10.00.00

Montage of cages and bodies within.

VO.. The omens must have looked pretty good for Wu Fat Kong when he left China to make his fortune.

He was 15, able bodied, and willing to work hard.

35 years later, his worldly fortune is here .. his home little bigger than a child's cot.

00.46

Cage man.

"I've no alternative but to live here. But there's nothing here for me. You talk about dignity ? All I have is these four walls  and the ceiling .. there's no dignity."

01.00

Aerial shot of Hong Kong greenery and city.

VO.. On the face of it no city in the world stands as a finer example of what almost unbridled capitalism can achieve. Government sets a few rules, taxes are kept low and everyone is free to make as much money as they like.

01.25

Boat chugging along with David Chu (business man) at the stern.

David Chu epitomises the dream that's brought 6 million people to Hong Kong.

Chu walks up onto upper deck.

A lot of his friends are quietly terrified that China's heavy hand in 1997 will crush the colony's free-wheeling ways ... but David Chu himself displays a thorough-going optimism...

01.47

David Chu.

"I think things will get better."

Reporter - Peter George - asks question.

"Better ?"

Chu.

"When you come to visit me, you can come onto my yacht again except it will be a bigger one." (laughs)

View of wake as boat draws away from camera.

VO.. Once, the David Chus of Hong Kong made their fortunes on the back of the colony's abundant cheap labour - making goods to sell to the world at bargain prices .. today, that's all changed..

02.14

View of buildings and residential area.

Property, speculation and international deal making is what it's all about today, leaving Hong Kong's workers priced out of the market by their kinsmen in mainland China.

02.39

David Chu.

"The Hong Kong labour rates are at least ten times higher than the mainland rate."

Question

(Peter George).

"What do you have to pay a labourer in the mainland ?"

Chu.

"Probably in the vicinity of five US dollars a day."

Question

(Peter George).

"So any labourer at that level in Hong Kong today has reached use-by date, no longer necessary to Hong Kong?"

Chu.

"Yes, but Hong Kong, we still need people to service the industry in Hong Kong. We need people to clean the streets so people just shift to different jobs."

03.20

Workers: old faces, barrow pushers etc.

VO.. Structural adjustment is what the economists call it .. the hundreds of thousands of semi-skilled and unskilled workers and their families who can't adjust to their loss of livelihood are more likely to call it a disaster...

Faces in Nat Sot Market.

Here, in the showpiece of capitalist enterprise, the spectre of widespread poverty is looming...

03.50

Poverty in Hong Kong has another dimension rarely discussed in Western society, but one at the core of Chinese culture..

04.10

Professor Stewart McPherson, Hong Kong City University.

"Without enough, just the minimum to have a normal, ordinary - not rich social life they just won't have dignity. Now dignity in this culture is very, very important and if you don't have just that minimum dignity then people lose face and that's very, very important."

04.23

Machine shop. Owner: Cheung Mon works machine.

VO.. It's people like Cheung Mon whose dignity is disappearing... the very people whose sweat and cheap labour built Hong Kong into the place it is today.

Twenty years ago he employed thirty people .. today he's got seven.

04.55

Cheung Mon.

"The business is no good. I'm losing money every month. I don't know what I'm going to do. I just try to keep going day by day until I can't keep it going any longer. Then I'll close it down." 

Machine shop.

VO.. Since he's been here, Cheung Mon's rent has soared from 400 dollars a month to 6000... inflation, recession and China's cheap labour have ruined him.

05.21

Cheung Mon.

"In the current climate, I don't think the government's going to help us, because it's nearly 1997 and they're leaving. So when China takes over sovereignty, they'll have deal with the problems but I think the prospect for people in Hong Kong is very gloomy."

VO.. In truth people like Cheung Mon expect no help .. not from the businessmen who once needed them so much and not from China.

If they all agree on anything at all, it's that no matter how bad things get, introducing any form of welfare state will destroy the notion of Hong Kong's spirit of free enterprise...

The bleak truth is that the Chinese Worker's State has no intention of squandering money on anything that smacks of social welfare and in that they have an incongruous accord with Hong Kong's capitalist elite.

06.13

David Chu.

"In Hong Kong if we have an  downturn, people out of a job, so without unemployment benefits they immediately willing to accept a job of lower pay. Do you see what I mean ? Because they have to make a living. So they are willing to take a half wage immediately. Whereas in Western society it would never happen as you know so we can sell more products so the recovery is much faster." 

