Author | White Jade Prince
Edit | Weekly sledgehammer
Original Debut | Golden Horn Finance (F-Jinjiao)
Before the first killing mission, Mid-Autumn went to the chaguan (police station) according to Rong Shao's instructions and stole a police point 38 revolver.
When he got home, he put on his headphones, put the music to the maximum, and danced with his pistol raised to relax. In between, he used a gun to "tuk" a whole piece of mooncake like a tuk (Cantonese "poke" meaning) fish egg and ate it, unable to hear the crazy slamming of the door and the cry for help outside the door.
This is a scene from the film "Made in Hong Kong" released in 1997 by Chen Guo. The film opens with a series of barbed wire fences outside the stadium, indicating that the characters have been in a state of confinement, living in an invisible cage.
This film, on the face of it, has nothing to do with the literal "Made in Hong Kong" language. It is about the tragic life of the mid-autumn festival of the low-level youth in Hong Kong, and the phrase "when you die when you are young, you will always be young" exhausts the depression and despair of the low-level youth of that era.
Many people say that this is the best youth film in Hong Kong, realistic enough. Later, Guo Jingming's youthful and traumatic literature that revealed the worship and refinement of this petty bourgeoisie, as well as the sadness of the river, was not at all in the same grade.
In The song "Made in Hong Kong" released by Hui Guanjie in 1990, the interpretation of Made in Hong Kong has a completely opposite background to Chen Guo's films.
The lyrics go like this, "Highway road area to all good wild Hong Kong made ... Hong Kong is good everywhere to build a future, rain and wind blowing without deterrence, create a better place! It perfectly interprets the classic advertising slogan in Hong Kong TV: "Life is full of hope, the front road is created by me".
Both are "Made in Hong Kong", the date of release of music and film is 7 years apart, but the presentation is the opposite of "Made in Hong Kong".
Made in Hong Kong, it is a song, a movie, and a time that has been covered with dust.
Hong Kong manufacturing, starting from the 1940s and 1950s, took 30 years to prosper, and then from the 80s onwards, it moved almost nothing. In the Pearl River Delta, it has undergone washover and shuffling. In 2020, when the epidemic was raging, Hong Kong realized that Hong Kong manufacturing existed in name only, and even masks could not be made.
Made in Hong Kong, where did it go?
If we look back at the history of "Made in Hong Kong" from its rise, prosperity, and gradual decline, we will find that everything today has been written down for decades.
Chaebols, compradors, Britons, Hong Kong governments, big real estate developers... After the division, tearing and conflict between the forces of all sides, after the completion of the mission of resettling the displaced people of the war, Hong Kong's manufacturing industry is nothing more than an insignificant old decay.
After experiencing prosperity and struggle, going north to the Pearl River Delta, and the fall of the Cyber City, Hong Kong manufacturing has existed like the young people of this land, but before they can grow, they are snuffed out by the deep-rooted shadows of this land.
Today's curtain is over
On September 25, 2020, the world will no longer be made in Hong Kong.
According to the requirements of the US Customs, from this day onwards, goods exported from Hong Kong to the United States must be marked as "China" and can no longer be labeled as "Made in Hong Kong".
On August 11, U.S. Customs issued a notice that "Hong Kong no longer enjoys a high degree of autonomy and therefore no longer guarantees special treatment different from China." In other words, goods made in Hong Kong and exported to the United States will no longer be labelled "Made in Hong Kong" and must be marked as "China" instead.
The Hong Kong SAR government and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs have expressed strong opposition to this.
This matter has little impact, but it is of great significance.
Hong Kong has always had its own independent tariff status, and it can also label its own "Made in Hong Kong" origin label. In the final analysis, it is the United States that wants to put pressure on China and Hong Kong by denying Hong Kong's independent tariff status in its trade with Hong Kong.
Hong Kong still has not escaped the fate of becoming a pawn in the sino-US great power game.
The reason for saying "little impact" is that products originally made locally in Hong Kong and exported with "Made in Hong Kong" accounted for less than 1% of Hong Kong's total economy. Of these, even fewer are exported to the United States. No matter how other countries impose sanctions and restrictions on the trade of products labeled "Made in Hong Kong", it does not matter to Hong Kong's overall economy.
The Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development of Hong Kong, Edward Yau, revealed that the total value of "Made in Hong Kong" goods exported from Hong Kong to the United States in 2019 was about HK$3.7 billion, accounting for less than 0.1% of Hong Kong's overall exports, and the affected industries include food, jewellery, pharmaceuticals, aluminum, etc., which are not extensive.
However, when the US side acted on this ground, Hong Kong also lost its independent tariff status, and also made Hong Kong manufacturing, which had actually ended long ago, completely ended.
Seeing the news, many people have questions, is there a manufacturing industry in Hong Kong?
Not only has there been, but manufacturing has also had a glorious time in Hong Kong. The label of "Made in Hong Kong" is the historical product left by that glorious period, and it is a glorious medal in this land. However, no matter how dazzling this medal is, it will eventually fade because of some forces that cannot be broken. This is the fate of Hong Kong manufacturing, and even the whole of Hong Kong. This fate was already doomed decades ago.
