The Slow, Quiet Death of Hong Kong

This is China, and this is China, yet the degree  of difference between the two sides of this line far surpasses that of many, perhaps even most  international borders. Growing from a fishing village into one of the world’s wealthiest  cities almost entirely within its 156 years of British Colonial rule, the 27 years since  Hong Kong’s return to China have done little to blunt the full totality of its anomalies from  the mainland, but Beijing’s now trying to change that—and fast. This is proving challenging.

Much of Hong Kong is quite literally as different to the mainland as it can be. North  of the border, vehicles drive on the right; in Hong Kong, they drive on the left. Hong  Kongers get their own passports—some of the strongest in the world, in fact, with visa-free  access to 172 countries.

Mainlanders, meanwhile, only get relatively weak Chinese passports  granting the same rights to just 90 nations. Hong Kong has unrestricted access to the entire  internet, China’s is some of the most restricted and censored in the entire world. In fact, Hong  Kong is so isolated from the rest of China that mainland residents are not even allowed to  visit the territory without applying for and being granted a permit, whereas the  residents of the UK, US, and 168 other countries can visit without any visa or permit—it  is quite literally easier for most foreigners to visit the city than Chinese people. 

But then there’s the less tangible side—the general, international flair to  the city borne out of Britain. For example, Hong Kong’s traditional tea is closer to  the British preparation since it relies on milk—uncommon in traditional Chinese cuisine  due to the lactose intolerance experienced by 90% of ethnic Chinese. There’s also the ever-present  egg tarts—a direct lineage of the British custard tart, ubiquitous across the city's bakeries and  restaurants, and even now in Hong Kong-style dim sum restaurants in the rest of the world.

With  high levels of English proficiency, day-to-day exposure to Westerners, access to international  media, and more, Hong Kong, while in a category of one, is far more similar to places like  London or New York than any other Chinese city. But Hong Kong’s distinction goes deeper than that.  Perhaps the greatest source of difference is in the very core of its legal and political system. 

China, after all, is a communist state—a political structure just about as fundamentally different  as possible to those used in the west. Hong Kong, meanwhile, is a free-market, capitalist economy  centered by a western, democratic system based on English law. With the handover of Hong Kong  to China in 1997, this system was adapted and enshrined into Hong Kong Basic Law—in broad  strokes, this guaranteed the maintenance of the status quo of democracy, capitalism, and  the English legal system until at least 2047.

So in the era since the handover, you have a  strange, singular situation where a communist, autocratic country oversees a capitalist,  democratic territory—a fundamental incompatibility that the pair have increasingly  and painstakingly attempted to rectify, such as in 2019 when the Hong Kong government proposed  an amendment to the territory’s Basic Law. It was called the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual  Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation. The law was born out of a murder, as a 19-year-old  Hong Konger killed his girlfriend in Taiwan, admitted to doing as much, but then couldn’t  be extradited back to Taiwan because there was no formal extradition agreement between Hong Kong  and Taiwan.

To close what they called a loophole, the pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance  for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, presented some changes to the law: that special  surrender arrangements would be considered on a case-by-case basis to any jurisdiction, regardless  of their prior extradition relationship with Hong Kong. While this would only apply to 37 specific  schedule 1 offenses—which range from murder and piracy to offenses involving the unlawful use  of computers—it was received by the Hong Kong public as a serious concern. Now, it seemed,  any brush with the law could see Hong Kongers whisked away from their western-style courts and  legal system and thrown into those of mainland China’s.

For people with such a cultural  distance from their next-door neighbor, it seemed like another slide toward Chinese  rule—and they wouldn't stand for it. The protest began in earnest here, well before it  became global news, with a student-led sit-in at the Central Government Complex. Then, the movement  grew: 10,000 marched in protest two weeks later, then, a month after that, a crowd that organizers  claimed to be around 130,000 marched in protest against case-by-case extradition toward the  legislative council.

Still, while the largest protest in five years, the bill, and its most  prominent proponent in Chief Executive Carrie Lam, maintained that the extradition rules were  to become law. But over the weeks and months that followed, the protests continued to  snowball into the massive demonstrations that reached global headlines and ranked as the  largest in the city’s history, and eventually Carrie Lam gave in and withdrew the legislation.  So in the short-term, the protests won the battle, effectively striking down Hong Kong legislation  that felt like it empowered the mainland.

But it also served as justification for another legal  maneuver that may have forever displaced the balance between eastern and western influence in  the city. This was a new national security law, and it was annexed, in its entirety—all  6 chapters and 66 articles—by a vote of 162 to zero. This criminalized acts that  could be considered subversion from China, or efforts of secession from China, or terrorism  toward China.

