Hong kong and singapore – a tale of two cities

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HONG KONG AND SINGAPORE – A TALE OF TWO CITIES



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Post date:
10 Oct 2014 - 7:35pm












I was in Hong Kong recently to visit an old friend who lives on Lama Island. To get to her home we had to catch the Star Ferry.

We almost didn’t get there for the cabbie who took our fare got so angry with me that he almost threw me out of his cab just because I enquired innocently whether he hailed from mainland China as he seemed so clueless where Lama Island is.

I apologized abjectly and swore I didn’t mean to cast any slur on him a thorough-bred Hong Konger. Thereafter he cooled down to lecture me on why he and others were so angry about the mainlanders from China. According to him they are like locusts who prey on everything from hospitals, schools, kindergartens, properties to social welfare. They not only drive up inflation but they also take away our jobs. “I really detest them!” he said with great vehemence.

A few months later my long time friend, an Emeritus Professor of Geography from Montreal University, was not as fortunate as me and was actually thrown out of a Singapore cab on 2 consecutive days. His only “offence” as an “angmo” was being too smart and tried to direct the cabbie along a well-known route to NUS. “If you are so smart go there yourself”. With that the cab door swung open and he was discharged. This had never happened to him before as a resident or as a visitor in all of 48 years.

In my perplexity I asked myself “why is Singapore becoming more like Hong Kong?” Why are people getting so angry these days that they not only get into road rages but they are also demonstrating and marching in Hong Lim Green? I therefore took our Prime Minister’s advice to heart and decided to stop navel gazing and look earnestly outwards China, India and Indonesia, countries which will have a big impact on us.

I turned to the Straits Times and Voila! I found an article entitled “Protests in Hong Kong – economic anxieties lie beneath democracy demands” by Li Xueying. I wish to quote extensively from this article because I feel strange premonitions that what is happening in Hong Kong might also take place here in Singapore.

“I always knew there is something wrong with our society, but I did not know exactly why and how to fix it”, is a quote from a 25 year old Hong Konger Andy Chan who attended the Occupy Central protest to keep an eye on his little brother.

Andy graduated last year from the University of Hong Kong, the city’s top college. He earns $2,480 per month and after a year he is exposed to the harsh realities of trying to forge life in one of the world’s costliest and most unequal societies”.

“There are a myriad of causes for the 1,300 protests that took place in HK last year”.

Hong Kong today is one of the world’s most unequal societies with a Gini coefficient of 0.537.

“While the Pearl of the Orient has 44 billionaires, it also has 1.31 million people living below the poverty line in a population of 7.2 million.

“And even as the cost of living steadily heads north, wages are stagnating and Hong Kongers feel keenly that they are no longer able to move up the ladder”.

They long for a leadership who will be less “beholden to the tycoons, developers and other vested interest representatives.

“The powerful magnates used to be revered but have since been vilified by many for their oligarchic conglomerates with power over items from property and grocery prices to rentals and wages”.











If all the observations made by Ms Li seem familiar and applicable to Singapore then there is indeed sound reason for concern.

But then we should not worry too much. Singapore is not a very demonstrative society and I am quite sure that the march in Hong Lim Square will not spill over into Fullerton Square. Unlike Hong Kong we have been politically emasculated for too long for a movement like Occupy Central to ever emerge.

So sleep well but don’t forget to VTO in 2015.

Patrick Low


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