The medal can now only be housed in the History Museum – in June 2020, the Hong Kong Museum of History organized an exhibition about Made in Hong Kong.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > we once discussed in the article "Hong Kong Docks Are Empty", in the history of Hong Kong's more than 200 years of port opening, the duckweed in China and Britain, China and Japan, and China and the United States has been constantly pulled and torn apart by different forces, and we have written about the important position of Hong Kong as a trade transit station between China and the rest of the world. This status has given Hong Kong a decades of development window. Since 2018, Sino-US trade frictions have continued, and Hong Kong has not been very peaceful. </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right"> </h1>
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > however, Hong Kong's experience is not entirely due to external forces. </h1>
The opportunity not to be swayed by global economic turmoil and trade frictions, to embark on a path that is completely less subject to people and less passive, and to fight for an unshakable position for itself in the world industrial chain, has been missed by Hong Kong itself.
If we look back at the history of "Made in Hong Kong" from the rise, prosperity, and gradual decline, we will find that everything that happened today on Hong Kong land, in 1980, this year that was not special already had an answer.
Just like the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar of the Ming Dynasty, from the water's surface, this year did not have any major waves. However, the tearing, turmoil, distortion, and destruction that happened here later can be seen in it.
Hong Kong made a choice that year.
Where there is a choice, there is a price. The choice is controlled by those who live in the luxury villas on the top of the mountain, and those who do not have the right to choose at the bottom of the mountain become the price.
Made in Hong Kong Manufactured in Hong Kong
In 1971, the movie "Big Brother Tangshan" swept the world after its release.
In the movie, Bruce Lee wears a white kung fu shirt with three buttons, which is also known as the "Aberdee shirt" of the Hong Kong population. With the popularity of the movie and Bruce Lee, the same kung fu shirt became popular in the European and American markets, and the price was expensive, and it was difficult to find a shirt.
Bruce Lee is the representative of the golden age of Hong Kong kung fu films, and the "Aberdeen" is one of the representative products of the golden age of Hong Kong manufacturing.
From 1931 to around 1949, Hong Kong was the best "safe haven" for talents, capital and even industry, and all kinds of people landed on Hong Kong Island from various piers in Hong Kong to construct the background of Hong Kong.
Among all the immigrants, Shanghai immigrants had the deepest impact on Hong Kong, and at that time, most of the spirit, qi, spirit and soul of Shanghai followed the ships across the ocean and came ashore from the docks. Talent, labor, technology, capital, production machines and even factory orders can be moved from Shanghai at the ready-made level.
Hong Kong has gained a solid foundation for manufacturing development effortlessly.
It should be known that before 1949, the industrial output value of Shanghai as a city accounted for one-third of the national total. The textile industry is the largest and highest output value industry in Shanghai. As a result, Hong Kong also has the foundation for the development of the light textile industry.
The starting point of Hong Kong's manufacturing industry is high enough.
Especially in 1937, after the fall of Shanghai in the Battle of Songhu, the situation was even better - at that time, Shanghai Shenxin, the largest textile factory in China, moved the original yarn and machinery to Hong Kong and opened the Dayuan, Nanyang and Weilun Spinning Factories; Chen Tinghua founded Nanfeng Textile in Tsuen Wan; Zhao Anzhong set up Jiafeng Textile Factory; Cha Jimin created the New Territories Textile Factory...
Manufacturing has risen rapidly, in part to resettle displaced people.
Beginning in 1937, a large number of mixed people poured into Hong Kong, and they needed to make ends meet. A large number of people who have not found a livelihood slowly defected to the gangs, causing trouble, and the new Ngee Ann and Ge Zhaohuang's 14K were established in Hong Kong during the civil war.
In the years when Hong Kong manufacturing became prosperous, there were five waves of people pouring into Hong Kong in 57, 62, 72 and 78 respectively, each wave for different reasons, but they constantly supplemented Hong Kong with cheap labor.
A large number of displaced people and hong Kong escapee people gather in slums such as Kowloon City Walled.
Kowloon Walled City was the most evil place in Hong Kong in that era, and the "three disregards" zone that the police did not even dare to enter during the day, the paradise of pornography, gambling and drugs, was called the "Devil's Cave on Earth". The material for many Hong Kong bandit films comes from here, for example, the prototype of the pig cage walled city in Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu" movie is here.
After World War II, Hong Kong was brought back under the British government. In order to prevent these displaced people and gangs from making trouble, the British government in Hong Kong at that time reduced the rent of industrial land below the interest rate, and encouraged those entrepreneurs who still had capital to quickly open factories and recruit workers to absorb a large number of laborers.
The industrial base from Shanghai coupled with policy stimulus allowed Hong Kong's manufacturing industry to develop rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s.
At that time, the international environment was also favorable and called for Hong Kong manufacturing.
After the war, major countries such as Europe, the United States and Japan were seriously injured and over-consumed materials. At the same time, it also faces the problem of labor-intensive industrial transfer and industrial transformation and upgrading; the United States briefly imposed an economic blockade on Hong Kong because of Chinese mainland, but soon resumed Hong Kong's free trade, allowing Hong Kong-made products to enter the United States to fill the demand for American light industrial products; at the same time, Southeast Asian countries had a brief process of self-closure and restriction of international trade after World War II.
