Inside Hong Kong’s cage homes - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14940017
The story is pretty much the same here in Toronto, the government basically messed up the real estate market. Plus on top of that you have all the foreigners dumping their capital into local real estate but not actually living here full time.
#14940028
If it comes with a dominatrix, sure, I'll live in a cage. :excited:

Albert wrote:The story is pretty much the same here in Toronto, the government basically messed up the real estate market. Plus on top of that you have all the foreigners dumping their capital into local real estate but not actually living here full time.


Miami has this same problem. Lots of rich foreigners (many rich Latin Americans, and Rich Russians for some reason) have dumped their money into real estate and fucked everything up for the working poor in Miami. The Panama papers revealed the massive amounts of people using Miami real estate as a way to park illegal money.
#14940030
Bedspace apartments were intended to accommodate mainland Chinese migrants temporarily and many of them are still living in these tiny apartments because they cannot become Hong Kong permanent residents after living in Hong Kong for a decade. I think Hong Kongers look down on mainland Chinese migrants, who are not really welcomed in Hong Kong, just like the Poles in Britain, who are also subject to harsh immigration measures.

Bedspace apartments started to appear more commonly during the 1950s and 60s. During the Chinese Civil War, a large number of Chinese mainlanders migrated to Hong Kong, and this, along with a surge in birth rates due to the prospering economy, caused the population to dramatically increase from 2,015,300 in 1951 to 3,129,648 in 1961.[7] In an attempt to cope with the housing demand, the Hong Kong Government started to build several public housing estates. However, the government could not handle the extra burden brought by the Chinese migrant workers, and there were no housing or labour protection policies in place at that time. Cage homes thus became popular among migrant workers, as the rental fee was low.[8]

Today, people still live in cage homes because the Hong Kong government has instituted a single-person scoring system for public housing applications and lowered public housing quotas. In addition, according to the Hong Kong Basic Law, new immigrants must wait 7 years to become Hong Kong permanent residents. As such, poor immigrants are often forced to live in bedspace apartments until they receive a Hong Kong ID card.[4]
#14940031
ThirdTerm wrote:Bedspace apartments were intended to accommodate mainland Chinese migrants temporarily and many of them are still living in these tiny apartments because they cannot become Hong Kong permanent residents after living in Hong Kong for a decade. I think Hong Kongers look down on mainland Chinese migrants, who are not really welcomed in Hong Kong, just like the Poles in Britain, who are also subject to harsh immigration measures.


That'll change. The main land has all the guns, money, and people.
#14940037
Rancid wrote:If it comes with a dominatrix, sure, I'll live in a cage. :excited:

Really? :)

Rancid wrote:Miami has this same problem. Lots of rich foreigners (many rich Latin Americans, and Rich Russians for some reason) have dumped their money into real estate and fucked everything up for the working poor in Miami. The Panama papers revealed the massive amounts of people using Miami real estate as a way to park illegal money.

Maybe Toronto sees a lot of money pouring in from Russia too.

ThirdTerm wrote:I think Hong Kongers look down on mainland Chinese migrants, who are not really welcomed in Hong Kong, just like the Poles in Britain, who are also subject to harsh immigration measures.

However, Hong Kong is part of China as it should be and Hong Kongers are Chinese themselves too, so I don't really see how Poles in Britain are relevant here.
#14940051
Beren wrote:However, Hong Kong is part of China as it should be and Hong Kongers are Chinese themselves too, so I don't really see how Poles in Britain are relevant here.


You don't seem to understand Hong Kong and the surrounding Guangdong(which most Cantonese still call Canton... You know, in their own culture and language) province is predominantly Cantonese with the associated traditions and "Mainlanders" are mostly Mandarin....

They are "both Chinese" but that is mainly to outsiders who clearly don't understand they speak almost completely different versions of the Chinese language and therefore there is a significant cultural, political and racial division despite "both being Chinese".

Yes this could indeed be prejudice and racism against "those damn Mandarin Mainlanders".

