Are we really this desperate?

The SCMP reports on the latest obscure/offbeat attempt to rejuvenate Hong Kong’s economy…

Hong Kong is seeking to establish a cross-border individual travel scheme for yachts, with discussions under way with Guangzhou counterparts to ease maritime travel for private vessels as part of a wider effort to create a high-end “yacht economy”.

As opposed to a ‘low-end’ yacht economy. 

From the Standard…

Speaking at a Legislative Council briefing, Law stated the goal is to attract international yachts while also stepping up efforts to draw mainland Chinese tourists.

She pointed to the potential of developing a yacht rental sector. This would allow tourists, particularly those from inland regions unfamiliar with sailing, to experience trips with a captain and enjoy Hong Kong’s scenic harbour and island views.

I have a vision of a small group of civil servants in Admiralty within a Department that is part of a Bureau. It has a director (salary: HK$1,800,000 a year), three deputy assistant sub-directors (HK$1,000,000 a year), and a dozen more assistants and clerks (average HK$600,000 a year), plus a car and driver. It is the Yacht Economy Development Unit, and it is eagerly identifying more opportunities as we speak. 

(Obviously, it’s nothing like that in real life.)

A Bloomberg story expands on the New World Development horror and asks how the next generation of property tycoons will fare in the post-patriarchs era…

The younger generation in Hong Kong is navigating unfamiliar political terrain. Once a dominant force in the city’s business and policy circles, Hong Kong’s tycoons held considerable sway — especially during the early years of China’s reform and opening up, when Beijing’s political elite actively courted them for their investment capital and global connections.

But that influence has waned since the 2019 protests and social unrest. President Xi Jinping’s administration has grown increasingly wary of the city’s powerful family conglomerates, with state-owned media including the official People’s Daily blaming them for fueling public discontent through unaffordable property prices.

Beijing’s official explanation to the world for the 2019 protests is that evil foreign forces plotted and funded the movement. Closer to home, however, Chinese officials link anti-government sentiment to the housing mess. (Many dogmatic pan-dems reject such a link, insisting that the movement had nobler aims such as defending Hong Kong’s freedom and values. But if you could measure individual causes of raw discontent, housing would be number-one.)

One irony here is that the original property bubble (roughly 1985-1997) resulted from Beijing’s requirement that the colonial Hong Kong government tightly limit land supply. Another is that after the Asian Financial Crisis, post-1997 Hong Kong administrations continued that policy, systematically making apartments more and more expensive, yet smaller and smaller in size. Beijing could have ordered local leaders to cut that out (just as they could have limited the flow of Mainland immigrants into the city, which added to the housing problem). Even today, after encouraging serious over-supply of offices and malls, planners are nervous about allocating land for plain everyday housing.

In short, while the tycoons profited – obscenely, with relish – from the deliberate shortage of housing, they didn’t cause it. Not that we need to have much sympathy with them today…

Adrian [Cheng, former New World Development scion and boss], for his part, has turned his attention to other endeavors. He’s now leading the Hong Kong Academy for Wealth Legacy, a group that’s promoting the city as a hub for private investment offices that handle money for rich families — and providing financial guidance to their wealthy heirs. He also set up a firm to invest in digital assets.

In late September on Threads, he posted the words “I am my own light; nothing could diminish it.”