Hong Kong, which has all the factors of manpower, capital, technology, labor, policy, and international environment, has naturally become a destination for the transfer of labor-intensive industries.
At that time, Chen Ruiqiu, a dongguan native, founded Yangtze River Garment in Cheung Sha Wan, Sham Shui Po. A few years later, the "doctor brand" shirt of Yangtze River Garment sold well in Southeast Asia. Later, because Bruce Lee became popular overseas, the Aberde shirt sold for about 10 yuan in the 1940s and 1950s, equivalent to the monthly salary of ordinary workers at that time, but the product was still selling well.
By 1960, Hong Kong's total yarn production reached 500,000 spindles, 80 times that of 1947, and the textile industry also became the largest manufacturing industry in Hong Kong in this year, with spinning mills breaking through to 10,000. With the development of the textile industry, the garment industry related to it has also developed rapidly.
The spinning and garment industries are industries with relatively low technical thresholds, while Hong Kong has a large number of uprooted people who need to live, so many small-scale handicraft family workshops have been formed.
Another major business of these small family workshops is "wearing gum flowers", which is called "yellow gum flowers" in Cantonese - go to the plastic injection factory to take some flower branches, plastic leaves, plastic flower pieces, plastic cores, etc. home for overall assembly.
With the application and promotion of plastic technology, Hong Kong's plastic products industry has also begun to flourish, and many of today's wealthy families are closely related to this industry. For example, Li Ka-shing is a home that relies on plastic flowers.
Li Ka-shing's plastic flower factory
Relying on a large amount of financial support from his father-in-law, Li Ka-shing rented a warehouse of about 100 square meters in Shau Kei Wan and founded the Yangtze River Plastic Factory. At that time, flowers were relatively expensive decorations, so plastic flowers were generally used instead of flowers, and plastic flowers had a very large market.
Later, the yellow gum flower slowly turned into a vulgar swear word in Cantonese. From a manufacturing production behavior to an everyday phrase, it can be seen that the matter of "wearing plastic flowers" has a universal and profound impact on this region.
In the mid-1960s, almost all plastic flowers in the world were MADE IN HK. Changjiang Plastic Factory has become the world's largest manufacturer of plastic flowers, and Li Ka-shing is known as the "King of Plastic Flowers".
Later, Li Ka-shing walked higher than the plastic flowers in Hong Kong, was hailed as the embodiment of the spirit of "Under the Lion Rock", and became an idol for generations of young people in Hong Kong. The truth is that Li Ka-shing may have struggled under the Lion Rock, but he lived on the mountain after all.
After the wave of plastic flowers passed, many plastic factories began to turn to plastic toys. In the 1980s, Hong Kong surpassed Japan, Germany and the United States to become the world's leading exporter of toys. Among them, the most famous toy is the broccoli doll, which has become a popular toy around the world like the Barbie doll produced in Japan. At Christmas 1983, Hong Kong produced 200,000 broccoli dolls a week, and the next year, 20 million Hong Kong-made broccoli dolls were sold out, setting a new record in the history of toy manufacturing in the world at that time.
Faced with a huge market, Hong Kong's manufacturing industry was not worried about sales at that time: the United States, Britain, European countries, Japan, Southeast Asia, the mainland and Hong Kong locals all had demand for Hong Kong-made goods, and these market demands supported Hong Kong's manufacturing industry.
In the two decades from the early 1950s to the early 1970s, Hong Kong's GDP grew at a compound annual rate of 10.5%, and the export value of Hong Kong's products increased by a compound annual growth rate of 15.1%. At the end of the 1940s, there were less than 1,000 registered manufacturing enterprises in Hong Kong, and by 1970, the number of enterprises had reached more than 25,000.
In the early years, Hong Kong made a fortune from the opium trade, the pillar industry entrepot trade industry, shipbuilding once became the largest local manufacturing industry. In 1959, the export value of Locally Manufactured Products in Hong Kong exceeded the value of entrepot trade, and the following year, Hong Kong's largest manufacturing industry changed from shipbuilding to textile industry, and the era of "Made in Hong Kong" really came.
A city that has been a transit trade for a hundred years, Hong Kong has become a light industrial city in just two decades.
Hong Kong's development of labor-intensive industries predates South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, which were later known as the "Four Asian Tigers", about 5-15 years earlier. Originally, there was a big first-mover advantage – when the textile industry became Hong Kong's largest manufacturing industry, six years before the founding of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew was still far from establishing an export-oriented development strategy.
As the other three tigers have also begun to undertake the transfer of labor-intensive industries and begin to establish an export-oriented economic development route, the competitive pressure in Hong Kong has increased.
From 1970 to 1979, although the advantages of Hong Kong manufacturing continued, the low-threshold businesses of textiles, plastic manufacturing, clothing, toys, and paints were all doing by the four tigers, and the advantages of Hong Kong manufacturing gradually disappeared.
The global rise of the electronics industry has allowed Hong Kong manufacturing to spend another decade of prosperity. The electronics industry was in its infancy at this time, and countries did not have a trade protection policy stage.
After the three pillar industries of textiles, clothing and toys lost to the Three Little Dragons, Hong Kong manufacturing still maintained the appearance of prosperity by relying on electronics manufacturing.
