Hong Kong’s political problems are simply too hot to handle
The Legislative Council is paralysed from the waist up and, under attack, Leung Chun-ying’s administration lacks the will to push through reform
Hong Kong has no social problems, only political problems.
Or to be more accurate, Hong Kong has no social problems that cannot be solved, only political problems that are too hot to handle.
Take, for example, the housing problem that has rendered millions of people “homeless”. Its long-term solution, as everybody knows, lies in the increase of land supply. This can be done by reclamation, land use rezoning or altering the current designated boundaries of country parks to make more land available for development.
It doesn’t take a John Maynard Keynes or even a Paul Krugman to reach the above conclusion. All one has to do is to exercise his common sense. But these days Hong Kong people seem to have no use for common sense. Winston Churchill famously said that the first casualty of war is truth. In today’s Hong Kong, it seems that the first casualty of political infighting is common sense. Any attempt to significantly increase land supply amounts to a serious challenge of the status quo and its deeply entrenched vested interests. You can guarantee that this will be met with stiff resistance from different quarters of society.