Similar to the data point that half of New York City is living near poverty, Hong Kong elderly poor is on the rise. Not a surprise to me given what I saw in Hong Kong when I was working on my new book, the Beyond the Pale of Two Cities. The new statistic about one out of three senior citizens in Hong Kong falls under the poverty line has just quantified an obvious problem. The governments can choose to either deny these facts or do something about it before the term "middle class" can only be found in history books.