In Hong Kong, the tiny corner of China where it is still permitted to gather freely outside a McDonald’s, several thousand people took to the streets last weekend. They were protesting at the contents of the budget. But, unlike their counterparts in Greece and Ireland, they were not lamenting cuts to public services necessitated by big deficits. Rather, they were outraged by what their government was proposing to do with its large surplus: give each and every one of them HK$6,000, or about US$770.

The people of Hong Kong are too savvy to take this bribe lying down. Many worry that the cash handout will stoke inflation, already running at 4.5 per cent and identified by John Tsang, financial secretary, as the most ominous cloud on the economic horizon. The payout, an embarrassing U-turn for Mr Tsang, was meant to placate a public angered at the government’s parsimony in the face of a whopping surplus. Revenue exceeded expenditure of HK$304bn by HK$71.3bn, four times the HK$17bn surplus of the previous year. Many wonder if the authorities could not spend the money more wisely, or not collect so much in the first place.

Christine Loh, head of Civic Exchange, a Hong Kong think-tank, calls it the “Scrooge budget”. The government’s habit of racking up annual surpluses means it has accrued fiscal reserves of HK$592bn, equivalent to 23 months’ expenditure or 34 per cent of gross domestic product. Why, asks Ms Loh, is it so allergic to increasing recurring expenditure? Could it not spend even a fraction of the money on cleaning up the city’s pollution by introducing greener buses, or improving the wholly inadequate care provided to elderly and disabled people?