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A yacht economy, certainly, but no subsidies for rich men’s toys please

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 16, 2025| Leave a Comment »

That pitter patter of little feet you heard after the policy address came from a herd of hogs heading for the public money trough, which naturally follows the announcement of a new hub. Consider the government’s newfound enthusiasm for the “yacht economy”.

The policy address had barely finished echoing down the corridors of power before a spokesman for the Boating Industry Association was pushing a list of “supporting facilities” which visiting yachts would require and which, it seemed, he expected the government to provide at the taxpayers’ expense.

According to a report in the Standard the association’s chairman, Lawrence Chow, clearly had a longer list in mind but started with “landing facilities, public restrooms and waste collection stations”.

Over this issue hangs a small technical confusion. The government, and the Standard’s headline writer, referred to “anchorages”. Mr Chow referred to “berths”. These are not the same thing.

An anchorage is a place where a yacht can drop an anchor. It needs a lot of water space round it for this and communication with the shore requires another, smaller, boat … or for the really affluent owner a helicopter. This is not a great boost for tourism. Also you would not wish to be on an anchored yacht in a typhoon.

A berth is a place where the yacht can tie up next to a jetty or pier, and its occupants then merely have to step ashore or, if the yacht is really big, walk down a gangplank. This is obviously much more convenient and places which take the “yacht economy” seriously all have facilities of this kind.

Most of the government actions announced so far consist of removing bureaucratic obstacles. Yachts will, for example, no longer be required to have a reserved berth before they arrive. Skippers will be able to take the exam for local waters remotely. And so on.

We have not seen so much detail about how the proposed “five new anchorages” will be produced, but I take it what what this actually means is five new marinas.

Clearly there will have to be some official contribution in the shape of space: a patch of water on which a marina can be built and a patch of land next to it for the necessary “facilities”. There is no reason why the operator of the marina should not provide everything else at its own expense, or indeed pay a reasonable fee for the land and water. After all users of the marina will be paying. Operating a marina is a commercial enterprise.

If visitors require public restrooms and waste collection stations it will be in the interest of the operator to provide them, and the resulting increase in custom will provide a reward.

There are two reasons why the government should be extremely careful to avoid the appearance that it is subsidising this activity. The first is that it would be undignified, indeed obscene, for a government which cannot afford to provide its elderly citizens with a decent pension to use public money to subsidise millionaires’ recreational activities. Or to put it in words of one syllable, rich men’s toys.

The second reason is that it would contrast rather fiercely with the government’s indifference to the possibility that Hong Kong people who are not millionaires might enjoy boating activities. Walking along the edge of Tolo Harbour is a pleasant experience but it is also frustrating. There is sunshine, there is a gentle breeze, there is a large expanse of more or less clean water but … no boats.

Ma On Shan, Taipo and Shatin are large populous towns on the edge of the harbour and the grand total of boating facilities offered to their inhabitants is … zero. There is a Taipo Boat Club but since the construction of the Tolo Harbour Highway it has been exiled to Tai Mei Tuk, which is miles away.

It would be nice to have a “yacht economy”. Could we not have a “dinghy economy” as well?

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Travel trade illusions: sportfests are good for the economy and travellers want to shop in airports

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on October 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Goodness, a whole page in Monday’s Standard was devoted to Routes World, an international conference held in Hong Kong.

Routes World is an annual get-together for people building and running airports. It is held in a different place each year. Hong Kong was a happy host because links with other airports can help its ambition to become, or remain, an international air transport hub.

This is one of the more plausible of our hub ambitions, which now number about 20. What is the collective noun for a multiplicity of hubs? A hubbub? A hubble bubble? A hubris?

Most of the Routes World proceedings were no doubt routine conversations about things only interesting to people in the industry, or with a morbid fascination for the economics of airports.

It does seem, though, that the travel business suffers from some shared delusions. This is not surprising. Many professions have them. Journalists had a shared delusion for a long time that their consumers were mainly interested in accurate information. Now that the internet is up and running it has become clear that most people find inaccurate information much more interesting.

