Retired banker Stephen Roach is no prophet of Hong Kong
Hong Kong Free Press
Retired banker Stephen Roach seems to have carved out a new career as a prophet of Hong Kong. During his recent trip to Hong Kong, he continued to indulge in a talkfest on the city, making predictions about its future, spilling comments made by his old friend Laura Cha in private conversations, and rebutting the HKSAR government’s clarifications as worrisome denials.
Yet despite having made multiple trips to Hong Kong in recent years, Roach’s remarks betray the same shallowness and short-termism as befit a stockbroker, writing off investments when the going gets tough.
It is true that Hong Kong is facing some tough economic headwinds because of geopolitical uncertainty and structural problems. But its future is bright, because Hong Kong is working hard to restructure its economy.
Hong Kong is undergoing an economic transformation accelerated by integration with mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA). Guangdong’s service economy has improved so much after a three-year lockdown that hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people are drawn to GBA cities during weekends and holidays for shopping and entertainment, in the same way that swarms of mainland tourists flocked to Hong Kong for shopping and enjoyment of Hong Kong’s city life a decade ago.
Greater Bay Area cities have a tradition of helping each other. Now, integration is helping us to resolve a longstanding problem concerning the elderly, among others. Much greater travel convenience is enabling our elderly to retire in better living conditions in the mainland, with financial support from the HKSAR government. More benefits to the economy and the livelihood of the people emanating from integration are on the way.
Our relationship with mainland cities in the Greater Bay Area is a win-win proposition. Mainland cities welcome our tourists, while we open our doors to their industrious workers to replenish our ageing workforce, technicians and engineers to fill our science and technology parks under construction, and top talent in diverse fields to enhance the human capital of our city. With strong support from mainland China, Hong Kong will never lack the resources we need to enhance our talent pool and technological capabilities.
A person does not begin to understand Hong Kong’s future without grasping the context in which Hong Kong moves forward. Hong Kong is a unique city with its freedoms and openness guaranteed under the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement. We are a part of China, no different from Guangzhou and Hangzhou, and we have a moral and constitutional duty to protect the sovereignty, security and developmental interests of our country.
It is baffling that a well-travelled person like Mr. Roach keeps harping on our national security laws. Don’t the US have national security laws? They have plenty. Didn’t the governments of Australia, United Kingdom, and Singapore, just to name a few, upgrade their national security laws in recent years to guard against “foreign power interference” and “hostile state threats”?
Why can’t Hong Kong install national security laws to protect the security of its motherland and restore order and stability? Police in the US cleared students who staged pro-Palestinian protests after a short period of camping and occupation. Hong Kong residents suffered months of violence and destruction before our police moved in, and they accomplished their tasks without causing any fatal injury, an unimaginable feat in western countries. I hope Mr. Roach will stop pointing a finger at us but turn a blind eye to the national security obsession and rough law enforcement methods of his country.
I think Mr. Roach is stuck in the era of the old Hong Kong, when people could make a fast buck speculating on the property and stock markets. It is no bad thing for property prices to moderate, and for investors to reflect deeply on where real value lies. China does not stand still, nor does Hong Kong.
China is transitioning to a new economic model and so is Hong Kong. Mr. Roach’s rant about Hong Kong losing its old magic is irrelevant to our future. I hope Mr. Roach would wake up to this, and stop getting too carried away by the attention he is getting by pretending to be a prophet of Hong Kong.
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