Good article. I had the chance to visit Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou a few years ago and found the differences between the cities quite striking. Quite a different feel between the 3 cities - HK with a western mindset, Shenzhen with a pan-Chinese transient population, and Guangzhou being like HK's Cantonese element minus the Brit pretenses.
I remember going to a local market to buy some tea to take back home to my family and the lady running the tea shop gave me her business card saying that she had contacts with plastic-mold injection and other factory-related things. Lady was ready to do business! Not many other places in the world can you get connected to set up a production line so quickly.
Exellently gentle wakeup call to Americans who know nothing of East Asia, but whose national leadership--and especially the Neocons infesting the government's highest, most influential and powerful echelons--are Hell-bent on enmity. Wholly inexcusable and without basis, but still an ugly fact. Perhaps factual learning will help cure this. Thank you!
Baumol's cost disease is a choice, but the choice is immigration, not the welfare state. America strongly restricts its immigration. HK less so, and benefits from waves of low cost labor from the mainland.
Both are true. I didn't focus as much on immigration because US/Europe has had deflationary immigration policy for the last few decades (maybe no longer) but has voided those benefits by supplying a generous welfare state.
The trouble with immigration in the US is that it is not very selective. You guys will let anyone walk over the border, shrug, and book a court date two years away to process their asylum claim. Deranged
Foreign born people summing up to 0.15% of the population per year over the last 10 years is not very much by developed country international standards, Hong Kong included. I'd be blown away if Hk’s net migration was lower than that and I'd expect it's in the vicinity of 10x that.
Honestly us immigration rate since then is probably relatively similar, and I know less about Hong Kong but it has had lots of migration from over the border for most of its history. Sort of a weird comparison going back that far though because Hong Kong was a poor colony rather than a developed economy at the time.
I mean try asking Hong Kongers if they think _they_ are Chinese. I remember meeting a cute HK Chinese girl at HK Seaworld 15 years ago and her and her mum were pretty emphatic they weren't Chinese. Since 1997 HK has legally been part of China but prior to that it was a British colony. HK might be 92% of Chinese but quite a lot of them are recent migrants from mainland China. If your hobbyhorse is racial purity you'll think I'm being cute but Baumol's cost disease doesn't care what race the immigrants are, just how much money they're willing to work for.
Good article. I had the chance to visit Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou a few years ago and found the differences between the cities quite striking. Quite a different feel between the 3 cities - HK with a western mindset, Shenzhen with a pan-Chinese transient population, and Guangzhou being like HK's Cantonese element minus the Brit pretenses.
I remember going to a local market to buy some tea to take back home to my family and the lady running the tea shop gave me her business card saying that she had contacts with plastic-mold injection and other factory-related things. Lady was ready to do business! Not many other places in the world can you get connected to set up a production line so quickly.
Exellently gentle wakeup call to Americans who know nothing of East Asia, but whose national leadership--and especially the Neocons infesting the government's highest, most influential and powerful echelons--are Hell-bent on enmity. Wholly inexcusable and without basis, but still an ugly fact. Perhaps factual learning will help cure this. Thank you!
Have you had time to visit Macau? What are your thoughts on it?
Not yet
Baumol's cost disease is a choice, but the choice is immigration, not the welfare state. America strongly restricts its immigration. HK less so, and benefits from waves of low cost labor from the mainland.
Both are true. I didn't focus as much on immigration because US/Europe has had deflationary immigration policy for the last few decades (maybe no longer) but has voided those benefits by supplying a generous welfare state.
Fair!
The trouble with immigration in the US is that it is not very selective. You guys will let anyone walk over the border, shrug, and book a court date two years away to process their asylum claim. Deranged
Foreign born people summing up to 0.15% of the population per year over the last 10 years is not very much by developed country international standards, Hong Kong included. I'd be blown away if Hk’s net migration was lower than that and I'd expect it's in the vicinity of 10x that.
Sorry I missed the sourcing. Here https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2024/04/where-do-immigrants-live.html
Honestly us immigration rate since then is probably relatively similar, and I know less about Hong Kong but it has had lots of migration from over the border for most of its history. Sort of a weird comparison going back that far though because Hong Kong was a poor colony rather than a developed economy at the time.
I mean try asking Hong Kongers if they think _they_ are Chinese. I remember meeting a cute HK Chinese girl at HK Seaworld 15 years ago and her and her mum were pretty emphatic they weren't Chinese. Since 1997 HK has legally been part of China but prior to that it was a British colony. HK might be 92% of Chinese but quite a lot of them are recent migrants from mainland China. If your hobbyhorse is racial purity you'll think I'm being cute but Baumol's cost disease doesn't care what race the immigrants are, just how much money they're willing to work for.
Hong Kong, to China collectively, is the unwanted step-child, perhaps.