Published 2004-05-04 14:09:18
The fall out from last weeks NPC decision to go backwards in democratic development brought out some astounding statements from some of the richest developers in Hong Kong.
After Gordon Wu (Hopewell holdings) got his mega hotel thrown out of the planning board, in a PR disaster, he went on the radio, slamming those damn enviromentalists for preventing him making shit loads more money. But later in the week we had a better foot in mouth example by the Head of New World development.
In trying to justify what is widely seen here as as stupid decision, he announced that turning Hong Kong into a democracy would bring it closer to being a socialist society like North Korea or Vietnam. Then he suggested that all those horrible democrats should move to one of those lovely democratic? countries. On the face of it, this has got to be one of the most stupidest comments ever. However what is hiding behind the reality, is something even worse.
Most of the supporters of last weeks decision are the people who gain the most from the status quo here. The biggest property developers have considerable influence in goverment policy here, and their major push is to restrict land supply, which has a knock on effect of inflating house prices. Ah, you think, Basically this whole rallying cry against democracy is really a money making scheme, to suck money out of the poor suckers who need somewhere to live, to add a few more mercedes to their driveways..
What they totally fail to realize is that democracy here is extremely unlikely to bring in massive socialism, with the goverment spending all it's money on paying people to sit around and do nothing. It just prevents rather rude self centered idiots like them from making the rest of Hong Kong suffer in tiny appartments.
