by Big Lychee
The NanfangToday, 9:01 AM
Hong Kong’s biggest post-1997 buzzword has been ‘integration’. Other than the fact that it is with the Mainland, no-one agrees exactly what it entails. Most accept that it is primarily to do with the economy – trade and investment. Some also see a social dimension involving personal and household mobility. To encourage correct thinking, the government started to use the term ‘boundary’ for the border. Only cynics with a sense of irony apply the label to political matters, like the creeping influence of Chinese officials in the city’s administration.
The basic message has been that, whatever it is, this ‘integration’ is obviously a good thing, allowing Hong Kong to ride China’s rise to global superstardom. Officially, it would not take place at the expense of the city’s international connections. Until recently, only a few throwbacks to the 1980s like former Chief Secretary Anson Chan have asked whether the city would be better off remaining relatively insulated from Mainland influence (as envisaged in much of the Basic Law). In the last few years, of course, such sentiments have taken root among younger radical ‘nativist’ or ‘localist’ groups.
China’s economy is now approaching some sort of disruptive transformation or upheaval – in the absence of reliable data, no-one knows what. (See comments from Willy Lam and others here on the leadership’s dilemma; and slides 2-6 here for a big-picture summary.) But whatever happens, Hong Kong’s Integration-is-Wonderful economy can only suffer.
All right-minded Hongkongers rejoice in reading about the closures of stores selling overpriced garbage (in which landlords feel pain, and Bloomberg amusingly describes Burberry as a ‘trenchcoat maker’). Some observers, peeved at the city’s ingratitude, feel or hope that everyone will be hurt…
William Pesek puts this in the context of Hong Kong’s dismal governance…
Even he, like so many others, makes the mistake of believing Hong Kong ‘has become reliant on … the tens of millions of shoppers’ from the Mainland. It looks like that. But what we are really seeing is – surely – a tourism industry reliant on Hong Kong, not vice-versa. It’s just massive, distorting, unsustainable arbitrage. The city was a happier, more comfortable and certainly no less prosperous place 10 years ago before the unmanageable deluge of Mainland shopper-tourists struck.The city was a happier, more comfortable and certainly no less prosperous place 10 years ago before the unmanageable deluge of Mainland shopper-tourists struck.
The government is off on its hallucinatory fantasy in which we must cram yet more tourists in, and simultaneously pick winners in tech and creative sectors (so long as they don’t, like Uber, compete with established anti-innovative Beijing-favoured tycoon interests). Hence the deal with New World to expand Avenue of Stars. There’s almost a parallel here: China’s leaders can’t think beyond more debt-fueled investment in infrastructure; Hong Kong’s can’t think beyond cramming more tourists in.
There is no reason for Hong Kong people to pay any attention. ‘Integration’ is very much incomplete, of debatable value and meeting popular resistance. The impact of China’s economic slowdown (and factors like a stronger US Dollar) could or should include: fewer crowds, lower rents, lower living costs, more space for smaller companies, and more opportunities for innovators and entrepreneurs. To our bureaucrats and tycoons, these are Bad Things. To the rest of us, China’s dreaded downturn might offer an alternative – not a moment too soon – to an increasingly gloomy ‘Mainland’ future.
The post China’s Downturn Gives Hong Kong an Alternative to Gloomy Mainland-led Futureappeared first on The Nanfang.
https://thenanfang.com/chinas-downturn-gives-hong-kong-an-alternative-to-gloomy-mainland-led-future/
