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Alice Wu

Last week, Xia Baolong, Beijing’s point man on Hong Kong and Macau affairs, made a two-day trip to the city to review the Hong Kong government’s progress across many areas.
Everything seems to have been orchestrated with precision. Ahead of Xia’s arrival, the government launched its two-month public consultation on the city’s first five-year plan. The day after Xia concluded his visit, the government released its 200-plus page report on the impact of its targeted poverty alleviation strategy.
The same day, the International Institute for Management Development released the results of the latest World Competitiveness Ranking. Hong Kong has risen one place to the world’s second-most competitive economy. All this offered a timely reminder of what the administration had accomplished.
The result-oriented government of Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has essentially released its own report card on poverty alleviation. Launching the city’s first five-year plan is the administration’s strongest display of political will to Beijing, showing how well Hong Kong is moving in line with national plans. Lee should be proud given that Xia apparently gave his administration a big thumbs up.
Lee said the five-year plan would unify the blueprints in different fields by setting a five-year threshold “so that all development proceeds at the same pace and in the same direction”. The not-so-subtle message is that aligning with the central government’s plans for the country has been part of Hong Kong’s plan all along under Lee’s leadership.
Lee’s administration has made efforts to improve cross-bureau coordination and address poverty. However, the recently released report on poverty is really about how the government is redefining its work.


The administration has abandoned the poverty line based on household income in favour of a 21-indicator framework that the government says will help it better target needy groups. In actuality, it is redrawing the lines, starting with using the concept of “social transfer values” or “income” gained by a family for not having to pay full price for public services.
For example, consider a family with two children – one in primary school and the other in secondary school – who attend government-funded schools. In the government’s calculation, that household’s income has increased by about HK$15,500 (US$1,970) per month through state-provided education and about HK$5,000 per month through healthcare. Households in public rental housing are seen as having their income increase by about HK$10,000.
Chief Secretary Eric Chan Kwok-ki said using household income to measure poverty painted a distorted picture, failed to reveal the needs of the underprivileged and was ineffective in helping authorities formulate policies. No system is perfect, but the government needs to come up with better reasons for abolishing the poverty line.


Using the new framework, the government says it can address the needs of “at the end of the queue” with focused measures. The most vulnerable include households with children living in subdivided flats, single-parent families with children under 12 and elderly households with all members over the age of 80.
The government says 323,600 people from 169,000 families are “at the end of the queue” and that it has met all its key performance indicators for programmes for those in target groups. While it’s good that there are focused measures and resources for the city’s most vulnerable, they are only part of the work that must be done.
An estimated 1.65 million people were reported as living in poverty in 2020. Without the poverty line, we will have no idea how we are faring on this count. Recognising the shortcomings of the poverty line as a measurement is one thing, but to not use it at all, even as a reference, is another matter entirely.




Regardless of how the goalposts are moved, the government needs to address the issues underlying poverty. The wealth gap is an obvious one. Hong Kong’s Gini coefficient was 0.397 at the time of the 2021 census, but this reflects the situation after social value transfers. Unless the government can ensure that the benefits of economic growth trickle down more widely, it should not consider its job well done.
The cost of living is another factor the government must consider. How do the increases in household income from social value transfers stand up against inflation? Higher prices, especially for basic needs such as food, hit those in lower-income brackets hard.
Without the poverty line, we will not have a complete picture of our problem. By focusing on the end of the queue, the government may be missing how long the queue itself is.


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An elderly man in Wan Chai. After the current administration took office in 2022, it stopped using the poverty line and discontinued updates to an annual report. Photo: Nora Tam

A cleaner working in a back alley in Wan Chai. The report features more than 80 pages detailing existing policies and measures in healthcare, education and social welfare, as well as a chapter on “social transfer values”. Photo: Sam Tsang

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While the government lauds its efforts, discarding the income-based poverty line obscures a full accounting of the problem


While the government lauds its efforts, discarding the income-based poverty line obscures a full accounting of the problem.


Poverty

Hong Kong politics

5050

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


Moving the goalposts won’t fix sources of Hong Kong poverty

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}While the government lauds its efforts, discarding the income-based poverty line obscures a full accounting of the problem

While the government lauds its efforts, discarding the income-based poverty line obscures a full accounting of the problem