One of the air people’s shared delusions concerns sports. Consider this offering from Philipe Karat, head of the transport part of the Brazilian Tourist Board. He reportedly said that “Brazil’s experience hosting the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics significantly raised its global profile, attracting more tourists and new airlines…”

This is wildly at variance with the growing consensus among people who study such things that hosting international sports circuses of this kind does not provide an economic boost, the extra income from visitors is grossly overstated, and is off-set by an increase in the number of locals taking holidays abroad to avoid the circus.

As two sports economists put it:


The World Cup coincided with the start of Brazil’s longest recession since the 1930s. That rather undermined claims that it would boost the economy. The impoverished country then had to fork out another $4.6 billion (predictably 50 per cent over budget) to host the Rio Olympics.

Outside the tourism bubble most people now agree that it was a terrible mistake to hold World Cups in Brazil, or in South Africa, since both countries had more important needs than a bit of fun and a temporary influx of foreigners. Brazil, as Kuper and Szymanski put it, “sacrificed a little bit of its future to host the World Cup.”

For another interesting delusion we can turn to the panel discussion on “the transformation of airports into sought-after travel destinations”. This is the idea that people will plan flights so that they can visit airports they particularly fancy.

As one speaker put it, “If passengers can enjoy a comfortable and pleasant shopping experience at Hong Kong airport there would be little incentive to seek transit through … other destinations.”

Someone needs to grab these people firmly by the ear and explain that air passengers are not looking for a “comfortable and pleasant shopping experience.” In fact attempts to turn air travel into a shopping experience are more resented than appreciated.

The preoccupation with lucrative retail outlets leads to difficulty in finding the things which travellers really need, like bags or electrical adapters. And the comfort and pleasure will not compensate for a poor range of goods on offer. Hong Kong airport would be a more attractive destination if it had a decent bookshop.

It is a basic axiom of international air travel that all airports are very much the same. The differences between them pale into insignificance compared with matters like the date and time of the flight, the intended destination, the impact of a mid-journey change, if any, and above all of course the price of the ticket. The flight, we hope, will be comfortable and pleasant. The airport merely has to be efficient.

I have been processed through a wide variety of airports. The only one I would really like to transit through again is Istanbul, which has excellent local shops starring Turkish Delight and paklava with a wide variety of colours and ingredients. But I am not going to choose Turkish Airlines just so I can taste these delicious marvels again.

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Where are we going to put these overseas students? Not in Shenzhen, please

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 28, 2025| 3 Comments »

Some time ago I noted that banks continued to prune branches while the local education industry continued to spawn new universities, and if these trends continued it would eventually be easier to find a university here than an outlet of the bank whose branches used to be proverbially “as common as rice shops”.

We’re not there yet, but we’re close. HSBC is now down to 20 branches while the number of universities has officially risen to 12. This does not include the mysterious University of the Built Environment, which announced its promotion in the Standard recently, but apparently is domiciled in the UK. There are eight recognised post-secondary colleges waiting in the wings. So lots of choices.

Unfortunately this expansion of opportunity has coincided with a drastic drop in the proportion of the population in the late teens and early 20s, whether in the workforce or the general population. Why this has happened – the trend seems to have picked up after 2019 – I leave to your imagination.

Meanwhile, in a possibly unrelated development, the government has increased the proportion of students which the universities it funds can take from outside the territory. The upper limit has now reached 40 per cent. Many of these people are paying through the nose. This is what economists count as an invisible export of services.

So it is a Good Thing. But like all Good Things it comes with costs and one of these has now surfaced. Hong Kong students traditionally solved their accommodation problems by living at home. This is the system still followed in Scotland, though not in England, where leaving home to go to Uni is an important life landmark, albeit an increasingly expensive one.

The usual Hong Kong arrangement when I started teaching was that the parents provided room and board, while the student worked part time to raise fees and spending money. The more well-off universities had “halls of residence” which made no attempt to fit in the entire population, but aimed to provide a taste of communal life for those who wanted it.

