Korea Economy

This night, I watched ATV for the program 金錢世界. It said, the Korea economy is blooming and continue to bloom, although there is already 30+ percentage increase in all the Korea-investing funds this year. Seems I made a wrong decision in my investment.

In the program, it said Korea can support her economic growth because of a very unique factor — the education level of Korea is high in general and hence they can support a lot of development. The key reason is that, whenever you do development, there must be something new created. Who can afford to try new things and accept the new things? The youth. Korea is full of the highly educated youth. Moreover, due to their education, they want to raise their own living standard, so they supported the local economy by purchasing their own product, especially the new innovations.

Back to Hong Kong (again, I am such a guy), I do feel that’s the thing we missed. We do have a lot of young people with high education, but we do not have the things to support their desire — even I am using a Korean notebook computer to type this text. We do not innovate. However, once you do, we can definitely support it internally. The point is, we are not used to do innovation, but just buy from one and selling to another. It is the time to change!

Moreover, although we have a lot of educated young people, but we do not constitute a high percentage. You see, how many uneducated people are coming from the mainland each year! That’s 185 times 365, equals to 67 thousand. The problem is, they are the burden to our welfare system. I do not discriminate against them, but it is really strange that, why our government do not have a screening against these people for immigration. For us, if we are emmigrating to US, Canada, Australia, UK or whatsoever, they interviews us a lot to make sure we are not going for the welfare. Why we are so generous to those mainland people? Let it come unconditionally? C’est bizarre!

To make our community better, I suggest (who knows if the government is reading my text) to do the following. Firstly, set up a immigration department. Not the current one, but a new department that solely serve for promoting immigration to Hong Kong and screens applicants. We should never screen the people by just their wealth, but wealth and education and talent. If they got none, sorry, Hong Kong is not for you. Secondly, let the company recruit overseas workers without quota. Which means, whoever they want to recruit, let them do so. However, add a precaution — the overseas workers must live in Hong Kong by themselves, either by renting an apartment or buy one or the company to supply one, but not live with their relatives. If this is required and enforced, we can make Hong Kong the center for creating fortune but secured the job for the lower-incomes: cost is so high that only the costy job is right for them. At the same time, we secured the real estate market as well! Thirdly, free the land for industries. Only free land can save us from making innovations and creating new products. You know, a plant need so much space to build. If these are done, I guess, firstly, the real-estate price will drop to a reasonable level by reducing the demand, so that everyone can afford. Secondly, our economy can be healthier.

Hong Kong is really a lovely place. She has a great potential. However, you need to put some effort to let her to exert her potential.