Monday, October 03, 2005

Economy_another financial crisis in Hong Kong??

He Xin, a left-wing academic in China, said Hong Kong will have another financial crisis by the Spring next year in an interview. I totally agree, though it is a little risky to give such a clear schedule.

Hong Kong successfully avoided the huge suffer in 1997's crisis, partly because of Chinese government's help. But at that time, Hong Kong's economy was not dependent on China, especially the stockmarket. Not many big Chinese companies were listed in Hong Kong.

See now, it is hard to count by fingers how many mainland companies are listed here, including the state-owned giant such as China Mobile and the future listed- China Construction Bank. If China's economy is not performing that well, or the investors lost confidence in the nation, Hong Kong's stockmarket will be hit hugely, while it is hard for Hong Kong government to help as it did in 1997.

The only thing for Hong Kong to be lucky is to make sure China's economy go on well. But that's not easy too. As the academic said, the biggest problem in China is the growing unemployment rate. When the number becomes higher and higher, it will hurt internal need as well as social stability. But I wonder if there is someone really care about that, even the government?

I just interviewed a Hong Kong company who is involved in the infrastructure construction in China. It said that it will reduce half of the people in the Chinese company, once state-owned, in five years coz they think the human resources in Chinese companies are alwasy redundant. But how about those poor people? What will they do to support their families? Without the government, the capitalists will never care about these things, right? And even worse, there's not strong worker unions in China.

Should someone care?

3 comments:

waisikgwai said...

What specific impacts would such a financial crisis have on HK employment, housing, etc.? Would it be similar to the 1997 金融風暴 only worse? 可唔可以同讀者分享詳細d0既預測或者情報?

Amy Gu said...

hoho, Bromgrev, land value crash is not for fun ah. It will be terrible for Hong Kong people who just recover their confidence in the properties. Local property developers will suffer much from this, in turn, will suffer their employees and the whole economy.

Have you heard that newspaper in Beijing fell short of profit under the economic control policy? The reason is property developers and car makers are suffered from the policy first, and then reduce the advertising fee on the media.

Amy Gu said...

waisikgwai, I think the future crisis will from internal, not from outside pressure as 1997 one was. As the left-wing academic said, it will come before the Spring next year. But as fas as I say, it will be a bit of late, maybe some time next year.