We now have the prospect of a severe shortage of accommodation for students from outside Hong Kong. This has not gone unnoticed and last week the permanent secretary (the senior real civil servant, not the DAB apparatchik) in the Development Bureau announced a pilot scheme. The government will relax some planning requirements and procedures for property owners who wish to convert into student housing their hotel or office block.

The secretary, Doris Ho Pui-ling, noted – perhaps tactlessly – disappointing demand from tourists, and high vacancy rates in some commercial offices. Ms Ho said that action on this matter was necessary to support the “Study in Hong Kong” brand and the government had set a quota, as governments do.

Whether it will be met remains to be seen. Real estate people were doubtful, citing conversion costs of $1,500 to $2,000 a square foot, as making it difficult to devise profitable schemes.

The Standard (which has dropped the Mary Ma masquerade and now calls its editorial an editorial, as a respectable newspaper should) opined that student needs should not be met at the expense of tourism; the territory’s hotels were 80-90 per cent full, and the number of overseas tourists was rising.

Well I agree with Ms Ho. If the government wants to have lots of students from other places it needs to provide somewhere for them to live. From my time as a bit of student representative grit in the smooth machinery of university management a few observations.

Conversions of factories and offices are really difficult. They usually feature large floor spaces. The bosses take the spaces round the outside with windows and the peasants work in a big open space in the middle which has no natural light or ventilation. Short of digging a big hole in the middle of the building to provide a light well, or a change in student expectations – do you really need a window? – the floor plan is a problem.

Hotels do not have this issue. Actually many UK universities are happy to let out empty student rooms to budget tourists in the summer. It’s a good deal. The room is simple but you also get the use of a kitchen and a laundry, a boon for travellers on the cheap. I would have thought a basic hotel could be switched to student use with little change.

The price of conversion should not be regarded as fixed. In my experience architects can be quite creative if told firmly enough that their first draft is unaffordable.

There will usually be opposition. I find this a bit surprising but some people think student residences will bring noise and disorder, or depress nearby property prices. No doubt the Standard will not be the only defender of the tourism industry’s interests.

I hope, though, to hear no more of the Standard’s suggestion that students who are studying at Hong Kong universities should live in Shenzhen. It is a curious fact of life that students, who cheerfully waste their time in interesting ways, will not tolerate a long commute.

When the University of Lancaster was planned it was assumed that students would live in nearby Morecambe, a moribund seaside resort with lots of cheap holiday accommodation. This did not happen. Students hated the idea. Readers who have had the misfortune of visiting Morecambe in the winter may find this unsurprising, but it held in other places also.

The “Study in Hong Kong” brand will not long survive the discovery that your student is regarded as a sort of reverse vampire, welcome in Hong Kong only in the hours of daylight.

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I have no quarrel with these low-budget tourists, but their fear of foreigners is overdone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Well you should be careful what you wish for. Hong Kong is seeing a lot more tourists visiting from the mainland. The bad news: many of them are coming in ways which involve very little local spending.

Many tours reportedly come just for the day. Their interaction with the Hong Kong economy is limited to maybe one meal. “Forced shopping” is apparently no longer a thing; these visitors can’t afford it.

There is also a new category of visitors: mainland backpackers. They are looking for an ultracheap visit, and many of them can be found economising on accommodation expenses by spending the night in a 24-hour McDonalds.

Clearly this sort of thing involves all the inconvenience for locals that tourism can bring, while making a disappointing contribution to wealth and business. Perhaps this explains the Hong Kong government’s newfound enthusiasm for marinas catering for big yachts.

After all a billionaire in a private plane is attended only by a pilot and a flight attendant. A yacht will bring to our shores not only the super-rich owner but his crew: skipper and mate, engineer and mate, chef and assistant, a couple of “house-keepers” to make the beds and a couple of deckhands to pull ropes and polish brass. Enjoy your run ashore, people.

