When you’ve been working hard to kill something, and succeeding, announcing that the victim of your murderous ministrations is as vibrant and perky as ever won’t change the fact.
Question: “Will Hong Kong’s star shine again?” (Radio Free Asia, October 22, 2023).
Well, why not? Hong Kong is once again open and ready for business, the politicians there are telling everybody. The pandemic is over! Come back!
The effects of the pandemic have battered commerce everywhere, especially where zero-COVID protocols were enforced. But other economies have bounced back once officials stopped trying to stop people from walking around. Why not Hong Kong?
Largely because the Chinese government exploited the opportunity presented by the pandemic to finish swinging down the hammer on Hong Kong’s rights and liberties. The enduring harms inflicted by the sweepingly repressive National Security Law of 2020 can’t begin to be cured except by rescinding the law. Since the Chinese Communist Party is unlikely to loosen its now-strangling grip anytime soon, doing business in the city—living in the city—has become harder and more dangerous. Many Hong Kongers of more independent-minded or entrepreneurial bent have fled to other lands and will not be returning.
The city’s international financial center and economic hub positions are crumbling under the weight of Beijing’s tightened grip of the special administrative region where the “one country, two systems” principle is taking a new form under Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Hong Kong’s major indicators—freedom, rule of law, international financial center status, international standards of practices, property market, stock market, government’s financial reserves—are all on the decline, and it is a Hong Kong government problem,” points out Lew Mon-hung, a businessman and former Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference committee member. . . .
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee can’t cheerlead his way out of this.