Hong Kong is also still heavily influenced culturally by it's British period and English is still the second or third most popular language spoken. It is still an official language of Hong Kong and still in wide use:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_English

Heck my mum is Cantonese and she still calls "Beijing" as Peking in English, due to that being the "Canto-inspired transliteration"...
#14940055
Beren wrote:@colliric

It's still the same people, the same country and the same culture, even if there are different dialects.

It's Peking in Hungarian too. :excited:


Made by Cantonese politically active people back during the days of the handover:


Yes ok most average HK Cantonese are not this degree of politically motivated anti-mainland culture. But this is still a good example of how alot of Cantonese initially viewed the "mainland invasion".
#14940056
Anyway, if ThirdTerm is right and Hong Kongers treat mainland Chinese in their city as the Brits treat the Poles in Britain, then they are complete arseholes. The real difference between them is that mainland Chinese are poorer and less Westernised, they're the same otherwise.
#14940060
I think it's a complicated issue and not one I'm going to pretend I fully understand, but as someone who has been to Hong Kong often and may be living there at some point, here's my two cents.

First, Hong Kong will some day here be just another Chinese city. It's true that something like 70% of the land isn't developed; it's still grassy hills, mountain trails, beaches and islands. They could lower housing prices by developing some of these areas, but in a generation or two that makes Hong Kong just another coastal Chinese city; the only thing left to distinguish it would be that it was once independent but without any legal effect or difference in population (only 1% of Hong Kong residents are white, for example and I don't believe those are all permanent residents) I believe that Hong Kong would stop being unique if it all gets developed to reduce housing costs. This is bad for a few reasons, including that one of the reasons people are willing to pay some of the highest rents in the world (and most can forget about owning property) is partly because of those beautiful undeveloped regions.

On the other hand, just moving out of HK is complicated because receiving most state benefits and services in China (which, I often point out, are less generous than western benefits even though they're "communists") requires local registration (hokuo). Hong Kongers are given Chinese nationality (there is a similar system in place for Taiwan, even though both regions tend to deport unregistered mainland Chinese) so it is not too hard for some of them to get a job in China. But here is where things get complicated.

First, your employer may be able to hold you over a barrel. I don't fully understand how this works in each region but there's a phenomenon called "cha bu duo". It basically translates to "close enough" and what it means is that if you don't have an existing relationship with someone (called guan xi in Mandarin) when you cut a deal with them, they will give you the absolute shittiest version of whatever you agreed upon that they can get away with. When I first moved to the Chinese world I thought "cha bu duo" would just mean they were laid back, that's not what it means at all :lol: My rose-colored glasses are mostly off by now. I'm not sure I've ever had an agreement work out 100% to my expectations, unless I was paying an arm and a leg. Anyways, back to the point about what this means for Hong Kongers.

What you might notice about these poor Hong Kongers is that they are... poor. A poor Hong Konger will probably want/need public services in mainland China. Since they don't have a "ho kuo" (local registration) they won't be able to get them. A poor person, speaking not only a different dialect but probably also a different language (Cantonese instead of Mandarin) will also probably not be able to get a ho kuo, the process being complicated and unique to each region. A person with a work permit and a nicer boss will probably not need a ho kuo in the first place. So, if you fall through the cracks, it appears that you're screwed and may end up stuck living in a bunk somewhere in HK.

Are some of these people mainland Chinese living in HK? Yes. If you know what the languages sound like, some of the people interviewed in these bunk houses are speaking Mandarin, which is a giveaway that they're not from HK. And that is also another somewhat different issue.
#14940114
I thought this would take them an eternity but apparently a new quasi-citizenship scheme for Hong Kongers, Macanese and Taiwanese is coming out soon: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/pol ... -residents

The article says these new ID cards will give them access to social services and will function as a work permit. So, this will take some of the strain off of the poor Cantons in Hong Kong who have been falling into the cracks between the systems.

Edit: Reading the whole article now, apparently they need to have been in the mainland for six months before they can get the card, so it won't be instant access and will still make some people vulnerable to bad bosses, although it might now be a temporary problem.
#14940119
Rugoz wrote:Hong Kong was fucked the moment it was handed over to China, so whatever.