In the past 10 years, the number of electronic processing plants in Hong Kong has increased from 230 to 1300, and the high-tech product BB CALL (pager) at that time has boomed in production and sales in Hong Kong, and the export of electronic products has increased from HK$1 billion to HK$13.4 billion, becoming the second largest manufacturing industry in Hong Kong after the garment industry.
Textile, plastic and clothing and other industries are still the same, the electronics industry is developing rapidly, and Hong Kong manufacturing has ushered in the most brilliant 10 years. A group of "big kings" took advantage of the tide to emerge, tian jiabing, the king of leather, Zeng Xianzi, the king of belts, Meng Minwei, the king of rice cookers, pang Dingyuan, the king of steel...
Among all the products exported, the proportion of Hong Kong-made products increased from 10% in 1947 to 69% in 1970, and more than half of the exported products were branded as "Made in Hong Kong".
In 1970, Hong Kong's manufacturing sector accounted for 30.9% of GDP. 30.9%, keep in mind this ratio, which is the peak in the history of Hong Kong's manufacturing industry.
In the same year, the proportion of Hong Kong-made products reached the peak of total export products, and in the following decades, Hong Kong manufacturing has not exceeded the 69% proportion.
It took 30 years for Hong Kong to be made from scratch and then destroyed overnight.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > lost in 1980</h1>
In July 1978, the mainland began to allow some provinces and cities to develop foreign processing and assembly business.
Half a month after the document was issued, a Hong Kong boss with a sample of a handbag came to Dongguan Taiping Garment Factory to ask for an identical product, which later became the first processing enterprise in Dongguan records.
There are many records about the "first Hong Kong-funded cooperative factory", and it does not matter so much whether zhuhai's Xiangzhou Wool Spinning Factory, Shunde's Daji Clothing Factory or Taiping Handbag Factory is the first factory.
At the end of 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee was held, and the Pearl River Delta region near Hong Kong became the preferred gold digging place for Hong Kong manufacturing merchants, and leather, hardware, textile, plastic processing and other categories came to the mainland to build factories.
Konka, Midea, Langfu Shoes, and later these enterprises that began to go to the world from the Pearl River Delta are inseparable from the figure of Hong Kong businessmen. Of course, among these manufacturing Hong Kong businessmen, there was also the boss of Giordano, Lai Chi-ying, who quit the clothing industry and founded Next Weekly and Apple Daily.
In 1979, guangdong Overseas Chinese Farm Administration bureau and Hong Kong businessmen jointly established Guangming Overseas Chinese Electronics Factory, which is the predecessor of Konka TV.
Hong Kong companies take advantage of Hong Kong as an overseas trade window to undertake product orders as a "display store" for foreign trade, while the Pearl River Delta has sufficient and low labor to process, assemble and manufacture products, playing the role of "factory". "Front shop and back factory", with seamless cooperation.
In fact, what Hong Kong companies do is not difficult. Hong Kong companies initially brought light industry from Hong Kong with extremely low technical thresholds. As long as there is a little capital, find the order, you can do it. Culturally, Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta have the same cultural roots and many interactions. As long as Hong Kong companies have a little capital, anyone can do this kind of joint venture factory business. Hong Kong people's identity has given them the advantage of standing on the duty-free port with one foot and enjoying tax incentives and low labor rents.
As long as you go 1 kilometer north and do what you have done before at a very low cost, you can make it easier to make money, throw dirty work to cheap labor in the mainland, and the cost and risk can be earned back from the preferential tax subsidies in the mainland.
The mainland's low labor and rents, preferential taxation, and flexible model of "three to one supplement" have accelerated the transfer of Hong Kong's manufacturing industry to the mainland.
By the early 1980s, small business owners in Hong Kong had built tens of thousands of factories on the mainland. Tens of millions of "migrant workers" and "migrant girls" from the mainland have flocked to the Pearl River Delta, opening up the tide of population mobility in the past three decades.
More of the positions left to Hong Kong are corporate management, sales and finance, and the signs of hollowing out the manufacturing industry are beginning to appear. The proportion of Hong Kong's local manufacturing industry has declined rapidly, and in just three years from 1979 to 1982, the proportion of manufacturing has dropped by 6 percentage points.
GDP kept going up.
In 1985, Hong Kong's GDP grew by 59% compared to five years ago, once again creating an economic miracle. Hong Kong's entrepot trade exceeded the proportion of export manufacturing, and the backbone of Hong Kong's economy became the pre-1959 entrepot trade industry. This year, the mainland once again became Hong Kong's largest trading partner.
On the surface, they are all exports, but entrepot trade is a commercial service belonging to the tertiary industry, while export manufacturing is a secondary industry that really does things.
Entrepot trade has driven all related industries such as transportation, trade, retail, tourism, etc., freeing up hands and having money, Hong Kong's entertainment industry has begun to move towards the golden age, leaving a lost "Made in Hong Kong".
The Lost Began in 1980.
In 1979, the second oil crisis broke out, the global economic recession, trade conflicts and protectionism rose, and in the first five years of the 1980s, countries around the world except the United States were plagued by oil crises.
