Chapter 201 Hong Kong (Revised)
Masayoshi Kishimoto, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, and the rest of the group were appearing at the waiting hall of Tokyo Narita International Airport. They were about to take a flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong.
Masayoshi Kishimoto and Kiyoshi Kobayashi did not enter the VIP waiting room and sat side by side on the soft chairs in the waiting hall. Neither of them valued those things that showed their personal and social status.
Masayoshi Kishimoto leaned his back on the top of the chair back, slightly sideways towards the other party, crossed his legs and chatted idly, “How much do you know about Hong Kong?”
“I won’t lie, it’s my first time going to Hong Kong.” Kobayashi Kiyoshi said honestly.
“Hong Kong belongs to the paradise of the rich and the hell of the poor. This one aspect is similar to Tokyo. Hong Kong is known as the Pearl of the Orient, the city is as developed and affluent as it gets, yet it is also one of the areas in the world with the largest gap between the rich and the poor.
Its economic lifeblood is concentrated on Hong Kong Island. The most unfair point is that Hong Kong does not have inheritance tax. It’s obvious that the rich get richer and their children and grandchildren are sheltered by their ancestors.
You think Tokyo is a miniature kingdom where the middle and lower classes rent small places, and Hong Kong will make you realize that they live even smaller. There’s a saying among Hong Kong people who tease themselves that pigs live more spaciously than they do.
The rich live at the top of the hill, the affluent middle class live halfway up the hill, and the ordinary citizen class live in elevator apartments at the bottom of the hill. As for the poor, they live in the coffins of old tenement buildings at the foot of the mountain that often don’t have elevators, inside pigeonholes.
Or, live inside the unauthorized houses above the rooftops. It is also good and normal for ordinary families of five or six, or even more, to be crowded inside a house of more than twenty square meters.
Many young people get married and live separately in their parents’ homes. Hong Kong’s per capita residential space is given a definition by UNESCO that challenges the bottom line and dignity of being a human being.” Masayoshi Kishimoto briefly introduced said.
“Chairman, you’re not joking with me, are you?” Although Kobayashi Kiyoshi had never been to Hong Kong before this, he knew that quite a few Japanese people quite liked to choose Hong Kong for their travels and vacations.
“You know I’m not joking when you see that I’m not laughing. The reason why Hong Kong will lose the status of the former manufacturing center, into this one now, that is because it is the government to implement the strategy of industrial hollowing out, resulting in the past in Hong Kong, many manufacturing industries in Hong Kong on one after another to the north of the mainland to migrate.
As a result, it can be imagined that those with low academic qualifications and skills will find it difficult to find suitable jobs. Even if they can find a job, they will not be able to get a good salary. Coupled with inflationary price rises, the low-income groups are having an increasingly difficult time.
In this respect, Singapore is doing better than Hong Kong. The upper class elites in the former know that no matter how the city develops, there is always a need to solve the employment problem of the low-end people.
Otherwise, the whole city will not be able to function. Therefore, Singapore is not as committed as Hong Kong to de-hollowing its industries and focusing on building its international status as a financial center.
The public housing scheme in Singapore has also done a good job in advocating the Home Ownership Scheme (HOS). And nowadays, Hong Kong is famous for several slum areas are Tin Shui Wai, Tung Chung, and there are places like Chungking Mansions.
In the past, the Kowloon Walled City, a slum is known around the world, but also a kind of poor people’s culture and one of the representatives of the economy.
However, Hong Kong was razed by the British before its return to mainland China. The poverty rate in Hong Kong is also similar to that in Tokyo.
Aside from the gap between the rich and the poor widening year after year, the officially published figures of the poor population are all perennially maintained at one-sixth of the population.” Masayoshi Kishimoto said slowly.
Kobayashi Kiyoshi’s heart became much clearer when he heard the chairman say this. The reason why the other party had set up their office in Hong Kong had also been well thought out.
Otherwise, how could Masayoshi Kishimoto know so much? This was a practical situation that involved quite a few aspects of Hong Kong society.
“I’m still curious as to why you, Chairman, decided to set up your first office into China in Hong Kong in the first place.
According to the habits and traditions of Japanese companies entering the Chinese market, it is always favored to set up the first stronghold in either Dalian or the Magic City.” Kobayashi Kiyoshi asked curiously.
“Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, and Cantonese is also spoken in Guangdong. The latter also has two of China’s four first-tier cities. Many enterprises in mainland China always show caution when they think about taking a step out.
They will often make use of Hong Kong as a window to take a look at the outside world, to learn more about international affairs and rules of the road.
Mainland China is a humanistic society and a state monopoly capitalism, which is not only different from Hong Kong, but also completely different from the social systems of Japan, South Korea, Singapore, as well as major developed countries in Europe and the United States.
They are all about connections and back doors. If you take the Yangtze River as a boundary, the more north it is, the more serious it is, while on the Vietnamese side, the more it accepts the modern market-oriented economy.” Masayoshi Kishimoto spoke eloquently.
“Shame. I, a person in charge of the investment side, don’t quite understand the actual situation in some of these areas you mentioned, Chairman.” Kobayashi Kiyoshi didn’t mean to be flattering and said with genuine admiration.
Masayoshi Kishimoto smiled and waved his hand at him. He himself was a Chinese in his previous life, and could not be clear about what was going on in China?
Especially after he had read Sun Longji’s “The Deep Structure of Chinese Culture” in his previous life, his mind had opened up a lot.
“The Korean side is basically like that. We’re grasping the related online game industry with one hand, and the real estate industry with the other.
As for our Hard Gold Group’s investment direction and center of gravity for the next twenty years, one is to place it in emerging markets such as mainland China, while the other is to place it in mature markets such as the United States, which possesses highly sophisticated technologies.” Masayoshi Kishimoto was very clear about the direction of his group’s strategic development in the future.
Kobayashi Kiyoshi understood the chairman’s strategic intent. This is not only in the group company senior management meeting above he repeatedly said, but also this time they went to Hong Kong personnel composition above also showed a fairly high specification. From this, it could be seen that Masayoshi Kishimoto’s emphasis on entering the Chinese mainland market was extremely high.
“Since the chairman values investment in the mainland Chinese market so much, then he shouldn’t just send Rumiko Kato over.” Kobayashi Kiyoshi voiced his opinion saying.
“The office in Hong Kong is just an outpost of ours, the main job is to gather relevant intelligence as well as go and make proper contact with some of the companies with great potential in mainland China.
In the future, I will set up Hard Gold Group offices in each of the four first-tier cities in mainland China. At that time, I will also send more people.
The Chinese government nowadays is giving a lot of concessions to foreign investors, especially in terms of tax breaks and the like.” Masayoshi Kishimoto calmly said.
Kobayashi Kiyoshi understood the President’s far-sighted intentions, which was why he no longer objected to Kato Rumiko taking the position of head of the Hong Kong office.
“Currently, there is nothing that worries me more than the lack of talent within our group of companies. None of the newcomers behind this have followed suit again.
Personnel Minister Takayuki Nanno goes around headhunting and poaching people, but it also takes time, and it’s not something that can all be done in a moment.” Masayoshi Kishimoto said thoughtfully.