Editor’s Note: Financial secretary John Tsang introduced the Hong Kong government’s annual budget last week. Here, a representative from the Civic Party, a leading group in the Legislative Council, reacts.

Guest Comments by Au Yeung Chi Fei

HONG KONG – While seeing some improvements in the Hong Kong budget, we’re worried that the financial secretary and the government still neglect the deep-rooted conflict that Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has reminded Hong Kong to handle. That’s the widening wealth gap exasperated by an unfair political system.

In the financial secretary’s budget speech, he says, “It’s inappropriate for us to solve the unemployment and poverty problems through large-scale redistribution of wealth. If we adopt this approach, which focuses on providing high levels of welfare, we’ll have to overhaul our tax regime and rates, weaken wage-elasticity-and-adjustment functions in the market, and fundamentally change our well-established mode of economic operation.” This shows the government as entirely out of focus. What we need isn’t a high-welfare state, but a fair state.

The Civic Party asks for a level playing field that breaks monopoly and vested interests. That’s why we push for early universal suffrage and the abolition of functional constituencies.

We ask the government to build more public-housing flats, resume the construction of Home Ownership Scheme flats and regulate unscrupulous sales practices by developers. The government refuses to do these things. Merely revitalizing the secondary market of HOS flats and liaising with the Mass Transit Railway and the Urban Renewal Authority isn’t enough to stabilize the property market long term.

As for environmental policies, a HK$300-million Pilot Green Transport Fund is grossly inadequate to replace old buses that cause serious roadside pollution. The government should set up a $6-billion Roadside Clean Air Fund to replace the buses.

Looking deeper, the budget offers little more for a green economy, except for the mention of electric cars, which remain slow to appear. The government should tackle waste reduction and develop the recycling industry.

We welcome the provision of online fees for low-income students, but note that the government still fails to increase the quota of 14,500 for-grant university places. Similarly, we approve of 1,000 more nursing-home places for the elderly, yet they won’t eliminate the 20,000-long queue.

Unfortunately, the Hong Kong government always grossly underestimates its income and so refuses to make the long-term policies needed to reduce the ever-widening wealth gap.

ARCHIVES