The four Asian tigers can see the ceiling as soon as they look up in the labor-intensive industries and export trade-oriented economic strategies, so South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have entered the stage of industrial upgrading and transformation.
Singapore, which was 15 years behind Hong Kong in manufacturing, embarked on a completely different path than Hong Kong with the intervention of The Lee Kuan Yew government – promoting transformation with illiberal policies ("active, direct intervention"), proposing "automated, mechanized, computerized" production, and "establishing a software development center and a computer manufacturing center".
Taiwan has formulated a "ten-year economic development plan" to promote the development of eight major industries: energy, high-tech industry, information, automation, bioengineering, television technology, food, and medicine. In 1980, Hsinchu Science Industrial Park was completed. In the wave of information industry, Taiwan has found its own position in the future because of this industrial upgrading.
Among the four small tigers, South Korea is the largest, and the South Korean government led the "semiconductor industry support/cultivation/revitalization plan" at this time. In 1982, Samsung established a semiconductor research and development laboratory to develop 64K memory.
Only Hong Kong, which simply transferred manufacturing to the mainland, made more and easier money. After all, for Hong Kong and manufacturing Hong Kong businessmen, investing in factories in the mainland is a faster and easier business to make money.
It must be noted that the famous families in Hong Kong did not participate in this wave of manufacturing transfer.
In the early 1980s, several major families had not yet controlled the lifeblood of Hong Kong, and the British government in Hong Kong was the "master" of this land, and it was also the root cause of Hong Kong's failure in manufacturing transformation.
At that time, Britain already had the status of global economic hegemony, for this land that would be returned to China sooner or later, for a colony, the British government in Hong Kong had no enthusiasm for industrial upgrading and change, and in the original words of the British and then financial secretary Xia Dingji, it was under the original words of "extremely significant adverse effects".
In other words, only by renting out land, selling quotas, and controlling public utilities, which can bring benefits to Britain in a timely manner, can the Hong Kong and British governments have the courage to intervene. Anyway, after not many years of colonization, it is better to make money by simply renting out land and selling export quotas.
This is the key to Hong Kong's later development into a chaebol country like the "Lee Family City".
Britain's attitude toward Hong Kong's self-sufficiency was later interpreted as the so-called "free economy" policy, and some people believe that these policies gave Hong Kong businessmen room to develop, creating the status of Hong Kong's free trade port and creating Hong Kong's economic legend.
As for the long-term economic issues such as the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry and the development of the industry, the Hong Kong and British governments have also explored under the boiling of public opinion, but in the end, Hong Kong missed the wave of the development of the information technology industry. Hong Kong's relationship with Britain made this outcome inevitable.
Since Hong Kong is only temporarily in charge, there is no justifiable reason to ask Hong Kong businessmen to pay taxes to the United Kingdom, and many of Hong Kong's taxes can only be used for the construction of local urban livelihood. Hong Kong businessmen have a low tax burden and lax controls. Until the handover, in the 50 years, Hong Kong had only had fiscal deficits for 8 years, and the rest had large surpluses.
This particular factor made Hong Kong's corporate income tax at that time far lower than that of the other three tigers in the same period, when South Korea's corporate income tax was higher than 50%,; Singapore and Taiwan were around 40%, while Hong Kong's corporate income tax was only about 16%.
This is also an important reason why Hong Kong has become a tax haven, a money laundering paradise and a free trade port with low tariffs in Asia.
Based on special historical reasons and different tax policies, Hong Kong has become an enclave of the "free market", attracting a large number of internationally renowned enterprises to invest in Hong Kong, attracting a large number of funds and talents, laying the foundation for Hong Kong to become a global financial center and trade center.
After the Opium War in the 19th century, after the British officially divided Hong Kong Island, they declared that all the land belonged to the British royal family, and the way the government made a profit was to auction the lease of the land for a certain period of time. Leasing land is the main non-tax revenue of the British government in Hong Kong.
In addition, the United Kingdom stipulates that British-funded enterprises should directly contribute taxes to the United Kingdom, so the British government of Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, together with the Seven Oceans Company from the United Kingdom, Jardine Matheson, Wheelock, Hehuang, Swire, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Kadoorie and Yingzhijie, controlled the most valuable assets in Hong Kong - land, quota rights and public utilities.
Quotas are the government's use of the power in its hands to demarcate certain franchises, export volumes, radio and television stations, and so on. In the early years, the British government even sold drug sales concessions and grain and oil sales concessions.
Hong Kong's garment industry was the largest manufacturing industry, but at that time, the four major families in the garment industry, the main income was by selling export rights to get rich. Other garment factories that have worked hard for 30 years have not been sold to make more money by selling export quotas.
Public utilities, that is, hydropower transportation, oil and gas high-speed communication ports, these industries, although there is no huge profit, but the profit is moderate, is everyone's yearning for the "cash cow".
Long ago, several British oceans almost divided up the valuable areas of Hong Kong. For example, Jardine Matheson & Co., which was the first to enter Hong Kong and was originally mainly engaged in the opium trade, occupied a large amount of land near Wharf, and its main business was real estate, shipping, construction and retail, while Wheelock operated oil tankers, and after the contraction of the tanker business, it mainly engaged in real estate.
