Hong Kong as a financial centre could drown if ‘river water’ from China continues to rise

A more mainland-dominated Hong Kong would threaten the city’s robust regulatory regime, high corporate governance standards, and freedom of the press and information, putting its status as Asia’s financial centre at risk

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A bronze sculpture of a bull looks over Exchange Square in Central where Hong Kong’s stock exchange stands. Hong Kong’s position as the most important financial market in Asia relies on freedom of information. Photo: Warton Li

Mark L.

Published: 9:00am, 17 Jul 2019Updated: 9:07am, 17 Jul 2019

Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin famously said that well water and river water do not mix. Jiang’s point, made soon after the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, was that Hong Kong shouldn’t try to pollute the mainland with ideas about democracy. Cadres from up north, in turn, wouldn’t try to inflict communism on postcolonial Hong Kong.

Of course, the idea that Hong Kong would be as separate from China after 1997 as it was during British colonialism was never realistic. Now, although Hong Kong’s extradition bill is dead, that river water from the north threatens to submerge the special administrative region.

It’s worth going beyond the political sloganeering and thinking more concretely about what a more mainland-dominated – and politically restrictive – Hong Kong means for business, if the special administrative region is more fully merged before 2047. The reality is likely to lie somewhere between the utopian idea of a harmonious and vibrant Greater Bay Area and dystopian visions of the sort of surveillance state now being trialled in Xinjiang.