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Argument: Hong Kong’s Liberties Are Dying but Business Lives On Hong Kong’s
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ARGUMENT

An expert's point of view on a current event.


HONG KONG’S LIBERTIES ARE DYING BUT BUSINESS LIVES ON


THE TERRITORY’S ROLE AS A MAJOR FINANCIAL HUB REMAINS DESPITE THE CRACKDOWN.

By Hilton Yip, a journalist in Taiwan.
A plane lands in Hong Kong.
A Cathay Pacific aircraft comes in to land at Hong Kong International Airport in
Hong Kong on Aug. 11. Isaac Lawrence/AFP via Getty Images
August 12, 2021, 3:15 PM

With the arrests of numerous political and media figures, changes to school
syllabuses, and an exodus of people at the airport, it would be easy to assume
Hong Kong is “dying.” The reality is more complex. Even as Hong Kong’s civil
liberties are curtailed, the city retains a vital place in the Chinese
economy—one that’s drawing mainlanders in even as some existing residents leave.

Since 2020, Hong Kong has been experiencing a steady reduction of civil
liberties, marked by the passing of the national security law (NSL) last June,
which criminalizes acts of treason, secession, and collusion with foreign forces
and can be broadly applied to justify investigations or arrests.

More than one year since the NSL was passed, Hong Kong is paying a heavy price
for its 2019 protest movement, which lasted more than seven months and saw
mostly peaceful mass protests as well as violent clashes between protesters and
police.

With the arrests of numerous political and media figures, changes to school
syllabuses, and an exodus of people at the airport, it would be easy to assume
Hong Kong is “dying.” The reality is more complex. Even as Hong Kong’s civil
liberties are curtailed, the city retains a vital place in the Chinese
economy—one that’s drawing mainlanders in even as some existing residents leave.

Since 2020, Hong Kong has been experiencing a steady reduction of civil
liberties, marked by the passing of the national security law (NSL) last June,
which criminalizes acts of treason, secession, and collusion with foreign forces
and can be broadly applied to justify investigations or arrests.

More than one year since the NSL was passed, Hong Kong is paying a heavy price
for its 2019 protest movement, which lasted more than seven months and saw
mostly peaceful mass protests as well as violent clashes between protesters and
police.

On July 27, the first-ever trial held under the national security law ended with
the defendant being found guilty of terrorism and secession and then sentenced
to nine years in prison for riding a motorcycle into policemen while carrying a
flag with a popular protest slogan. Given the NSL has been used to criminalize
any form of dissent—including songs, slogans, and children’s books—many see Hong
Kong’s much vaunted autonomy, which was guaranteed until 2047 by the “one
country, two systems” arrangement, as effectively over. In effect, they feel
with decreased civil and media freedoms and rule of law, Hong Kong is becoming
more “Chinese” and less international.

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To signal its displeasure with this, the United States has targeted sanctions at
Chinese Hong Kong-based officials and even Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief
executive. Then-U.S. President Donald Trump also ended preferential economic
treatment in July 2020 for Hong Kong and imposed restrictions on imports of
certain technology products from the United States after the imposition of the
national security law by Beijing.



After the latest round of U.S. sanctions on Chinese officials in July, Beijing
soon retaliated by imposing countersanctions on U.S. and nongovernmental
organization officials, including former U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
However, more importantly is all these sanctions have not curbed the ongoing
crackdown in Hong Kong.

In recent months, the billionaire owner of Hong Kong’s most outspoken critical
newspaper Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai, and several of his editors; dozens of former
legislators; and numerous councilors have been arrested, and many have been
brought to trial. Protest activity is quickly quashed, and annual events like
the July 1 pro-democracy march and June 4 Tiananmen Square commemoration were
denied official permission this year.

However, these arrests mirror the targeted crackdowns carried out in the past
decade on Chinese human rights lawyers, journalists, and feminists. Beijing’s
reaction to anything under its rule that challenges its authority openly,
whether it be Uyghurs or students, is well known.

Although many in Hong Kong as well as international observers see this as a
disaster, this is precisely what Beijing wants, and the hard truth is the city
is still a major financial hub.

Hong Kong is generally functioning, especially its vital financial sector, with
COVID-19 largely under control with single-digit or zero daily cases during the
past month. Hong Kong’s GDP is estimated to have grown by 7.5 percent
year-on-year in the second quarter, after growing by 7.9 percent year-on-year in
the first quarter, ending an 18-month recession due to COVID-19 and the 2019
public protest movement.

Read More

A Hong Kong artist poses in Taiwan.


TAIWANESE ARE SYMPATHETIC BUT UNCERTAIN ABOUT HONG KONG REFUGEES

Widespread support for protesters may not translate into policy.

Argument | Lev Nachman, Shelley Rigger, Chit Wai John Mok, Nathan Kar Ming Chan

For the first half of this year, Hong Kong’s stock market saw a 60 percent rise
in average daily turnover to HK$187.6 billion (US$24.1 billion) compared to the
same period last year. Much of this growth was due to an influx of funds from
the mainland, and with growing U.S.-China tensions, this influx should not just
expect to continue but to increase. Hong Kong bank deposits increased by 5.4
percent in 2020 while foreign direct investment into the city surged by a
whopping 62 percent to US$119 billion, though this was due to a low base in
2019.

There were also 46 initial public offerings in Hong Kong in the first half of
this year, raising a total of HK$213.2 billion (US$24.7 billion), a whopping 130
percent increase from the same period in 2020, according to KPMG International.
These include the HK$48 billion listing of Chinese video-sharing service
Kuaishou Technology and the HK$23 billion listing of JDLogistics.