Sooner or later I expect to see the government take this approach to its logical extreme and provide facilities for the most expensive and upmarket of sports: horse polo. Players have to be rich – a small herd of horses is required – and there are four people on each team. A simple knock-our competition for four teams would assemble 16 millionaires.

In response to complaints about the cheap end of the tourism boom, Chief Executive John Lee said that Hong Kong must “welcome all kinds of tourists”. I find myself in the unaccustomed position of agreeing entirely with Mr Lee.

There are two reasons for this. One is that it is the right thing to do. Poor people have just as much right to merriment and diversion as rich people. Helping the poor is praised by most of the big religions. Being kind to strangers is a virtue.

The second more pragmatic reason is that today’s young backpackers will be tomorrow’s well-heeled visitors. Some of them may even eventually own yachts. Early impressions of holiday destinations have a lasting impact on later choices.

In this connection it is useful, as Scotland’s national poet put it, “to see ourselves as others see us.” This is, interestingly, from a poem called “To a louse, on seeing one on a lady’s bonnet at church.” but I digress.

One rather worrying account of a low-budget visit appeared recently in the Standard, translated by Marco Lam from a social media post. It relates the visit of two ladies (not really relevant link but I couldn’t resist it), who decided to economise by staying a costless night in the Central McDonalds.

On their way they recorded nervous moments in “dimly-lit backstreets” in which there were “foreigners peering out.” They changed their route and took to main roads.

The McDonalds was “full of holidaymakers”. They met one helpful local, and one suspicious man who (thank goodness) was a mainlander. They then set off at three in the morning for the ferry pier. Apparently they wanted to watch the sun rise on Cheung Chau. At this point the story gets a bit puzzling:

“Walking through Lan Kwai Fong’s bar district, they endured what they called ‘the most intense part’ of their night – a gauntlet of drunken foreigners whose ‘invasive, provocative stares’ left them terrified despite their conservative clothing. Only upon reaching the ferry pier and seeing other travellers did they finally feel safe, the woman wrote.”

The puzzle is this: the all-night McDonalds is in Sheung Wan. To get to the Outer Island ferries you must walk northeast. To get to Lan Kwai Fong you must walk southeast, quite a long way. Did the ladies take a huge detour? Mix up their timings? Mix up their geography?

Common sense suggests that walking through any city’s bar district at three in the morning is not for the timid. I doubt if Hong Kong is in any way unusual in this respect and in many places wandering women would have more than “invasive provocative stares”, whatever that means, to worry about.

The horror story provoked some constructive comments from local netizens, including suggestions of other free sleeping places, or affordable offerings where you would actually get a bed and a bath. Perhaps some sort of Lonely Planet-like directory of Hong Kong for the financially challenged visitor could be produced.

I would like to take issue with the two mainland ladies’ evident problem with “foreigners”. Look, there is nothing to fear here. The times have long passed when most of the young foreign men in Hong Kong were drawn from the brutal and licentious soldiery. We also no longer have young Brits arriving with nothing but a fresh degree and a UK passport, with a view to looking for work and enjoying 24-hour drinking, not then permitted in England.

Most of the foreigners in Hong Kong now are mature and respectable lawyers, bankers or (yawn) accountants. English teachers cannot afford Lan Kwai Fong prices. We may peer but we do not pester. Relax.

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Our government’s latest craze: marinas for millionaires

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

What is it about the Hong Kong government and luxury yachts? This used to be a non-topic. An occasional superyacht (no agreed definition but generally over 24 metres and crew of at least eight) would arrive and tie up at Ocean Terminal for a while.

Well-off local residents owned less super yachts (under 24 metres, crew 1-10) which they kept at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club or the marina on Discovery Bay. This supported a small industry – someone once described a yacht as a hole in the sea that you pour money into – and attracted no official or political interest.

Lately, though, our local leaders seem to have decided that this is a cow which can be milked.

