it's in contrast to what people consider "bad life" in EU, because of high taxes and socialist structure. as a reminder that there are many places in the world where people barely survive even if they worked all their life. so Europe is not a bad place to be. It is a perspective to think about, in contrast of the topic starter who mentioned the impression from EU as "Taxed to︀ death, highly bureaucratic, entrepreneurial spirit destroyed, handouts to the undeserving and so on." 🙂 . it's︁ not that bad, offer these people who don't understand how they got to a cage︂ living in their 60s-70s after life of hard work, the conditions in Europe, they'll be︃ happy to swap any day and start over their life from beginning, but in a︄ socialist country 🙂 .
btw the controlled building rules are not for︇ having the free space and parks, it's the main revenue for the government because it︈ leases all lands to those skyscrapers and condominiums, as main income for them, so land︉ must remain as expensive as possible, otherwise they'll need to impose taxes on something else︊ in order to keep the machine running. The tax here is simply shifted into real︋ estate 'extra' unnecessary exorbitant costs, but technically it's just a 'tax' for the government, so︌ anyone renting/owning any real estate, basically pays its tax to HK by that (it's expensive,︍ lease of land is always worth it for developers because apartments will sell for huge︎ prices, so developers afford to pay the government sick lease prices on the land, that️ way the HK tax happens, just in "workaround way" through the real estate). Not saying it's a fact, but that's what I've read about why government must keep tight control of what lands they authorize for construction over time. Feel free to point me to another information if I'm wrong 🙂 . But makes sense to me so far.