Hong Kong is a Dinosaur Waiting
to go Extinct
Hong Kong is another dinosaur waiting to go extinct. Since they returned it China in 1997 the place has basically stayed the same whereas Guangzhou has redeveloped itself into a first class city. Guangzhou is definitely the city to live in now. Mind you the pollution levels are pretty severe and that is a bit of a problem.
A lot of people protested against the rail line. It seems the younger people in Hong Kong have more understanding of the future than the government. There is already a high-speed train to the Shenzhen and then you just walk into Hong Kong and get their subway system.
I take the train all the time. They leave every 15 minutes and it takes a little over an hour to get to Shenzhen. I just go to the station and buy a ticket, and I’ve always managed to get on the next train. No waiting. Mind you it is very crowded.
You don’t start an expensive mega construction project that you don’t need at the end of the age of oil.
I don’t think that rail line will ever get finished. The world is changing and the elite in Hong Kong just don’t know what is going on. The weakest link in Hong Kong is water and the next one is electricity. They should be spending the last of the cheap oil money on building water desalination plants because they are going to need them. China has severe water problems and when water gets tight in China, Hong Kong seems to forget they are at the end of the pipeline.
Also another thing that popped up just recently was Chinese Premier WenZhiBao said on TV that with the drought in Northern China the mainland grain stocks were still good but they had to be watched. HK gets 90% of it’s food from China so if there are food problems in China, HK will be affected and the elite in HK just don’t realize that.
That high speed rail line is destroying what little arable land HK has. Actually I don’t think HK grows anything except chickens. So if there are food problems in China then HK will have many problems.
Also Hong Kong’s attitude towards the mainland Chinese is something to be desired.
Hong Kong just doesn’t seem to realize that it is the mainland Chinese that are keeping Hong Kong afloat and the numbers of people crossing the border are dwindling. I go through the border to HK quite a lot and it has never been as crowded as it was 4 to 5 years ago. The mainland Chinese are starting to realize that their cities are better than Hong Kong so it is only a matter of time before they stop going to HK.
The mainland Chinese come to spend money and that is about it. At the moment there is a housing bubble in HK because the mainland Chinese are the buyers with the money. The Chinese government is tightening up the residential market on the mainland so more wealthy Chinese will come to HK to buy flats.
Hong Kong just lost its advantage.
Before Hong Kong was the gateway to China now there are many gateways. They were the main port from Southern China, now there are many ports. Actually imported clothes are cheaper in Hong Kong and gold but now the mainland is changing the pricing for gold, it used to be fixed price. Now you can buy gold in the banks in China at a little over spot.
So there is no reason to go to Hong Kong to buy gold. In the gold shops in China the Panda Gold Coins are fixed price. So it is cheaper to buy gold coins in HK. There seems to be problems with fake pandas and now some banks wont buy them back. So don’t buy a panda gold coin unless you want a souvenir.
Also when China changed the requirements to get an entry visa Hong Kong is not the place to get a visa anymore. That would have stopped a lot of traffic going to HK. And now you can fly direct to China, before HK was a good stop over, but not so anymore.
And with the greed factor starting to raise its ugly head its time to give HK a miss. The greed factor used to be very bad in the mainland but now its probably worse in HK. I got misled in a bank so someone could make a commission out of me.
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