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Leaving the life in China for Hong Kong not all that good

Bloomberg Published on Thu, Jul 13, 2017 / 5:54 PM GMT+8

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(July 13): They start sometimes at dawn and work frequently into the night, an army of old workers manoeuvring carts around the streets of Hong Kong. Their spines bent with back trouble or simply the burdens of life-long toil, they’re collecting cardboard boxes to sell to recyclers for the equivalent of US$2.60 ($3.60) a day.

In Hong Kong, they’re known as "cardboard grannies." They’re estimated by non-government organisations to number 5,000 — a figure almost 40% higher than the total of registered Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces seen frequently on the streets of the bustling Asian financial center.

Hong Kong has amassed enormous wealth since its handover to China in 1997, yet it’s also home to an expanding wealth gap, according to the standard measure of income inequality. It has risen to a record in 2017, is the highest in Asia, and exceeds that of the US and Britain.