by Hana Iwaki

Globalization has become big issues to all over the world since 1970s.  Globalization means that many things like human, information, money and stuff move over the countries and a political, economic, and cultural boundary line and a barrier become borderless.  As a result, information network and market on a global scale are formed and then information and capital move freely. That means all over the world receive its impact at the same time.  At first glance, the globalization has a good influence to the world.  But is that so?  In this blog, I want to give an example, Hong Kong which is one of the global cities.  Global city is the center of the global economy, there is a trade with various cities around the world, and it has developed enterprise services (consulting, legal, financial, etc.) particularly.  In the global cities, managers and administrative post, a service industry increases to provide services to them.  Because of that, the ratio, rich and poor, rises and the middle relatively fall.

In Hong Kong, many skyscrapers are crowded.  There is famous as center of finance so many enterprises have a company in there.  They need workers.  Many Chinese people immigrated to Hong Kong so that they can earn money.  People in Hong Kong welcomed them because there were duty and hard work.  Many people didn’t want to do hard work such as building cleaning and construction.  However, Chinese people were willing to do it because they needed money to survive.  So many people immigrated to Hong Kong and it is a small town, so the price of land got high by the immigration and globalization.  A real estate agent built high-class high-rise condominium for a high price so that they can earn money.  Of course, the immigrants have no money such as buying the condominium, much less rent it.  Where do they live?  They live in “beehive apartment”.  It is the apartment separated 7 to 8 spaces in a room.  A space for a person is too small and there are many fleas and lice.  They live inferior environment.

This also happens elsewhere in the world.  To save such people, the government and enterprise should take steps to cope with the situation.  For example, training poor people for taking a good job or guarantee the place where people live more comfortably. They must something take measures, otherwise poor people’s living going down and they might pass away.

References
HARVESLIFE HONG KONG.The reason why steps for poor don’t improve. Retrieved from HARVESLIFE HONG KONG: http://www.harveslife.com/blog/item_3775.html
Maruhaku, T. Inspecting the hypothesis of Global city: polarization of social strata of Hong Kong. Retrieved from BLOGOS: http://blogos.com/article/8477/