06.34

Chan speaks at card game.

"The words from the mouth of a rich man are different from those of the ordinary worker's."

VO.. Chan and his friends while away the days as best as they can - thrown into premature retirement they neither envisioned, nor wanted nor can afford.

07.05

Chan.

"The businessmen earn enough to keep them ahead of inflation, but we can't keep up. Businessmen don't even think about us workers."

07.15

Double decker bus going along road.

VO.. They're amongst the three million people - half of Hong Kong's population - who live in cheap government housing.

07.25

Apartment exteriors.

The huge estates began in the 50s not as some philanthropic social experiment but as a means to attract labour to Hong Kong while keeping wages right down. There's still no minimum wage - and there are no dole payments.

07.41

Bird sings in cage.

07.51

Professor Stewart McPherson.

"They do not believe in raising benefits to an adequate level. They do believe that it is important to have poverty to encourage people to work. If you don't have a pool of poverty, people can't be encouraged to work for low wages. It's not very complicated."

Question

(PeterGeorge).

"No, but that is in effect, at least in Western terms entirely cynical."

McPherson.

"I guess it is. I guess it is."

08.14

Walk through cages and along corridors.

VO.. At the bottom of Hong Kong's ‘pool of poverty', you find the people known as ‘cage men'.

Hidden away above a Chinese restaurant not far from the shopping paradise of Kowloon is a hell hole for the broken dreams of Hong Kong.

Kalina conducts a tour round cages. Some comments from reporter.

"This is one of the cage homes in Hong Kong and this one is the largest in the surrounding area. This is about 1000 square feet  and there lives around 100 people here. I think these people cannot live a dignified life in Hong Kong."

08.55

Kalina faces camera.

"And instead they are very hard working individuals in the past. So we think we can do more and we should do more."

Question

(Peter George).

"And loss of dignity is a very severe and serious thing in this country isn't it?"

Kalina.

"I think so especially for the poor people. When our society first contacted this group of people we find that many of them, they just want to die or get suicide and they have no hope in life. So it's a great tragedy for our affluent society.

09.32

Man lying in cage.

VO.. Today the waiting lists to get government housing can be as long as seven years - but some who've lived here for thirty years can now imagine nothing else..

09.46

Cageman no 1.

"I always try to be happy wherever I am. It doesn't matter to me."

09.54

Cageman no. 2.

"I've picked the best spot in the place because it's not so crowded here and I can spread my things around. I don't like the upper deck, I prefer the lower one. It's alright here, but in summer it's very hot and the electric fan isn't very strong. It's alright, I've grown used to it but the air isn't very good."

10.31

Factories in disrepair.

VO.. It's clear enough to see what's going on - factories closing, work disappearing, an entire generation of workers facing its use-by date, and a sink or swim economy doing pitifully little for those who are drowning.

10.55

Lee Cheuk Yan, Confederation of the Trade Unions.

"I would call this an unholy alliance when you look at the Chinese communists are allying with the Hong Kong big capitalists and the British government in ensuring that Hong Kong prosperity will go only to the pocket of a handful of big business elite."

VO.. Cheuk Yan is amongst the few prepared to take on the three big interests in the supercharged political atmosphere leading up to 1997.

Lee.

"When we try in the Union, when we try to propose an unemployment assistance scheme everyone - the Chinese government, the British government, the big business elite - always say that we are a free luncher, we are only looking at welfare state and no one really proposes anything to solve the problem of the poor in Hong Kong."

11.45

Workers, people, streets.

VO.. If Mr Lee's voice is a lonely one, it's because his opponents argue that the very essence of Hong Kong's society - its Chinese culture - will get it through these hard times.

And in hard times, say the David Chus of this world, Chinese families pull together to help each other through...

12.09

David Chu.

"So our tradition of each family take care of each of their own members with the assistance of relatives as well, this is enormous, efficient way of maintaining social stability.

Colourful junks etc.

To rely on our cultural traditions is absolutely essential because things can be done so much cheaper within the family rather than have the government perform the service. It's cheaper by a factor of ten, a hundred or a thousand times cheaper."

12.40

Old Woman shuffling off into dream-like pool of light through corridor of cages.

VO.. For those who've made it - and those who still hope to - it's a view that rings with common, free-market sense.

And for those who haven't... well, they're still wondering what happened to their dreams.

13.20

ENDS.