In the last two weeks, an ugly 'red tide' has made beaches unusable and introduced new perils to dragon boat training. It is also a troubling symbol of Hong Kong's missed opportunities.
Unusually warm weather has unleashed the algae bloom. The brown scum and red colour are byproducts of an algae, Cochlodinium, feeding on raw sewage coursing down the Pearl River Delta, to which Hong Kong adds its own sewage from 19th-century nullahs that open into typhoon shelters in Central and elsewhere.
The city's deepening paralysis is another cause, itself a byproduct of gridlock over democratic reforms. The government has postponed indefinitely investments in secondary treatment at Stonecutter's Island, Hong Kong's major sewage treatment facility, despite expert advice and years of consultations. It claims the algae is non-toxic - but dragon boaters are coming down with rashes and red-eye, and lifeguards have been telling people to stay out of the water.
If sewage is one example, gridlock surfaces in places where one might least expect it. Hong Kong lags behind the mainland on key policy issues, from financial reporting to corporate social responsibility and competition policy. In 2005, the last time the stock exchange proposed quarterly reporting, it backed down after local corporate heavyweights claimed it would impose too much of a financial burden.
Such problems are understandable in a city with vestiges of developing-world poverty, despite a per capita income on a par with Spain. At the low end of the ladder, according to the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the pay of some 334,600 unskilled workers has fallen 16.7 per cent since 1997, to HK$5,000 per month, even as top wage earners are back to the 1997 average of HK$27,000.
Yet the mainland's economy has provided an irresistible force, helping Hong Kong's to an average annual growth rate of 7.6 per cent in each of the past three years, based largely on its role as a trade and logistics centre for the mainland. Such prosperity provides a window of opportunity for policymakers.
