The future of Hong Kong

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 12 October 2020

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Can Hong Kong retain its position as Asia's financial capital? The National Security Law passed in Hong Kong saw violent protests in the middle of 2020. The BBC’s Karishma Vaswani takes us through how businesses have changed the way they work to avoid getting in to trouble with Beijing. Edward Yau, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Commerce says the new law won’t change the basic pillars of Hong Kong’s society, and that it will continue to attract big corporate names to hold on to its place as a key financial hub. But it’s not ‘business as usual’ by any means, says Tara Joseph, the president of the American Chambers of Commerce for Hong Kong, saying the worsening relationship between the US and China, coronavirus and the new law means some business people are holding back from their usual activity. And two key business figures, Weijan Shan, CEO of private equity firm PAG, and Curtis Chin, former US Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank, try to unpick the difficulty of the ‘one country, two systems’ approach which China has historically promised in its governance over Hong Kong.

(Image: A silhouetted figure looks pensively over Hong Kong's famous Victoria Harbour and the cityscape, lit up at night time. Credit: Tse Hon Ning / Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. In this edition,
0:08.1	can Hong Kong hold on to its position as Asia's premier financial center? Certainly, in my opinion,
0:14.4	the death of Hong Kong as an international financial center has certainly been exaggerated.
0:18.3	But some businesses there complain privately,
0:21.3	they're having to change the way they work.
0:23.6	Self-censorship is something that is becoming evident
0:27.2	in the way that people are talking and acting.
0:30.3	That's coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:40.3	Seen. B.C. Scenes there from the streets of Hong Kong in July, following a year of often violent clashes
0:47.3	between security forces and protesters angered by Beijing's increasing control over the territory.
1:00.1	That particular demonstration came after China introduced a new security law,
1:04.9	which effectively hands Beijing control over social stability in Hong Kong.
1:09.5	Experts say it fundamentally changes the territory's legal system,
1:12.2	and that has implications for business there,
1:17.8	implications which they've been digesting over the past few months. The BBC's Asia Business correspondent is Karishma Vaswani, and she's been speaking to key figures in Hong Kong and beyond.
1:24.7	She started by telling me what the new security law means for the many institutional
1:29.2	investors, international banks, fund managers and equity firms based there. Because the law is
1:35.0	worded so ambiguously and is so vague, the worry is that it can be used to impose censorship
1:43.2	of sorts so that you would find yourself in a situation
1:46.5	saying something that could be deemed anti-China, so therefore subversive, or that you may
1:53.4	find yourself working with a company or an organization that doesn't support China, and so
1:59.7	therefore would be considered collusion with foreign or external
	...

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