Widening of a Poverty Gap: A Condition of Governance Crisis in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong as a free society, where capitalistic economy is essentially adopted, has failed to balance the distribution of resources and led to the widening of income disparity, indicated by a Gini coefficient of over 0.53 (Ma, 2011) as well as the stagnation of median household income of $18,000 across 10 years (The World Bank, 2012). The problem of poverty and income inequality had been increasingly felt by the citizens (Wong, Wan, & Law, 2010) which severs the stability and legitimacy of the Hong Kong Government’s rule which hinges on the materialistic benefit for the whole citizenship (Ma, 2011). The unchangeable fate of poverty as well as the increasing pursuit of social justice (as indicated by an increase of keywords such as “Corporate social responsibility”: 6 occurrences in 2001; 522 in 2010) leads to the emergence of scepticism and grievances against the privileged rich (as indicated by an increase of keywords such as “Hate-rich”: 0 in 2001; 1257 in 2010). Failure to identify the social confrontation and to exert the Government’s role of resource redistribution will lead to governance crisis (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978). Hence, the manager requires indication tools to assess the situation (Holzer & Kloby, 2005). A quantifiable social indicator of media coverage (Bengston & Fan, 1999) is required to evaluate objectively the qualitative social tension.