My latest column: Pandering to Beijing, Hong Kong’s political elites are consciously or subconsciously hastening the mainlandization of our great city.

Reprinted from today's SCMP.

Is Hong Kong now just another Chinese city or will it become one very soon, having lost its “unique advantages”？

As we bid goodbye to a troubled 2023 and rung in an even more uncertain 2024,  those questions are weighing on our minds as we ponder about the future of this great city.

The signs hardly augur well, as illustrated by two recent examples.

Late last year, a married couple of eminent thought leaders in Hong Kong embarked a month-long trip to Canada and the United States where they visited relatives and friends who have extensive knowledge of this part of the world or who have lived in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. Their universal reaction is that Hong Kong is either now another Chinese city or will become one very soon.

“The rhetoric hastens the demise of the high-degree autonomy in real and perceptional terms,” one part of the power couple recently told me in confidence.  What the power couple experienced is not unique. The overseas perception of Hong Kong’s future is very pessimistic indeed.

Perhaps more ominously, more Chinese mainlanders believe Hong Kong is fast fading into another Chinese city with a recent acid comment gaining traction over the social media platforms comparing the Central’s Exchange Square, which houses the city’s stock bourse, to “a historical ruin”, citing its low trading volumes and a sharp fall in stock index.

The response from Hong Kong officials has been weak and negligible, blaming the outsiders for spreading misconception about the city but having done a poor job of explaining how different Hong Kong is under the One Country Two Systems formula.

Beijing’s forceful imposition of the national security law on Hong Kong in June 2020 has hardened that perception that the Chinese government has intended to make Hong Kong into another Chinese city all along.

That is where the biggest misconception about Hong Kong lies. In this space, I want to lay out arguments to show that while Beijing has very good reasons to keep Hong Kong separate as a capitalist city, it is Hong Kong’s political elites who are consciously or subconsciously hastening the mainlandization of our great city.

All along, the Chinese leadership’s guideline for Hong Kong has remained unchanged: “Long-term planning and full utilization”.  Under that policy, the People’s Liberation Army forces were ordered to stop advancing at Lowu border in 1949 and the radical leftists in Hong Kong were discouraged from fanning the Cultural Revolution-style riots in 1967.  The distinctively capitalist city of Hong Kong has proved invaluable to the Chinese mainland from the Korean War in the 1950s to China’s opening up in the 1980s.

Even as President Xi Jinping has completely changed the way on how the Chinese mainland is governed and Beijing has asserted the “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong, he has vowed the central government “must maintain Hong Kong’s distinctive status and advantages …… to maintain the common law”.

From Beijing’s point of view, keeping Hong Kong’s role as a “superconnector” between China and the rest of the world should be the most optimal arrangement.

Over the past two years, however, there have been more signs that Hong Kong’s political elites are driving the increasing mainlandization of Hong Kong, chipping away its distinctive status and advantages.

One of the most jarring and blatant examples is that the city’s political elites are embracing the mainland-style practice of formality for formality’s sake, bureaucraticism, hedonism and extravagance in a big time even though the central government is cracking down on those practices on the mainland.

The reports of local and Chinese mainland officials feasting at lavish dinners complete with expensive Maotai liquor are frequently cited. Ironically, Chinese officials who are strictly regulated over wining and dining as well as attending public events on the mainland don’t appear to be bound by any rule when they are in Hong Kong.

All those activities of hedonism and extravagance have poisoned Hong Kong’s long-cherished system of clean governance and rule of law.

Eager to be seen as politically correct, elites and politicians have wasted no time copying the mainland-style practices of holding high-profile ceremonies and seminars to study the remarks given by the top Chinese leaders and pledging allegiance – a typical practice of formality for formality’s sake.

In another worrying example showing what former city leader Leung Chun-ying denounced as “ostentatious and extravagant” practices by the pro-Beijing establishment figures, a district councillor organized a bash in August last year for celebrating his departure to Beijing for a study tour. More than 500 people including senior officials, lawmakers and other pro-Beijing figures showed up at the send-off party. The embarrassed government had subsequently restricted the number of its senior officials showing up at such an extravagant party at the same time to no more than three.

Senior Hong Kong officials are believed to attend four or five public functions every day in peak seasons and lawmakers attend even more, particularly those high-profile ceremonies and seminars organized by pro-Beijing entities,  making one wonder how much time they have left for their real jobs.

Even worse, following the imposition of the national security law and the overhaul of the electoral system,  the “patriots only” legislators and district councillors have been elected. They have had a hard time showing they have carried out their duties properly to provide the checks and balances and keep government officials on their toes. Instead, they are seen as wining and dining together.  

Over the past few years, both Chinese and Hong Kong officials have urged the city to better integrate itself into the overall development of the country – the Greater Bay area in particular, and dovetail itself with national development strategies. There is nothing wrong with this rhetoric but it creates the perception that the city is being passively led.  

As Beijing vows to assert “comprehensive jurisdiction” over Hong Kong, another perception is that Hong Kong’s civil servants are awaiting instructions from the Central Government on how to move forward as they send multiple study tours to Beijing.

Both perceptions are ominous for Hong Kong. Ever since China’s opening up in the late 1970s, Beijing has intended Hong Kong to provide not only investments but also the technical knowhow from legal services to urban management so that several more “Hong Kongs” could be created on the mainland, in the words of Deng Xiaoping.

Moreover, Beijing may have assumed total control over Hong Kong to ensure “patriots only” run the city, the mainland mandarins have zero idea on how to run a capitalist city. Turning to them for clues is the worst option for Hong Kong.

What Hong Kong should have done, however, is to use its superconnector role to influence Beijing’s policy-making process so that its decisions would be more conducive to foreign investment and trade. Unfortunately, there is little sign of Hong Kong doing that.

Ironically, following the city’s decision to expand its talent attraction schemes to stem an outflow of professionals, tens of thousands of mainlanders have applied to settle in Hong Kong precisely because of the city’s capitalist system.

The perception that Hong Kong is becoming another Chinese city has particularly made them uneasy. As several of them recently lamented to me with this similar line, “what is the point of coming  if Hong Kong is turning itself into another Chinese mainland city?”

In many ways and for many people, perception is reality.

End