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Hong Kong’s Housing Policy: A Case Study in Social Justice

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. From 1842 to 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony and China assumed sovereignty, under the “one country, two systems” principle, on 1 July 1997. It has a total area of 1104 km and a population of 6.92 million in 2007 (Information Services Department 2008). In Hong Kong, about half of the population lives in various forms of public housing and government expenditure on public housing accounted for 5.9% of the public expenditure in 2007–2008. The government sold over 450,000 subsidized sale flats to eligible households at discounted price under various subsidized home ownership schemes. Moreover, at the end of 2007, about 2 million people lived in public rental housing (Information Services Department 2008). Given the importance of housing policy in Hong Kong, it arouses the attention of officials, politicians and academic researchers. As pointed out in the book, there were a few studies among the huge literature on Hong Kong’s housing policy focusing on social justice. This book provides an interdisciplinary approach to examine housing policy in Hong Kong with emphasis on the philosophical discussion of social justices and its role in shaping public policy. The book can be broadly divided into two parts. The first part discusses the western and Chinese concepts of justice. Different theories of social justice, from ancient to contemporary concepts, are examined. The second part discusses the chronological development of justice in Hong Kong’s housing policy. It also provides a detailed discussion of the 28 interviews the author conducted in 2003. The interviewees were sub-divided into five groups in accordance with the stake they held in Hong Kong’s housing policy. The first half of the book reads like an introductory text on the philosophy of social justice. For those with no prior training in philosophy, this provides an important framework to follow the discussions in part two. Unfortunately, this part is not easy to follow. I find the various concepts of justice confusing and difficult to remember. For the benefits of those with no prior training in philosophy, a good summary of each major section should be added. A more detailed table of contents, and clearly labelled and numbered sub-sections would be useful. Chapter One also briefly describes the development of housing policy in Hong Kong from pre-1954 to 2002. Official statistics cited are only updated to 2001. For a book published in 2008, with a preface written in May 2008, readers would expect to find more current material. In fact, it takes no more than a few hours of desk research to include 2006 or 2007 data. Moreover, demographic changes, especially the diminishing household size and sources of population growth, should be examined in detail. A huge influx of immigrants from mainland China and their eligibility for public Housing, Theory and Society Vol. 29, No. 4, 435–439, 2012