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Hong Kong Has No Space Left for the Dead (vice.com)
Justin Heifetz, writing for Motherboard: When Fung Wai-tsun's family carried their grandfather's ashes across the Hong Kong border to Mainland China in 2013, they worried Customs officers, thinking the urn was full of drugs, would stop them. Fung, like many others in Hong Kong, could not find a space to lay his loved one to rest in his own city and would have to settle for a site across the border and hours away. It's an increasingly common story as demand for spaces to house the dead outpaces supply here in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of some 7.4 million people. Hong Kong's public, government-run spaces to store ashes -- which are affordable to the public, starting at $360 -- have waiting lists that can last years. But many Chinese, like Fung, strongly believe the ashes must be put in a resting place immediately as to not disrespect their ancestor's spirit. Meanwhile, a private space -- one that is not run by the government -- tends to start at more than $6,000 and can go for as high as $130,000. This is simply not an option for many families like the Fung's. In Hong Kong, most people cremate their loved ones and house the urns in columbariums, or spaces where people can then go to pay their respects. While burying a body is possible, the option is prohibitively expensive -- and besides, Hong Kong has a law that the body must be exhumed after six years, at which point one must be cremated.
San Francisco voted to stop burying dead folks in the city way back in 1900. Rich folks had their graves moved. Poor folks often didn't get moved at all. http://www.7x7.com/the-dark-hi...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
It's related to tech through science-fiction writing. Many authors based stories on the prospect of the world running out of space and alternative solutions being found (removing health and safety laws to increase death rates), allowing the population to eliminate each other to get birth permits. Star Wars even had an entire planet based on this problem (Coruscant).
Some countries like Bangladesh and Singapore have also run out of space. Bangladesh is begging other countries to take their surplus population. Hong Kong already has "coffin apartments". The next stage for them is to start building over the oceans or reclaiming land.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
No, the British handed over HK to China in the late 1990s. China promised not to "interfere" with HK until 2047, but are already meddling in massive ways like requiring all elections in HK to only involve candidates China has pre-approved. HK is classified as a SAR (semi-autonomous region) along with places like Macau, part of China's "one-country, two-systems" policy. That means as a HK resident you pay HK taxes and not Chinese taxes. It also means as a HK resident, you follow HK laws and not Chinese laws (an agreement that expires in 2047, and weakened by China's view that anti-secession laws in China still apply to SARs like HK). All that said, HK is not a country, and China's military is stationed in HK. To avoid alarming people, the Chinese military is instructed to dress in a special uniform for HK and not the standard PRC military regalia.