Swire & Co. was originally engaged in shipping and trading, and the main business at that time had become real estate and shipping, and later Cathay Pacific Airways was a subsidiary of Swire & HSBC and Standard Chartered monopolized Hong Kong's financial industry; Kadoorie's main real estate, hotels, power companies, etc.; Yingzhijie operated car sales and docks in Hong Kong.
In the 30 years of the vigorous development of Hong Kong's manufacturing industry, the British government of Hong Kong and the 7 Ocean Bank have monopolized and controlled the three major industries of finance, public utilities and real estate, which are the easiest to make money, which basically determines the direction of the entire Hong Kong in the next few decades.
Under the "guidance" of the British government and foreign banks in Hong Kong, Hong Kong businessmen are more fond of finance, real estate, and public utilities, but they are not interested in the upgrading of the manufacturing industry.
Hong Kong businessmen have almost all made great strides into the real estate sector after accumulating original capital in other industries. In 1955, Fok Ying-tung developed the sales method of "selling house flowers" on the Toad Palace Building, and Li Ka-shing went further and invented the concept of "pooled area" to transfer the cost to buyers. At that time, Hong Kong businessmen who came to the mainland to build factories also made money and went back to Hong Kong to grab real estate and flowers.
In the process of real estate development, Huo Yingdong pioneered the model of writing instructions for real estate and buying a mortgage, which standardized the entire process of housing transactions, protected the interests of buyers and sellers, promoted the development of the industry, and also allowed people with housing needs to leverage financial levers and let some capable people live and work in peace and contentment in advance.
In contrast, the "pooled area" model pioneered by Li Ka-shing can make real estate developers more money, but it also appears to be speculative.
Back to the point, by the 1980s, real estate developers had begun to dominate the rich list for many years. In the 1982 Forbes list, 6 of the 141 people with a wealth of US$1 billion in the world were in Hong Kong, and their main business was real estate.
Following the path of "free economy", most of the Hong Kong businessmen who had worked hard in the manufacturing industry have embarked on other paths, from entrepreneurs to capitalists. No one is willing to spend money and effort on industrial upgrading, how to get more land, how to control more cash cows, is the problem they are trying to drill.
In 1984, the Sino-British Joint Communiqué was issued, and China decided to take back Hong Kong.
Before the Hong Kong British government and the British foreign firm withdraw, they need to find a "receiver" of assets. The assets controlled by the British foreign firms are coveted by everyone, but the British must choose an "obedient one".
In the famous Wharf acquisition war, Li Ka-shing and Bao Yugang were both optimistic about Jardine Matheson and the listed company Wharf. The British felt torn between them. In the end, Li Ka-shing completed Pao Yugang and, with the help of HSBC, helped Pao Yugang to swallow Wharf, and Pao later helped Li Ka-shing to acquire the integrated business group of terminal containers, retail and real estate and the Wong Group in 1980. Later, Hehuang Group acquired Wheelock, one of the four ocean companies in Hong Kong.
In 1981, the highly appreciated Li Ka-shing became the first British foreign firm in Hong Kong. The name "Superman" came from this.
In 1985, Pao yugang successfully controlled Wharf, which has its own harbour city, Star Ferry and Hong Kong Tramway, and obtained the land in the prime location of Hong Kong Island.
Relying on the help of foreign firms and the British government of Hong Kong, several major families took over all their utilities, real estate, finance and other assets in Hong Kong. Whether it is the Li family's city or the Bao family's port, anyway, the fate of Hong Kong is thus held in the hands of several major families.
Therefore, only later in Hong Kong will there be a situation where several major families control Hong Kong's public utilities. Every kilowatt hour of electricity, Hong Kongers are paying taxes to Li Ka-shing.
In 1982, Orient Shipping was in debt of 20 billion yuan, and Dong Haoyun, the "ship king" who had been adhering to the shipping industry, died of illness, and Bao Yugang, who was also known as the "ship king", was a unique scenery on the top of the mountain.
After entering the mainland, these big families in Hong Kong have done the same business, and like to start in real estate, finance and public utilities.
According to official data in Shanghai, the number of Hong Kong companies investing in the real estate construction industry rose from 5 in 1990 to 327 in 1994, second only to 379 in the commercial and trade service industry, and "most of the mega-projects with more than $100 million are real estate investments." "By 1995, half of the real estate projects in the Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone came from Sino-foreign joint ventures and wholly foreign-owned enterprises. Of the 37 projects in which foreign investors participated, 2/3 were Sino-Hong Kong joint ventures or wholly owned by Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong businessmen we are familiar with hoarding and speculating on land at low prices are only one of their means. These people are not really developed and built, history will record the truth.
In 1978, Li Ka-shing was invited to Beijing to observe the National Day ceremony, and soon after, when Yuan Geng invited Li Ka-shing and other Hong Kong businessmen to inspect The Yantian Port in Shenzhen, Li Ka-shing asked, can Hong Kong businessmen also take shares? Yuan Geng did not answer.
In the 15 years from 1978 to 1993, Li Ka-shing has been waiting and watching, and there has been little investment in the mainland. It wasn't until 1993 that Hutchison Whampoa was allowed to take a stake in Shenzhen's Yantian Port that it really began to invest heavily in the mainland. Soon, he and Yantian Port jointly injected funds into the Wutongshan Tunnel and established a tunnel company to collect high tolls.
