Hong Kong might be heading for a recession after months of protests, but that has not stopped one businessman from paying almost US$1 million for a parking spot.
The mind-boggling sum paid by Johnny Cheung Shun-yee (張順宜) highlights the gaping inequality that has helped fuel nearly five months of demonstrations in the territory, where one in five people live below the poverty line.
The HK$7.6 million (US$969,327) price tag is more than 30 times the average annual wage in Hong Kong and about the same as a one-bed flat in London’s Chelsea area.
It is situated in The Centre, the territory’s fifth-highest skyscraper, which hit the headlines in October 2017, when it became the world’s most expensive office building after Hong Kong’s richest man sold it for more than US$5 billion.
The purchase came even though there are growing concerns about the effects of the pro-democracy demonstrations on the territory’s real-estate market, with property firms’ share prices plunging in the past few months as they are forced to offer discounts on new projects and cut office rents.
The economy has been tipped to grow up to just 1 percent this year, the worst rate since 2009 during the global financial crisis.
“A lot of those owners in The Centre are in finance or in other high-growth businesses,” Centaline Commercial managing director Stanley Poon (潘志明) said. “To these tycoons, it’s not a significant purchase if you compare it to the value of the office floors they own.”
Hong Kong’s white-hot property market has become a political issue as costs continue to soar, forcing some small businesses to close due to sky-high rents, while many residents cannot afford to buy or lease decent homes.
Commercial and residential property prices have been fueled by an influx of money from wealthy Chinese investors and developers.
While the long-running protests in the territory are fired mostly by anger at a now-withdrawn extradition bill, and hatred toward the government and police, they are also fanned by anger at the huge disparity between rich and poor.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS