Privatization of public housing in Hong Kong: a genuine agenda or propaganda

Abstract

It has been 25 years since the first initiative of privatization of public housing was implemented in Hong Kong and a rich literature on the subject has been developed, but most researchers only focus on individual privatization initiatives rather than the big picture. That is, why the privatization process remains stagnant? No attempt has been made to analyse whether the privatization policy and its initiatives are on the right track, or whether those initiatives are compatible and adequate, in order to find out the underlying reason for the stagnant progress on privatization. This paper attempts to fill this gap by first discussing methods of privatizing public housing, then the sequential model is applied to examine every stage of the privatization process. Results of the analysis indicate that the government has committed and continued to ignore numerous mistakes in the privatization process. More important, the government has done nothing to replace market interventions with market mechanisms. The mistakes and shortcomings of existing privatization initiatives are quite obvious and easy to rectify, and yet the government allows them to persist. The evidence leaves many wondering if the stagnant progress of the privatization policy is the result of incompetence in carrying out a genuine agenda or the policy itself is simply propaganda.