Agreed.

Such a dumb move by bleeding heart Englishmen ready to shed their guilt over bringing civilization to most the known world.
#14940270
Victoribus Spolia wrote:Agreed.

Such a dumb move by bleeding heart Englishmen ready to shed their guilt over bringing civilization to most the known world.

That isn't really what happened in the case of Hong Kong. The Chinese refused to renew the lease and made it clear they would recover the territory regardless so it would have been war if we stayed and a war that no one would help us with because the legalities would favour the Chinese once the lease expired. HK people might be sad that the PRC took it over peacefully but they would have been sadder if the PRC had taken it by force.
#14940278
I disagree with that sentiment.

You would have been supported trying to retain Hong Kong. An invasion would have looked bad for the PRC too, economically destructive and extreamly undemocratic.

But in saying that it would have been mainly diplomatic support and may not have been the required military support.

Hong Kong was not too different to the situation with the ROC(Taiwan), you would have had a large amount of technical support, and the support of the locals, but maybe not physical boots on ground military support.
#14940293
Hong Kong was the most prosperous part of East Asia and the Chinese economy overtook Japan after gobbling up the former British colonial outpost. It's in China's interest to maintain Hong Kong's status quo as a capitalist part in China. The Chinese economy will collapse, if anything goes wrong with Hong Kong, which may be why Hong Kongers are free to discriminate against Chinese laborers from mainland China with their own immigration laws. Hong Kong is making China great again economically. Mainland Chinese people envy the privileged status of Hong Kongers who are not directly controlled by Beijing and enjoy some privileges like those of Westerners.
Last edited by ThirdTerm on 17 Aug 2018 06:31, edited 2 times in total.
#14940294
ThirdTerm wrote:Hong Kong was the most prosperous part of East Asia and the Chinese economy overtook Japan after gobbling up the former British colonial outpost. It's in China's interest to maintain Hong Kong's status quo as a capitalist part in China. The Chinese economy will collapse, if anything goes wrong with Hong Kong, which may be why Hong Kongers are free to discriminate against Chinese laborers from mainland China with their own immigration laws.

Actually this is somewhat dated information. China's rising GDP has made Hong Kong much less remarkable than it once was. For example, Shanghai reports a higher GDP than Hong Kong does. So does Beijing. Shenzhen is almost as large. There may even be "tier 2" Chinese cities that are similar in GDP size.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_GDP

A lot of HK's future potential is related to the current construction projects. China is making progress building the world's largest bridges, linking Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Macau together. The plan is to turn the entire region into an economic hub that combines Hong Kong's finance, Macau's casinos and Shenzhen's growing tech sector. But by itself, Hong Kong is no longer as remarkable as it once was.
#14940312
colliric wrote:I disagree with that sentiment.

You would have been supported trying to retain Hong Kong. An invasion would have looked bad for the PRC too, economically destructive and extreamly undemocratic.

But in saying that it would have been mainly diplomatic support and may not have been the required military support.

Hong Kong was not too different to the situation with the ROC(Taiwan), you would have had a large amount of technical support, and the support of the locals, but maybe not physical boots on ground military support.


The PRC made it clear they didn't give a shit about a busted up reputation (which wasn't that high anyway even given the post-Nixon opening up), or economic consequences, or loss of life; they intended to have Hong Kong back whatever it cost them. They did value getting it back without a fight so that gave us some leverage for negotiating the "one country, two systems" idea that would preserve some autonomy for HK. If they had taken it in a fight they would have no obligation to respect HK's special circumstances and requirements.

Maybe CANZUK might have backed us up (for what that is worth given CANZ minus UK are not exactly top tier military nations, no offence) but not the wider NATO, because technically without a lease we would not have a legal right to govern there, and anyway the yanks never miss an opportunity to stab us in the back. NATO would let it go.

Taiwan is a different situation legally speaking.

Perhaps in a different world in which we were stronger militarily and China more friendless (Nixon's detente never happened) we might have done something more ballsy like renegotiating the lease with the ROC in Taiwan instead, lol. That would be provacative and still would have meant a big war with the PRC though.

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