The South Lantau Eco-recreation corridor (how do they think these names up?) has now graduated from a mention in last year’s policy address to an outline which includes a marina for 150-200 yachts up to 50 metres in length.

Then there is Skytopia (see comment on names above) which is planned by the Hong Kong Airport Authority, will be built next to the airport and will have 500 berths. We now also have the proposed development of land round the Hong Kong Coliseum, which will include a marina with space for 200 yachts, size not specified yet.

These plans have sparked a certain amount of scepticism. The owners of large crewed yachts can choose from a wide range of cruising grounds. The overwhelming favourites are the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. Your yacht can combine these by spending the summer in the Med and crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean in the winter.

The leading home port for big yachts is Fort Lauderdale, Florida. About a quarter of all superyachts are owned by Americans. Most of the rest are owned in West European countries or Russia.

There is a growing interest in Asian cruising, but this demands dependable sunshine and a supply of interesting destinations, so most of the traffic is in the region of Singapore, Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Whatever facilities are built here Hong Kong will always have one serious drawback: typhoons.

In short, this is not really a global industry. Some rather outdated figures on location of yachts in April here. Location of leading marinas here, ownership figures here. The idea that there are 900 or so big yachts out there just waiting for Hong Kong to provide parking spaces seems a bit of a stretch.

Some cynical observers have suggested that Hong Kong might be interested in a niche market: moorings for yachts whose owners would fear confiscation or other problems if they were moored in Europe, or even Singapore. But there is already a very nice marina in Hainan which shares our political peculiarities, such as they are.

Another disreputable theory is that owning a big yacht in Hong Kong might offer mainland millionaires a large floating asset (albeit a very expensive one to run) which could literally sail away at short notice. But of course our government would not dream of conniving at that sort of thing.

Given Hong Kong’s highly uneven income distribution it is difficult to see an expensive watery hobby producing a huge spurt in demand from local resources.

Indeed a striking feature of Hong Kong life is the government’s total indifference to the possiblility that large numbers of people might enjoy messing about in boats. It is interesting to consider the contrast between Chichester Harbour and Tolo Harbour. Chichester Harbour is a heavily tidal mudflat on which everything runs aground twice a day. It is nevertheless usually full of boats and occasionally, indeed, congested.

Tolo Harbour is big, sheltered and virtually non-tidal. It would be an ideal place for kids to catch the boating bug at little expense. There are big waterside towns in Shatin, Taipo and Ma On Shan. Facilities could be provided within walking distance of millions of people. They are not.

Tolo Harbour, whatever the weather, is usually completely empty. We are apparently more interested in providing facilities for millionaires than facilities for the masses. Shame.

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Please Ms Law, stay out of show business

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 13, 2024| Leave a Comment »

What, I wonder, is a mega event? This question arises from a Legco answer provided by our newly minted Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Ms Rosanna Law.

Ms Law gave a glowing report on her branch’s efforts to boost tourism. You might even wonder, reading her update on the situation, what her predecessor did wrong.

According to Ms Law, as reported in the China Daily, there were 110 mega events in the first half of this year. I do not remember hearing or reading about 110 events worthy of the “mega” label, which according to the Cambridge Dictionary means “very good or very big”.

And the fact that these events are allegedly happening at a rate of about 18 a month, or roughly one every two days, suggests that the adjective has been devalued by overuse. This suspicion was not dispelled by the China Daily, which illustrated the happy news with a picture of the Hong Kong Sevens, and in the article mentioned only the Art Basel culture fest. Both these events have been staged annually for many years. They may be well be “mega”, but giving the credit to the current Culture, Sports and Tourism bureaucracy seems a bit of a stretch.

Ms Law said the mega events had attracted 550,000 tourists who spent $2.4 billion, and also contributed a “value add” of $1.4 billion, a mysterious extra benefit which she did not explain. These are big numbers, at least until you look at the official Tourism Board visitor figures for the same period, which run to about 3.5 million per month.

