I’d use some caution in trying to compare raw salary numbers across different countries or even different parts of the same country.
What you need to make in order to have a decent standard of living depends completely on where you live. Even in the US it might take a couple of hundred of thousand dollars to live in SFO at an equivalent standard of living to someone in La Crosse, WI who is making a quarter of that.
Which is is why many commute.
If you base and live in HKG that number is way huge.
Insanely enough — but not surprisingly — CX has been about as hostile as it could be toward commuters (and well below the privileges of many other majors—and even some regionals ) — as well as basings — which is the one aspect that enables some folks to keep working here. You can’t make this stuff up.
Stuff up ..... I guess that about says it all.