(26 Feb) The financial Secretary has revealed in a speech to the legislative council of hong kong planning to pay permanent residents whose age are over 18 HK$10,000 each. This has stirred up heat from Chinese social media as they believed the money used by the Hong Kong government was given by the Chinese Central Government. Most of the commenters expressed envy, jealousy and even hate. They expressed the hardships that they endured due to the coronavirus outbreak as the nation continues to grind to a screeching halt as more than 20 million people are still confined in their homes.
Some netizens even proposed that the lump sum payment should only be made when the recipient has demonstrated their patriotic spirit with acts like singing the Chinese national anthem in full. The thing is that most Chinese mainlanders do not understand that Hong Kong is fiscally independent of the Chinese government, thus the money used for the scheme comes from Hong Kong taxpayers, not Chinese taxpayers.
Furthermore, as the cash payout scheme only benefits Hong Kong permanent residents, some non-permanet residents are complaining that they do not benefit even though they pay their fair share of taxes. Miss Zhao took to social media to show her discontent, posting:” The Hong Kong government is giving out money to permanent residents, but we non-permanent taxpayers are not benefited, even though the outbreak affects us all equally.” She also pointed out that the government had not taken into consideration about minority groups stating a policy Macau has recently announced to hand out cash payouts whether or not an individual is a permanent or non-permanent resident.
Judging from the reactions of Chinese social media, Chinese propaganda has been working hard to spread misinformation, deepening the already deep divide between Hong Kong and Mainland China.
Source: China HKET
https://bit.ly/2PJOqtr (https://bit.ly/2PJOqtr)
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