Security clampdown diminishes Hong Kong’s value to mainland China
Tom Abke
Beijing’s security clampdown in Hong Kong is rapidly reducing its value to the mainland by making it a less attractive place to live and work, thereby draining it of talent, according to a former United Kingdom diplomat stationed there and media reports. By bringing the city’s systems of political representation, media, education, civil society and law under authoritarian control, Beijing has precipitated mass resignations among Hong Kong’s civil servants, driven hundreds of thousands of residents to emigrate and greatly diminished its appeal to expatriate workers.
“No one is expecting Hong Kong to disintegrate tomorrow, but by 2049, when it is no more than just another Chinese city, I don’t think it’s going to stand out in the way that it has in the last century or more,” Charles Parton, who spent 22 years in the British Diplomatic Service working in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong and Taiwan, told FORUM. “Rather than a battle ax being taken to the skull, it’s death by a thousand cuts.”
A climate of fear has descended on Hong Kong, Parton said, prompted by such measures as the 2020 National Security Law imposed by Beijing. The law allows for those charged with crimes of secession such as subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, to be tried on the mainland and encourages Hong Kong residents to report anyone suspected of such offenses.
Parton described how authoritarian measures enforced by Beijing have whittled away at the city’s self-governance, spurring protests along the way, in his June 2022 essay, “The significance of Xi Jinping’s visit to Hong Kong,” published by the United Kingdom’s Council on Geostrategy. These measures began in 2003, six years after Hong Kong’s change of status from a U.K. colony to a special administrative region of the PRC.
The Chinese Communist Party, under Xi’s tenure as general secretary, has silenced opposition to Beijing in Hong Kong’s politics and media, he wrote. In education, “student associations have been disbanded and textbooks rewritten. Teachers and professors considered unreliable have lost their posts.” Unions, civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations were brought under Beijing’s control or shut down. Judges increasingly need Beijing’s approval to serve. Electronic surveillance is on the rise.
Almost every significant advocate of democracy in Hong Kong is now incarcerated or living abroad, The Economist newspaper reported in July 2022.
According to Parton, the PRC benefits from business transactions in Hong Kong that are conducted in Hong Kong dollars, a fully convertible currency, unlike the Chinese yuan. But the city’s gross domestic product (GDP) has dropped from nearly 20% of the PRC’s total GDP in 1997 to less than 3% today. While this change owes largely to the economic rise of mainland cities, Parton emphasized that Beijing’s repression has made Hong Kong a less attractive place to do business for many, including foreigners. (Pictured: Police patrol near the government headquarters in Hong Kong in May 2022.)
A poll by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that 26% of businesses and 44% of its members in Hong Kong were considering leaving the city; a similar statement was made by almost half of respondents in a survey by the European Chamber of Commerce. More than 100,000 people from Hong Kong filed for British National (Overseas) visas in 2021, which would allow them to live in the U.K., according to The Economist. In 2021, moreover, a record number of Hong Kong civil servants left their positions, while the number of new candidates dropped by 30%.
There has also been a noticeable drop in school enrollment, Parton said. “It seems people don’t want their kids to grow up in this sort of atmosphere,” he said.
Tom Abke is a FORUM contributor reporting from Singapore.
IMAGE CREDIT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES
