The situation of near-anarchy for Hong Kong’s corporate heavyweights may make for impressive annual reports but does little to relieve Hong Kong’s mounting social and economic tensions. Indeed, the usual hallmarks of classically defined competitive markets are nearly absent instead, Hong Kong’s market structure suffers from steep barriers to entry and government policies that serve to bolster the market positions of a half dozen huge conglomerates. Huge amounts of real estate are developed by a handful of large companies who control all aspects of supply, construction, and property management. Hong Kong’s biggest fortunes owe their growth and security to dominance over a wide spectrum of businesses ranging from transport, public utilities, supermarkets, and food distribution to, most importantly, land development. Poon dissects the sinews of Hong Kong “big money” and isolates its key components, those being legislative and legal sway over land and competitive policies. Although Hong Kong is often characterized as one of the world’s freest economies, it is in fact controlled by a handful of wealthy individuals and companies who stifle-rather than encourage-competition. “Oligopoly pays.” That’s the chief lesson emerging from Alice Poon’s excellent survey of Hong Kong’s real estate and infrastructure economies.
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