Hong Kong remains the major choice for Chinese companies to list outside of the
mainland, and there are expectations that some that have listed in the United
States will move listings to Hong Kong to escape tighter scrutiny on Chinese
firms.



Meanwhile, the likes of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs are actually increasing
hiring by thousands of people this year, contradicting expectations that firms
would downgrade their operations. Nonlocal companies based in Hong Kong fell by
0.2 percent year-on-year last June. However, one notable example, asset
management giant Vanguard Group, is actually leaving Hong Kong for Shanghai to
increase its mainland China operations.

There are also fewer expectations these days that Hong Kong could be replaced as
a finance hub by places like Singapore, Tokyo, or even Taipei. It is fanciful to
expect firms that want to do transactions with China to move further away,
especially to places like Taipei, where it is politically sensitive and
restrictive to do business with Beijing.

Hong Kong’s biggest advantage of being physically located next to mainland
China, adjacent to the tech hub of Shenzhen, is something none of its rivals,
especially Singapore, can replicate.

For many foreign businesses operating in Hong Kong, there is a level of concern
about the NSL, which expands authorities’ powers to search, seize, and freeze
the assets of those accused of violating the law. A survey by the American
Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong revealed more than 40 percent of respondents,
but which was only 24 percent of the chamber’s membership, plan to or might
consider leaving.

However, without any viable alternative to Hong Kong, most international firms
are likely to either stay or move just part of their operations to other places.
Chinese companies are also the most numerous nonlocal firms in Hong Kong, with
almost 2,000 firms as of the end of 2020, followed by 1,398 Japanese firms and
1,283 U.S. firms. That doesn’t mean more international companies might leave
Hong Kong in the future, but for now, Hong Kong’s role as China’s financial
gateway to the world is still intact.

The experience of one of the world’s biggest banks, HSBC, is telling. It has
been forced to bend the knee to Beijing and publicly support the NSL, but there
is little chance it would pull out from Hong Kong or reduce its operations there
given as much as 90 percent of HSBC’s profits come from Asia, specifically Hong
Kong.

Although not many companies are leaving, many people are. The NSL has led to
some Hong Kongers wanting to emigrate to more democratic societies. In the first
quarter of this year, more than 34,000 Hong Kongers, of which 13,700 individuals
were already in the country, applied for the U.K.’s BNO route, a special
residency offer for holders of British National (Overseas) passports, which are
only for Hong Kong permanent residents born before the handover in 1997. In
2020, Hong Kong’s population declined by 0.6 percent, the first since 2003.

But this might not concern Beijing too much. If the pandemic clears and borders
reopen, more mainland Chinese will continue to move to Hong Kong, joining the
more than 1 million people already living and working there. Hong Kong
authorities have even tried urging Hong Kong youths to go to the mainland to
work or live, especially in adjoining Shenzhen. And Hong Kong has experienced
exoduses before in the 1980s and 1990s before the handover, with many later
returning to Hong Kong again.



Frenetic and crowded, Hong Kong has never been a comfortable city for its
people, whether as a financial hub, a trading center, and especially during the
post-World War II period when its population more than tripled due to an influx
of refugees from mainland China. Its governing and business elites have always
prized economic rights rather than political rights, taking pride in Hong Kong’s
regularly high rankings as the world’s freest economy and prickling at any drops
or removals, such as from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom
this year. So although the loss of civil liberties is a serious concern, many
Hong Kongers already face tremendous economic struggles, such as astronomical
home prices.

Despite being one of Asia’s wealthiest places, with a GDP per capita of more
than US$48,000, Hong Kong also has a poverty rate of more than 21 percent, high
inequality, and some of the world’s most expensive and smallest apartments. Hong
Kong’s legislature might be the only one in the world where companies can vote
for representatives in several functional constituency seats, which are reserved
for sectors like commerce, industry, insurance, and, of course, finance.

The integration of Hong Kong with mainland China, which many worry about, has
been a goal for some time, as the Greater Bay Area plan, which envisions a
Silicon Valley-like region combining Hong Kong, Macao, and nine major cities in
Guangdong province, attests. Major infrastructural projects like the high-speed
rail from Hong Kong to Shenzhen and Guangzhou and the 34-mile Hong
Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, which both opened in 2018, also physically enforce
this integration. Although the Greater Bay Area plan has been mentioned less
recently, more integration in the future would not be unexpected.

Constant pronouncements that Hong Kong is “dying” risk obscuring and simplifying
the reality of what is happening there: a deliberate transformation carried out
under the direction of Beijing, which cares little about the civil liberties
being lost while retaining the city’s financial hub status. In other words, the
Hong Kong of old is gone and is not coming back soon. This wouldn’t be the first
time Hong Kong has been perceived in a limited manner. The heavy coverage of the
2019 protest movement, which received wide international support, was followed
by much fewer articles examining the aftermath or analyzing how the movement was
defeated.

There are few signs Hong Kong authorities’ crackdown on civil liberties and
political figures will abate despite mounting criticism and condemnation as well
as sanctions. It might very well continue in the coming months, even as Hong
Kong’s economy and financial sector continue to power on.

For the United States and others like the United Kingdom and Japan, condemning
Beijing and Hong Kong authorities must also be weighed against the fact that
thousands of firms from those countries operate and thrive in the city, doing
business with mainland China. There is a clear limit to what the United States
can do, even though the Biden administration issued an advisory in mid-July
warning U.S. firms about events in Hong Kong.

Current events require the United States as well as others to reevaluate how
they perceive the city and grasp the magnitude of the strategic challenges to
facing China.



See Also: Is It Time for the U.S. to Issue a Digital Dollar?

Hilton Yip is a journalist in Taiwan.


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