Capitalist greed is good: can Hong Kong reinvent its economic miracle?

Many long-time residents will say the city has lost much of its can-do hunger and ingenuity, where anything was possible at the right price
Hong Kong’s leaders must earn the people’s trust again as it is the one commodity in the equation that cannot be willed into being by any emergency decree

Vijay Verghese

Published: 8:45pm, 14 Aug 2020

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Famous as the entrepot for trade with China and later a safe avenue for foreign investment, Hong Kong has long had another export up its sleeve that is rarely spoken of in polite company: capitalist greed.

It is at the core of the city’s freewheeling capitalism, has changed much of Asia and attracted the attention of Deng Xiaoping, who was keen to lift China out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. This was when Hong Kong achieved lift-off and set about subverting its host with vast infusions of this powerful export.

Deng’s great gamble in the 1980s was opening up China to the West and its notions of economic development. It was hoped that Hong Kong could help change the quality and pace of life for millions. China learned, copied and changed.

It is interesting that this gamble, which paid rich dividends for China, failed to secure the freewheeling future of one of its prime architects. The thinking was that, over time, Hong Kong would reshape China in its own mould. China feared the city’s rapacious capitalism as much as it coveted the rewards of the process, later refashioned with socialist characteristics.

With rapid development, rising GDP and growing wealth, China rebuilt trust in the Communist Party. This enabled a fraying social contract – woven with the people’s unquestioning faith – to stay securely in place.

The party rapidly improved the people’s lot and, in turn, no one questioned its omniscient, paternal motives. China did this with great success until it was hit by the Donald Trump tsunami, followed in quick succession by the Covid-19 cataclysm.

Hong Kong weathered the passing storms across the border with varying success, but confidence in its own government eroded and nettlesome issues went unaddressed.

Taking the national security law out of the Legislative Council’s hands has generated turbulence, with long-term ramifications when it comes to trust in common law and the judiciary, the scope of police operations and the city’s very autonomy. This requires nuanced action by the Hong Kong government, not haughty pooh-poohing.

The arrest of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying along with a crop of young political aspirants is not the harbinger of a beautiful new dawn. Yet for many, the new sense of unfettered government and operation by diktat represent a return to a normalcy of sorts and a chance to get on with the business of making money.

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Hong Kong media mogul and opposition activist Jimmy Lai arrested under national security law

Another stark response was visible in the sharp rise in the stock value of Next Digital Limited – the parent group of Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper – as people voted with their wallets.

Where does this leave Hong Kong, a city built on laissez faire economics extrapolated to mythic levels and driven almost solely by the property value calculations of a handful of tycoons? Many long-time residents will say the city has lost much of its can-do hunger and ingenuity, where anything was possible at the right price. Hard work remains the core value of the city, but it is a softer version today.

Greed – and the phenomenal growth it spawned – is the reason post-handover administrations failed to respond to the city’s glaring socioeconomic and political needs, whether in housing, nurturing educational freedom or strengthening bedrock institutions. The protests have been a sobering chapter.

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China’s top legislative body extends Legco by ‘not less than one year’

The task before Hong Kong’s leaders today is development of both vision and consensus-building political acumen. Simplistically equating social discontent as a law-and-order problem rather than one of governance and policy neglect and substituting sharp dialogue with blunt police action resulted in a monstrous train wreck. The city must not fall through that trap door again.

A scrupulously apolitical city – where any talk of self-determination in 1997 would have met with blank stares – found itself by 2019 facing smoking barricades and radical political activism. Scapegoating liberal education is easy for hardline apologists, but much of the blame for this deadlock must be laid squarely at the administration’s feet. Dystopia does not pop out of a can unnoticed.

The mistakes of the past must not be repeated. Trust has to be earned. It is the one commodity in the equation that cannot be willed into being by any emergency decree. Whether that greedy heart beats again with vigour to firmly position Hong Kong at the centre of the Greater Bay Area development remains to be seen.

Vijay Verghese is a Hong Kong-based journalist, columnist and the editor of AsianConversations.com and SmartTravelAsia.com

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