This is a few years old and a bit outdated, but the general idea holds true.
...sure 759s foolishly expanded into an unfair market, but they certainly aren't playing on a level field. I know most of the regulars on these forums know this, but for anyone new to Hong Kong it is a very interesting read. Hong Kong is anything but a free economy, it is essentially all owned and operated by a handful of very powerful people who started with real estate and then branched out into other sectors.
The common denominator is that virtually all of them started with property - and then progressively gobbled up utility and public service companies.
Here are just a few examples of this cross-sector frenzy.
Cheung Kong Holdings buying Hutchison Whampoa in 1979 - a monster conglomerate involved in myriad businesses, among them the Park'n Shop supermarket chain.
Sun Hung Kai Properties controlling the Kowloon Motor Bus operator.
Lee Shau-Kee accumulating shares in The Hong Kong and China Gas - the town gas monopoly - before the company was listed in 1981.
Hutchison Whampoa buying Hongkong Electric - one of the two electricity duopolies - in 1985.
New World Development being awarded the Hong Kong public bus routes franchise in 1998 and buying Hong Kong Ferry in 2000.
The Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW) takeover of Hong Kong Telecom in 2000, masterminded by Richard Li, the younger son of Cheung Kong Holdings chairman Li Ka-shing, the wealthiest Chinese in the world.
This amounts to roughly six families controlling virtually all of Hong Kong's economic sectors. And it will stay like this. The Chinese tradition of passing the family fortune from generation to generation amounts to what Poon derides as an "antiquated feudal system".
There's nothing "free market" about Hong Kong's major utility/public service companies. On the contrary; they are monopolies or oligopolies. The two supermarket chains - Park'n Shop and Wellcome - have no less than 70% of market share. City Super is owned by Japanese - but that's an upscale brand, with only a few locations, and out of reach for most Hongkongers.
Park'n Shop and Wellcome consolidated their dominance essentially by pricing smaller companies out of the market; they could easily afford it. Park'n Shop is the retail/food division of A S Watson, which is part of the Hutchison/Cheung Kong conglomerate. Wellcome is part of the Jardines/Hong Kong Land group. So no wonder, for instance, a Park'n Shop outlet is in or around every building developed by Hutchison or Cheung Kong.
A measure of their power is that France's Carrefour - the second-largest global supermarket chain - tried to break into the Hong Kong market in 1996. They gave up four years later.
Asia Times Online :: The myth of a free Hong Kong economy