As it marks the 25th anniversary of its return to China, the former British colony of Hong Kong is reeling from pandemic curbs that devastated business and Beijing's crackdown on its pro-democracy movement. Some foreign companies are leaving the city.
“There are great opportunities in the Greater Bay Area that haven’t been realized yet,” said David Graham, executive director of the British Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. “It is a big opportunity for Hong Kong, and it will be very hard to replicate in other cities like Singapore or Dubai.”
Armas appealed to Lee for a “concrete roadmap” to revive Hong Kong, which remains, together with mainland China and Taiwan, one of the few places that still requires inbound travelers to serve mandatory quarantines. Activists and foreign governments complain the ruling Communist Party is chipping away at the 50 years of autonomy Beijing promised after 1997. The freedoms afforded to Hong Kong and its leeway for self-governance had helped it keep its status as a center for Asian headquarters of global companies even as rent and other costs soared to record levels and levels of inequality grew ever wider.
Until now, Hong Kong has been largely free of the censorship on the mainland, where internet barriers known as the “Great Firewall” are used by the ruling party to block China’s public from seeing foreign websites run by news outfits, governments and human rights activists. But the territory’s leading pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily, was shut down during the crackdown and its publisher, Jimmy Lai, sentenced to prison.
Hong Kong thrived as the trade gateway to China for decades, but it was eclipsed as the world’s busiest container port in 2000 by facilities in the Chinese mainland. Two decades later, with cargo volume barely 10% above its 2000 level, Hong Kong’s port ranks 8th in the world. Shanghai, Shenzhen and three other Chinese ports are bigger.
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