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The View | How Hong Kong can put an end to protest chaos – it’s about the economy, so fix the deep divide

  • Hong Kong is a free market on steroids that serves the rich. As discontent over an unjust system boils over, it’s time to introduce easy policy fixes

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Illegal cubicle homes on the rooftop of an industrial building in Kwun Tong. The source of Hong Kong’s misery is its economic system, the wrong-headed belief that the free market alone will solve every social problem. Photo: Dickson Lee
Restoring public order in Hong Kong will not happen through heavy-handed policing. That will only make the situation worse. And it will not come from the government abandoning its extradition bill or calling for calm. Even Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor stepping down would change almost nothing.
The only way to restore order is through a radical change in Hong Kong’s economic policies. After decades of doing almost nothing, and letting the free market rule, it is time for the Hong Kong government to do what it is there for; to govern in the interests of the majority.
The discontent among the Hong Kong people is deeply rooted and has been growing for many years. It is not a knee-jerk reaction to recent policy decisions or a consequence of the failed 2014 umbrella movement. It is a legacy of colonial rule and the economic system that the British implanted.
Hong Kong was bequeathed the most unrestricted neo-liberal version of the free market system on Earth, and told to be proud of it. It inherited a free market on steroids and a belief that almost any sort of restriction on economic activity was wrong.
For years, most Hong Kong people, and especially the young and the elderly, could have told any politician who was willing to listen that it was always going to end like this. The rising level of injustice was always going to result in widespread resentment and anger.

It was always going to end this way because an unrestricted market economy always creates a huge gulf between rich and poor, low wages for the majority, extreme wealth from speculative investments and vast economic sectors dominated by a handful of enormously powerful companies.

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