Life Snippet - the dangerous parallels between the UK and Hong Kong

The dangerous parallels between the UK and Hong Kong

Having lived in the UK for over 10 years with frequent travels back to Hong Kong and a close eye on what's happening over there, my wife and I came to the conclusion that UK is following the "Hong Kong path" with a 5-10 yr gap but it's closing in. And that is worrying.

The "Hong Kong path" is characterised by a squeeze on life through rising property prices and diminished opportunities leading to excessive competition, a focus on money & "prep to win". These all add up to take time & energy away from cultural, leisurely and intellectual pursuits and the little time that people have for leisure are reduced to blind TV watching, mobile gameplay and eating (not cooking or becoming a food connoisseur). These social changes will then brew inter-general tensions and resentment on life.

The first warning sign was of course the rising house prices in the UK. It is OK for house prices to go up, but when the prices require a couple's working life incomes to be handed over in exchange for a small flat, the mindset and preferences of the people will become dominated by the house. To start with, people will fight for higher-paid jobs instead of trading salary for better lifestyle - you either have a nice house to enjoy life in, or you can only rent a very small and shabby bedsit to feel miserable in despite having a 'lifestyle job'. Then the stress of saving every penny to catch up with the price hikes means all leisurely activities are out of the question, and people can only fall back to 'basic enjoyments' like eating or watching TV. The society is at risk of becoming boring and un-creative, with an emphasis of having a good job that pays well.

The trouble starts with the adults but then propagates to the teenagers and children. As money becomes the only way of securing a decent property and having a good life, they cannot afford to be distracted from academic work or any 'officially sanctioned' activities that will contribute directly towards job-market competitiveness. You must do well in school, and you must get into a good school. If you test results are not great, we will get you a private tutor. It is good to play football, but please join a club and make it into the squad, so that you can write about it in UCAS and on your CV. Leisure reading and fooling around is a waste of time, you can spend the time instead of something you can write about or demonstrate directly - revising, club football, or fancy activities like Model UN. Again, creativity and self initiatives are taken out of life, and recognising your own strengths & weaknesses and tuning your life towards them are not encouraged.

Both the adult life and childhood becomes that of 'making sure you can earn money', and your liberties are taken away - leisure time is requisitioned to invest in the future, and you develop yourself into a better work machine rather than a better all-round individual. You have to learn to love hobbies and subjects that are somehow related to earnings such as stock investment. Gradually, the society becomes monotonous as the variety of hobbies are no longer practised, while schools are turned into 'exam results factories' instead of places where the young generation grow into confident & capable individuals.

The impact of the above cannot be under-estimated. Without the wild energy being expressed in a multitude of lifestyles and pursuits, the society become more conformed and practical, rather like all those high streets that look the same. People are not excited about life, and they will just 'work, eat, sleep, spend money, do nothing'. It's a dull society. Worse still, it is one in which money's power become compounded - if you have more money, you can live in a much better property, you have more money to 'buy' what you do not have time pursue at leisure. This re-inforces the vicious cycle of squeezing out leisure time, abandoning leisurely pursuits in favour of spending all the time to invest in the future for a high-earning job.

The capstone (or tombstone) in this cycle is the inter-generational tension. The older generation (in HK they are the baby boomers, in the UK it will be the generation born in the 70s and 80s) managed to secure properties when they were cheaper, and they could afford to choose their lifestyle - the mortgage is low and so they can decide to work part time in order to have free time to do what they like; they also lived in a time when competition for school places and jobs are less fierce and so they had free time to build their hobbies and individual characters. In contrast for young generation, they spend their childhood competing with one another, then working to death to earn the down payment, and leisure time is either catching up with rest or thinking what next to learn in order to 'keep up with the market'. Good life vs. no-so-good life, and conflicts ensue.

It's not a positive picture, but the endgame is currently being played out in HK (and also China, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan etc). The UK is following along the same track, but there is time to break out of it. Not acting is not an option, for time is running out.