’s unrest, it is a prominent casualty. At first, protesters van-
dalised firms unsympathetic to the cause. More recently, their sab-
otage has become less discriminate. “We want to give some pres-
sure to the government economically,” said a student. From a
barricaded bridge at cuhk, he and other protesters guarded a road-
block of uprooted trees, unscrewed railings and traffic cones, scat-
tered on a busy thoroughfare below.
Worse than the physical damage is the psychological toll,
which affects spending. Retail sales were down by over a fifth year-
on-year in September and the number of visitors to Hong Kong fell
by over a third. Restaurants and bars have suffered their biggest fallTyger, tyger, burning
Social unrest is not proof of economic failureDiscontentCity on a hill or a precipice?