Later, in order to recover the WutongShan Tunnel, the Shenzhen Municipal Government and the Tunnel Company launched 38 rounds of arduous negotiations. The reason why negotiations have not been successful is that the price given by the tunnel company is unusually high, and the price is almost the same as the price of a new tunnel.
It should be known that Yantian Port itself is a state-owned enterprise and does not have a position of asking the Shenzhen government for a price.
Real estate has become the most profitable industry in Hong Kong, of course, there are objective reasons.
Since the 1950s, due to the rapid population growth in Hong Kong, many people have lived in "cage houses".
By the 1970s, the first generation of "baby boomers" had grown up, so the demand for housing in Hong Kong people had swelled dramatically. However, under the alternate control of the British government and several major families in Hong Kong, the problem of housing supply and demand in Hong Kong has not been solved.
The "cage people" that have emerged in the 1950s have continued until now, and have not been resolved during this period. In 1976, there was a large-scale anti-British operation, for which the British government of Hong Kong proposed the "homeowner has his own house" plan. But it also only stays in verbal planning.
In 1992, the movie "Caged People" starring Wong Ka-ju, the lead singer of beyond, was released, which was also Wong's last film work, and there was a line of compassion and thinking about his musical works.
In 2016, there were about 90,000 subdivided houses in Hong Kong, with more than 200,000 people living there. To this day, the imbalance between supply and demand of housing in Hong Kong continues, and coffin-sized subdivided houses and cage houses have been crammed into the hidden coke ovens on the ground floor of Hong Kong. 3% of the population lives in cage houses or coffin houses, with a per capita housing area of less than 2 square meters.
Some people live in hilltop mansions, some people live in coffin houses before they die, and they all have a bright future.
Everyone who lives in a cage house, every effort to survive, must give the person who lives on the top of the mountain "Nagong". The gradual folding of Hong Kong is more and more making the people at the bottom feel forced and suffocated.
Originally, under the control of the British government in Hong Kong, the young people at the bottom of Hong Kong have lacked a way to rise; now, under the control of real estate developers, the bottom of the Hong Kong people lived in coffin houses before they died, after all, after death, the cemetery is a luxury.
Those families who hope that family wealth will always be preserved and increased for generations have long prepared graves for ordinary people.
The shadow not only devours young people, but Hong Kong cannot escape this shadow.
Cyberport, which carries the heavy responsibility of Hong Kong's manufacturing transformation and upgrading, is also being stifled by the joint efforts of those major chaebols.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > the future of being strangled</h1>
Hong Kong Manufacturing has struggled, but under the shadow of interest groups, it has no chance of surviving.
In 1997, this year, many major events happened in the world. The most important of these, and most profoundly affecting Hong Kong, are these two events – the return of Hong Kong to china and the Asian financial crisis.
On July 1, Tung Ho-wan's eldest son, Tung Chee-hwa, became Hong Kong's first chief executive.
On July 2, the trigger of the financial crisis that engulfed Asia in the following year or two was ignited in Thailand.
There are also some inconspicuous little things.
This year, a magical "Octopus" appeared in Hong Kong, the world's leading electronic payment system that replaces cash. Many years later, WeChat Pay and Alipay led the global electronic payment trend for many years, while Hong Kong is still charging and swiping cards.
This year, Israel's high-tech exports were worth nearly HK$70 billion, accounting for two-thirds of the country's total exports.
Tung Chee-hwa, who has just taken office, has a beautiful dream of turning Hong Kong into a science and technology innovation city like Silicon Valley in the United States and Israel. In his policy address, he said: "... From the perspective of increasing added value... New inventions, the application of new technologies and the development of emerging industries are all very important to Hong Kong. ”
But this can only be a dream after all.
How Hong Kong goes, ultimately, depends on the meaning of those major families that have taken over the assets of foreign banks and controlled Hong Kong's food, clothing, housing and transportation, including Dong Haoyun's old rival Bao Yugang family.
The money was in someone else's hands, and I had to bow my head and call Dad.
In the matter of the chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa won over Bao Yugang's son-in-law Wu Guangzheng, but still lost to the forces under the shadow of all the big families.
Li Ka-shing's second son, Li Zekai, known as the "Little Superman", also appeared. In 1999, Lee persuaded the government to develop Cyberport and exchange a plan for 24 hectares of land.
Cyberport was originally a government-supported cooperation project managed by Yingke Group, which was hosted and managed by Li Zekai, hoping to attract large enterprises from the international IT industry to establish a science and technology park in Hong Kong through Cyberport. As the Hong Kong government was affected by the Asian financial crisis and it was difficult to support the government, the development and operation of Cyberport did not achieve the expected results and fell into a dilemma.
Then came the famous scene.
Li Zekai proposed to develop part of the land in Cyberport into a residential project, and sell the house to support the development of Cyberport. The Hong Kong government was short of money and agreed in principle.
After all, only land in Hong Kong is the most expensive, and the most scarce thing is the house, so the development of housing can quickly get a large amount of money. There would have been no problem with such an idea.
