Beijing is casting more doubt on Hong Kong’s future as a financial hub

Name: Hong Kong opposition lawmakers to resign en masse over Legislative Council disqualifications
Uploaded: 2020-11-17T14:00:18.000Z
Duration: 4 min 8 s
Description: Hong Kong opposition lawmakers to resign en masse over Legislative Council disqualifications

The disqualification of four Hong Kong legislators and the suspension of Ant’s IPO point to a discomforting conclusion: the city’s role as a business hub with an independent legal system is now vulnerable to diktats from Beijing

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A bank’s electronic board shows the share index at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Photo: AP

Mark Clifford

Published: 10:00pm, 17 Nov 2020Updated: 2:26am, 18 Nov 2020

Beijing’s stress test of Hong Kong has entered a new, more critical stage. What’s at stake is whether business can be divorced from politics – whether a steadily less free city can not only remain economically prosperous but continue as an international financial centre.

If Hong Kong survives this test, the territory will be an exceptional case, perhaps the only city ever that has thrived as a global hub even as its political and civil freedoms are taken away. Global financial centres are hard to replace. But the obstacles are mounting.

Two watershed events have highlighted this challenge. The disqualification of four Hong Kong legislators by the Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress, without even a nod to due judicial process, was a body blow to Hong Kong’s once-proud reputation as an open city ruled by laws, not men.

It’s hard to say if the end of an opposition camp in a Legislative Council that never had much in the way of power mattered as much as the way that the NPC trampled on any semblance of rule of law in Hong Kong and further shredded the concept of “one country, two systems”.

The legal system is one of Hong Kong’s last surviving independent institutions. The targeting of individual judges by pro-Beijing political figures signals that the campaign to bring the courts under Communist Party control will continue. The end of judicial independence would call into question the sanctity of contracts and undercut Hong Kong’s reputation as a place where property rights are respected.

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Hong Kong opposition lawmakers to resign en masse over Legislative Council disqualifications

The abrupt cancellation of Ant’s initial public offering demonstrated the same truth: Hong Kong’s role as a financial centre is now subject to diktats from Beijing, not law. What should have been a time for celebrating the world’s largest-ever IPO instead stands as a cautionary tale for private entrepreneurs that no company is too large to be brought to heel. An entrepreneur making his case – as Jack Ma did – would be listened to in most countries. Not in China.