Bloomberg: Is This the Death of Hong Kong? William Pesek Perhaps rumors of Hong Kongs demise werent exaggerated after all. Nineteen years ago this month, Fortune ran its infamous Death of Hong Kong cover. By 2007, the magazine had changed its tune, deciding, in the Mark Twain sense, that it had been wrong and that reports of Hong Kongs death have been greatly exaggerated. Given recent events, however, Fortunes initial prediction that Beijings meddling would cost Hong Kong its pivotal role in the world may have been spot on. Take this months unnerving white paper from China’s State Council, which asserted that Beijings interests took precedence over Hong Kongs. Its characterization of those who didnt want to live in a Communist society as “confused or lopsided” was as bizarre as it was chilling. So was its suggestion that Hong Kong courts effectively need to ask what would Mao Zedong do? before making decisions. The upshot: Hong Kongs 7 million citizens can forget about being truly free to pick their own leader in 2017, as Beijing had led them to believe would happen. Its no longer impossible to imagine the end of the “One Country, Two Systems” policy China agreed to after the U.K. returned the territory in 1997. And Hong Kongers dont intend to surrender quietly. China is enraged by an unofficial online poll on Hong Kong democratic ambitions thats been taking place since Friday. What Beijing has labeled an illegal vote, nearly 700,000 Hong Kongers so far have embraced to tell Beijing to back off. This is nothing if not an own goal by Xi Jinping. China needs to become more like Hong Kong, not the other way around. What Chinese officials mean when they talk about rebalancing China away from exports and unproductive investment is creating a vibrant and innovative service sector. A key part of that process will be inspiring more young Chinese to take risks and embrace innovation like Jack Ma, the billionaire founder of Alibaba. But that requires an environment conducive to true debate, creative destruction and more than a little countercultural discourse. How is that possible when the tools the rest of the world uses to spark thought and disrupt complacency -- a free press, academics unafraid of thinking aloud, Google, Facebook and Twitter -- are banned? Hong Kong has nothing to learn from Beijing. An economy consistently rated the worlds freest has zero to gain from the self-censorship, patriotic education and opacity China increasingly wants to impose across the Pearl River. If China continues to muddle financial transparency, call into question the independence of Hong Kongs courts and force expatriate economists to censor themselves, Singapore wins -- not Hong Kongs people. China must incorporate Hong Kongs freewheeling ethos, not stamp it out. In an opinion piece last week, state-backed China Daily likened Hong Kongs democratic dreams to a fable about a greedy fisherman’s wife who wished for too much. Greedy? Because they crave better local leaders? That kind of arrogant rhetoric is only driving more and more Hong Kongers into the activists camp, reports my Bloomberg colleague Natasha Khan. On Friday night, Occupy Central, Hong Kongs answer Occupy Wall Street, led a sing-along downtown of “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Misérables. If Xi pushes too far, millions more will add their voices to that chorus, miserable that their world-class economic system died a death entirely of Beijings making. To contact the writer of this article: William Pesek at [email protected] To contact the editor responsible for this article: Nisid Hajari at [email protected]
Posted on: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 15:53:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015