In 2000, on the eve of the allocation of the first phase of cyberport projects, ten property developers – Sun Hung Kai Properties, Henderson, Hang Lung, New World Development, Swire Properties, Wharf and others – jointly published an article entitled "Cyberport Private Land Grant: Misinformation for the Business Community", accusing the government of allowing Yingke Group to acquire land at a low price in the name of developing information technology.
Land and houses are the sensitive topics that can most touch the nerves of all Hong Kong people, and the development and construction of Cyberport have begun to be questioned and obstructed by many.
After 2001, the development of Cyberport came to a standstill, and later, only sporadic news came out about the completion of supporting real estate projects.
Although Cyberport was not successful, In this process, Yingke Group, followed by Cyberport's "Dongfeng", successfully listed on the backdoor, and Li Zekai benefited from HK$4 billion.
The ensuing 2001 technology stock bubble completely deprived Hong Kongers of the courage to invest and invest in the high-tech industry.
Therefore, when SMIC's Zhang Rujing went to Hong Kong to investigate, hong Kong people were afraid that he would become the second Li Zekai, and in the name of developing technology, they hoarded land at a low price, so they drove him away and drove SMIC to Shanghai.
The Hong Kong people's dream of science and technology, Tung Chee-hwa's grand plan of governance, has failed, and the initiative to improve Hong Kong's housing environment has attracted him even worse infamy.
Tung Chee-hwa believes that Hong Kong's loss of vitality in the wave of scientific and technological innovation is directly related to the high cost of housing and living in Hong Kong, so he increased the supply of land and housing while reforming education and increasing investment in science and technology.
As soon as he took office, he launched the "85,000" plan: no less than 85,000 public and private housing units to be built each year; within ten years, 70% of all households in Hong Kong would be able to buy their own homes; and the average waiting time for renting public housing was shortened to three years.
Hong Kong's high housing prices are ultimately a problem of imbalance between supply and demand. Increasing the supply of land and houses is indeed solving the essential problem. However, as the supply of housing increases, prices fall, which is more direct than Cyberport's cake.
If the low price of Cyberport is to move the crumbs around their cake, the "85,000" plan can be said to be directly taken to cut the cake in the hands of several major families.
Hong Kong became a wrestling field between two forces, and in the end, Tung Chee-hwa's side was defeated.
Soon after the implementation of the "85,000" plan, it coincided with a financial turmoil and a miserable storm in the Hong Kong property market.
According to reports at the time, there were 600,000 negative investors in Hong Kong with book losses of HK$600 billion. Public opinion has taken all this to Tung Chee-hwa's head, and the call for the cancellation of the "85,000" goal has taken advantage of the momentum. In 2002, he had to give up.
To this day, many people are still attacking Tung Chee-hwa's plan.
In fact, the financial turmoil is only an external cause, the real reason is that the assets of Hong Kong people, the wealth of the city, most of them are condensed on high house prices, if the house prices fall, the wealth of urban residents will "evaporate", which is the reason why Hong Kong's high house prices can not fall.
The phrase "house prices cannot fall" says that the contradictions between the two classes cannot be reconciled. Such contradictions have also begun to show signs in China.
Hong Kong has missed the transformation of the manufacturing industry, missed the development opportunities of high-end manufacturing industries such as information technology, and has not realized the ambition of "living in their own houses". Hong Kong's manufacturing industry and the problems of Hong Kong society are closely related and interrelated.
In 1980, it was the "fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar" in Hong Kong. Everything in the 90s and beyond was already doomed in this year.
Later, Hong Kong can continue to eat the dividends of the mainland's opening up, trade, tourism, finance... Eat well, sleep well, but no one mentions Made in Hong Kong anymore.
At the beginning of this year, because of a more severe epidemic than SARS, Hong Kong people in the process of finding masks and trying to restore local mask production remembered the "Made in Hong Kong" that had been dusty in the corner for a long time.
Then they realized that Hong Kong could not even produce masks, and it seemed that there was really nothing left left in Hong Kong.
In June, when the epidemic was not so severe, the Hong Kong Museum of History held an industrial exhibition: "Gong" is indispensable, a Legend of Hong Kong Industry, trying to find the collective memories of Hong Kong people in those years by displaying a series of classic Hong Kong industrial products, production utensils, etc.
The former "Made in Hong Kong" was a daily life for those generations, and it was also unforgettable. Therefore, it is often possible to see traces of "Made in Hong Kong" in Hong Kong movies. In Lin Zhengying's zombie movie, the antiques dug out of the soil are made in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong actor Li Cansen, who starred in the Mid-Autumn Festival, also revealed the filming plan of "Made in Hong Kong 2020" at this time, and behind him, Hong Kong manufacturing businessmen, experts and the government are also trying to make Hong Kong manufacturing return.
But can what you miss really come back?
At the end of the movie "Made in Hong Kong", a plane flew away. It was 1997, and the plane flying away was some kind of hint. Then the protagonist Mid-Autumn Festival said the famous line: "I hate adults the most when they say they teach you on the one hand, and hurt you on the other hand."
Some people can start a new life by flying away, and some people, living in the folded crevices of Hong Kong, can't fly.