Well the show goes on. Ms Law said $100 million had been earmarked for the Mega Events Coordination Group’s work over the next three years. It is difficult to know what is happening here. We do not know which of these events are a result of official inspiration, and which are items which were going on anyway, but were happy to sport the “mega event” label in return for a chance to bid for some cash and get free publicity when the Tourism Board, in Ms Law’s mellifluous phrase, “leveraged its global network to carry out publicity in the Chinese mainland and overseas.”

Doubts arise. As a product of the post-war baby boom I witnessed years of arguments in the UK about which activities should be undertaken by government and which by the private sector. But even avid seekers of public control of the “commanding heights of the economy” recognised that arts and culture were best left to voluntary and commercial effort. If subsidies were provided this should be done in a way insulated from official control, like the money given to universities.

The reason for this is the general experience that officially devised entertainments will be either uninspiring, loss-making or both.

There is, to put it politely, no evidence that Hong Kong is exceptional in this matter. Money effortlessly disappears in the Magic Kingdom, Ocean Park and Water World. The West Kowloon Cultural District is looking for a life boat, probably involving the fine art of selling expensive flats.

I seem to have caused some confusion last week by mentioning the Capital Works Fund in the same column as the third runway, which was not financed that way. Besides milking passing passengers the airport took on $110 trillion of debt – which whatever the fine print says is effectively backed by the Hong Kong government.

My point was that having a huge pile of money which could only be spent on building encouraged a mindset in which any pyramid, sphinx or ziggurat could be erected free from financial concerns because the supply of money was apparently unlimited. This led to extravagant choices, of which the third runway was one.

The idea that events should be supported by an all-purpose body selecting items on the basis of their prospects as tourist attractions is another. How are meaningful comparisons to be made between – say – a golf tournament, a performance of Aida and a chance to be bored in a conference centre by the CEOs of several international companies?

Money will be spent, certainly, but much of it will be wasted on events which would have happened anyway, or events to which the “mega” label is a polite joke. What is to be done?

In the long run we need perhaps to consider that erecting a pyramid without considering the running costs is a recipe for unhappiness. Museums and theatres are not supposed to make money. They are supposed to be provided as a service to the public and this implies a willingness to provide continuing support.

We also need to consider that what is happening today is not always a reliable guide to what will happen tomorrow. Shit, as they say, happens. Since the handover Hong Kong has had to deal with an Asian financial crisis, two political upheavals, and two epidemics. Technologies and tastes have changed rapidly. The rosy scenario is not always the one we get.

More immediately, as the government is wallowing in a financial crisis, perhaps they could start by cancelling the Mega Events Coordination Group and saving $100 million. The government’s role in fostering mega events should be confined to ensuring there are suitable venues for them. Left to themselves, the relevant industries will produce a steady flow of conferences, festivals, shows, opportunities to buy expensive items or to watch Lionel Messi watch a football match. The SAR government can stay out of show business.

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Taking off with three runways … to go where?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on December 6, 2024| 3 Comments »

The third runway system, the latest expensive adornment to Hong Kong’s international airport, came into full-time operation this month. This should be distinguished from the third runway itself, which opened in 2022.

During the ensuing two years one of the older runways was closed for “maintenance”, which might arouse suspicions that the extra runway was perhaps not urgently needed.

Nevertheless the opening of the new system was greeted with unrestrained joy. “The three-runway system has been hailed as a ‘game-changer’ for the city to enhance its status as an international aviation hub,” reported the Post from the official opening.

A China Daily writer described the new system as “more than a runway; it’s a bridge to new economic vistas that will invigorate the city’s future.”

Certainly it’s more than a runway. It could be regarded as a suitable commemoration for the Capital Works Fund, a curious financial arrangement inherited from the colonial era.

The basic idea was that income from land sales could not be depended on, and should accordingly not be relied on to cover the government’s running costs. Instead it should be put in a special pot, to be drawn on only for infrastructure projects which would be one-off bursts of expenditure.

