Economies do go through cycles of “ups” and “downs” whether they truly reflect the actual production or they’re arbitrarily monitored with speculation and inflated assets. Whoever know better how to play the game could possibly be less the adverse effect of any dramatic changes in the rules of the game and any burst of asset price bubbles.
With the inflated prices of property assets just two years after the 2008 financial tsunami, many Hong Kong people have complained the difficulties of owning property in Hong Kong, especially those generations born in 80s and 90s with less equity than older generation. The discrepancy between the rich and the poor is getting larger that getting a fair playing ground for everyone is apparently unavailable.
From the "Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2010" released by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini, the number of Hong Kong people with liquid asset of US$1 million or above is 76,000 as of Dec 2009. In other words, it is only about 1% of the population of Hong Kong that could be classified as “rich people”. Ironically, according to the research of Hong Kong Council of Social Services, the number of poor people grew more than 60,000 in just half years to reach 18.1% of the total population (1.26 million people) as of June 2010. The definition of poverty applied to those families which have household income less than half of the median household income of Hong Kong. How to solve the discrepancy between the rich and the poor people has now become the top concern of the government.
Growing resentment of the unfair rules of games geared towards rich people (仇商仇富情緒) is getting more ground in Hong Kong recently, especially as perceived and voiced a lot more by media and internet channels, though we do not have the actual figure of people of Hong Kong with clear and expressed resentment emotion against “rich people” by any objective collection of opinion.
In fact, the term of “anti-rich” is too general as whoever have expressed the resentment of “anti-rich” may not resent themselves being rich, but because of the stops or barriers they have perceived to prevent them from being rich to have the same status, reward and benefit like those rich people. Rather it is truer to say that Hong Kong has always been a materialistic cosmopolitan to encourage people making a lot of money on their own in our history, that if any resentment is more resulted from not making one's life the way one wants.
Human emotion and reaction is a very interesting subject. If one knows very well, one can easily monitor and control the emotions of others towards certain direction. (please click here for more information of the subject if you would like.)
Whenever anyone is in the emotional tone of “resentment”, they tend to respond better to a little bit, higher emotional state of “antagonism”. The media is very smart by channeling the resentment emotion towards the apparent enemies: rich business people and creating “antagonistic” emotional state. Yet, they’re not constructive emotions, but mis-emotions that could destroy the harmony within oneself and our community.
But who is the actual enemy of one’s state of condition? The state of one’s mind and emotion determine one’s state of condition. One will not accomplish anything if attacking only "apparency" but not the "actuality".
The call and responsibility to improve the conditions always lie on able people in any community and it’s no exception in Hong Kong. The more able people we have, the better the living environment we have. Yet, it also requires that each of us: the rich, the poor, and the government to help each other in providing better game fields with better rules of game. The rich people need to make money with exchange in abundance with quality products and service by doing business ethically. The poor people also need to work hard to make their own contribution to our community and soon they can improve and change their conditions themselves. The government needs to provide fair rules of games, opportunity and effective legal systems for the rich and the poor to participate and needed help to those for minimum level of survival and protection and in cases of any emergency. In other words, each person should take up his own responsibility no matter what role or condition one’s in and that's how the prosperity of any economy depends on.
It’s time for us to raise our emotional tone to be more “constructive” than “destructive” by taking our own responsibilities, then we will have a better life for all of us in living Hong Kong.