This bit of fiscal puritanism may be compared with the present arrangement under which the proceeds of the sale of bonds (which will have to be repaid some day) are treated as income. But let us leave the financial technicalities aside. Basically we were presented with a government looking at a large pile of money which could only be spent on infrastructure projects.

Call me a cynic if you will, but I would expect that to produce a growing enthusiasm for expensive and elaborate projects, with an increasing likelihood of white elephant production. Bridges, railway lines, reclamation of whole islands … Is this starting to look familiar?

All of these projects will be defended as contributing to Hong Kong’s future prosperity and status as some kind of hub. Let me dispose of two points before we get to the airport itself.

Firstly, as Kuper and Symanski point out, economists firmly believe that people respond to incentives, and economists certainly do. No plan for a sports facility or festival ever comes without a glowing prediction from an economist of the future wealth it will generate for the hapless taxpayers who are invited to pay for it. So it goes also for infrastructure projects.

The third runway can probably claim some sort of record in this area, as it was justified by a prediction of $455 billion in economic benefits … spread over the next 50 years. You can see that far ahead? J.K. Galbraith said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”

Secondly let us be wary of a promised “boost for tourism”. If you are a tourist-attractive island which can only be reached by the use of a small and uncomfortable ferry (as the Isle of Sky once was) then building a bridge will attract a lot of the formerly discouraged and will boost tourism (as it did).

If you are a coastal European city with the usual kit – city walls, cathedral, town hall, famous man’s birthplace – and cruise lines are by-passing your pathetic port, then constructing a cruise terminal may bring a new flood of people who used to miss you.

On the other hand if you are getting a million tourists a year, and your airport can handle two million, then upgrading it to a capacity of three million is not going to make the slightest difference. People are not going to visit specially to see the new airport. It is a means to an end.

And this brings us to the impact, or lack of impact, of the new runway. In 2015 an assessment of the situation was produced for planners and legislators. Keeping the airport as it was (Option A) implied a maximum annual capacity of 57 million passengers and 4.4 million tonnes of cargo. Making improvements but not extending them to a third runway (B) could raise this to 77 million passengers and 6.1 million tonnes. Option C – the third runway – would increase capacity to 102 million passengers and 8.9 million tonnes.

How much capacity did we actually use in 2023, the last full year? Ah, 43 million passengers and 4.2 million tonnes. In other words, comfortably within Option A.

The Airport Authority asserts that usage was depressed during COVID and will eventually recover. But is this inevitable, or even likely? Views differ. Since 2015 rival international airports have expanded in Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Passengers on shorter routes from Chinese cities can also consider the express rail link, which opened in 2018.

Spokespeople for the authority say that the airport is already busy again in rush hours. But these are not like land-based rush hours, caused by lots of people going to and from work at the same time. They are caused by airlines, for reasons of their own, all wanting to land and take off at the same time.

Catering to this urge is wasteful. Another way of looking at airport capacity is the number of movements it can handle. Because aircraft, once up, have to be kept two minutes apart there is a fixed ceiling of about 30 movements an hour per runway. Clearly with three runways you can hope to handle 90 movements an hour, which is an improvement.

But here again we seem to be meeting a non-existent need. In 2018, the last year before various interruptions culminating in COVID, the airport handled 427,000 movements. In 2023 it handled 276,000. This year so far we have 298,000. Clearly the figure is still rising, but has a long way to go before it catches up with the number achieved with two runways alone.

Given that the government is now running a huge deficit and is no doubt contemplating something painful in the way of increased taxes and lower benefits, it is quite understandable that the “line to take” is not that they blew $140 billion to provide some extra convenience to airlines.

So roll up for the new epoch, which will either feature massive financial losses or mass tourism. Are we having fun yet?

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Eating outside: a must-try experience which is fading away

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on July 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Let us now praise legislator Judy Chan (New People’s Party; Electoral Committee constituency) for what appears to be an effort to make sense of the government’s policy on food served in the street or, as the official phraseology has it, “fixed-pitch and itinerant hawker stalls selling food with local characteristics.”

In this laudable pursuit Ms Chan put down a written question. Indeed she did not just put down a question, she composed a mega-question. Short story writers have managed with fewer words. After a little warm-up paragraph the question consists of ten sub-questions, some of them with multiple prongs and alternatives: is the government doing X and if so how many times in the last three years and if not why not?

This literary brick dropped into the lap of the Secretary for Environment and Ecology (cool new job title, if I may say so) Tse Chin-wan, a recycled environmental civil servant. Mr Tse’s equally lengthy reply exemplifies the rule in these matters: the longer the question the less you learn from the reply.

The problem here is that one of Hong Kong’s traditional attractions is the street restaurant, or dai pai dong, which offers tourists the alluring prospect of a local meal in the open air. Years ago you found them all over the place. Luard Road, Wanchai, for example, a much wider road than the traffic required then as it still is, was reduced to two lanes by a row of stalls on each side.

Over the years they have gradually disappeared. This does not appear to be the result of lack of custom. Most observers diagnose a classic case of official hostility. The official line, as articulated by Mr Tse, is that if there are any “suitable proposals which are supported by the relevant District Councils, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) will give consideration with an open mind.” He did warn that it is “very challenging to identify suitable sites.”

Many people who used to sell food in the street have been relocated to “cooked food centres” in municipal buildings. They are usually upstairs from the wet market (diners with delicate stomachs should avoid walking past the butchery horror show) and feature wet tiled floors, bare concrete walls and a lot of fans because there is no air conditioning.

In my experience the food in these places is OK but the ambience is not. The toilets often leave a lot to be desired too, though I must add in fairness that the facility in the Kennedy Town market is fragrant, floral and wins prizes.

A long time ago I joined a small group who met regularly on Friday nights at a place in Fotan which is probably not, in official terminology, a dai pai dong because it has a real kitchen with mains water and electricity. It gave you the flavour of the experience, though, because the tables extended gradually through the evening onto the territory of the adjacent bus station, so you would eat, weather permitting, sitting in an unused minibus stop.

This was a pleasant arrangement and gradually caught on with our friends, so that on some Fridays the group required two 16-people tables, to the great delight of the lady in charge of promoting the sale of Yan Jing beer. This is the state beer of China, though, in the opinion of many experts, not as good as Tsing Tao.

There was, though, constant trouble with the FEHD. A uniformed squad would arrive and terrify the operator of the establishment with threats of huge fines if a table wandered outside the area officially designated for dining. Their van would sit nearby, occupied by a driver who was sometimes spotted doing unmentionable things with his nose.

At knocking-off itme, which I think was eight o’clock, the uniforms would get in the van and go home. People who arrived earlier would often stand around waiting for the hour of liberation and amusing themselves by developing new insults for the FEHD, or Food Gestapo as we called them.

This was apparently standard procedure in many parts of Hong Kong. Many government departments have little foibles which do not really make sense. The Transport Department will not entertain speed bumps. The Police Force, though it has long abandoned the system under which retiring sergeants were expected to own large parts of Toronto, still has a thing about the ICAC, and so it goes on.

The FEHD is, for some reason, peculiarly hostile to dining in the open air. There are, of course, some potential problems with street food hawkers, involving things like noise, hygiene and rubbish, but this does not explain the department’s visceral hostility to people eating in the open air, even if the food is coming from a pefectly respectable restaurant and the space is not being used for anything else.

As a result Hong Kong has always been a problem area for open air dining, unless you get away to somewhere rural or an outlying island. And dai pai dong are an endangered species. There are only 17 left.

As tends to happen with endangered species they are now being eagerly touted to foreigners as an attraction. “Eating at a dai pai dong is a must-try Hong Kong experience and you can’t call yourself a real foodie if you haven’t dined at one,” chirps the Tourism Board on its social media.

Two of the Cooked Food Hawker Bazaars where the board suggests you can enjoy this experience are officially described as “temporary”. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

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