As Lam saw it, such an act had been justified by the protests, but critically,  unlike the extradition legislation, this new law didn’t have to clear Hong Kong legislation,  as it was introduced then passed by the National People’s Congress, then signed by Xi Jinping—an  almost unheard of instance of Beijing imposing laws on the supposedly autonomous Hong Kong.  This was a massive break from the norm. While similar security legislation had been presented  in 2003, it was brought to the fore by Hong Kong officials, and it was subsequently dismantled  by protestors.

But now, in the grips of a global pandemic that had Hong Kongers assembling in  no larger than groups of eight, and in the wake of what China viewed as a secessionist  and terrorism upswell in the year prior, the nation took legal reform into its own hands.  The legal case to do so was dubious. The Hong Kong bar association protested, the western world  strongly denounced the move.

But strangely, the streets were quiet. Unlike during  previous perceived oversteps by China, Hong Kongers didn’t take to the streets, they  didn’t organize in the thousands around the universities. Rather, when reporters asked about  the new laws, they stayed suspiciously mum.

And, one by one, organizers and activists focused their  energy not on saving Hong Kong’s special status, but getting themselves and their families out of  Hong Kong as quick as possible. As the UK opened up a path to citizenship for Hong Kongers  who lived in the city during British rule, well over a hundred thousand opted to move  to the former colonizer, while hundreds of thousands more opted to move elsewhere. For  many, confidence was lost that the territory could ever return to what it was before. 

But it is worth noting: Hong Kong has never been a true, full democracy with universal suffrage. For  much of the colonial period, like most colonies, Hong Kong was essentially ruled outright by the  Governor, who themselves was the representative of the British monarchy. But in the 1980s,  the system started to evolve into something closer and closer to universal suffrage—where  everyone gets to vote.

In the 1990s and 2000s, the territory experienced its most representative  form of democracy ever, yet from the 2010s to today, that has started to regress as Beijing  institutes a series of so-called, “reforms. ” Now, Hong Kong’s elections system quite literally  may be one of the most complex in the entire world. But much of it stems from what’s called  the Election Committee.

This is a 1,500 member body who votes for the Chief Executive—the head  of the government. How this body is formed is convoluted and has changed with each of the last  three elections. In the 2016 election, though, 106 of the positions were just directly appointed—the  President of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Chairperson of the Drnking Water Safety Advisory  Committee, and Chairman of the Antiquities Advisory Board, for example, each automatically  gained a seat in the Election Committee.

But the vast majority of seats were themselves  voted upon by so-called functional constituencies. In 2016 there were 38 of these each representing  a variety of interests—there was one for the financial sector with 18 seats, another  representing Chinese Medicine with 30, even one representing religious interests with  60 seats. Now, each functional constituency itself has a different way of determining  who fills its election committee seats.

Some, like the education constituency, allow for  widespread voting—every registered teacher and many higher-level administrative staff  in educational institutions are allowed to vote on who they send to the committee, and  therefore have an indirect say in who gets appointed as Chief Executive of Hong Kong.  But bizarrely, about 42. 5% of total election committee seats were voted upon by organizations  and corporations.

In the finance constituency, any registered bank that has been operating  for at least three years votes—not individuals working at the banks, the banks themselves. Yet  for other constituencies, like that of transport, the eligibility criteria is simply just a list  of companies. There are 229 that can register to vote in this constituency, and that’s how Gate  Gourmet, for example, the Swiss-Owned airline catering company, ends up with the right to vote  for the individuals who then go on to vote for the most powerful politician in the territory. 

Clearly, this system had its critics. The very fact that the head of the government was voted on  by 246,440 voters, rather than all seven million residents of the territory, would be enough to  elicit controversy, but then there’s the question of the composition of this voter-base to begin  with. Politics in Hong Kong typically are split into the so-called pro-Beijing and pro-Democracy  camps.

There’s the group that supports increased control by the central government, then there’s  the group that supports increased autonomy and democracy for Hong Kong. These functional  constituencies, and therefore the election committee, consistently skew more towards the  pro-Beijing camp than the general public. For example, in the 2012 legislative council  elections, some seats were voted upon by the general public in geographic constituencies, while  others were voted upon by the same functional constituencies.

The pro-Democracy camp actually  beat the pro-Beijing camp in the directly elected seats—winning 18 to their 17. But considering  pro-Beijing won the vast majority of functional constituency seats, 26 to pro-Democracy’s 9, the  pro-Beijing politicians won a strong majority in the legislative council—as they have in  every single election in the Chinese era. But something changed in late 2019.

In the midst  of the wide scale anti-extradition protests, the territory held its District Council  elections—essentially, the local elections. Unlike the territory-wide legislative council or  Chief Executive elections, the vast majority of District Council seats were directly elected  by the general public. And the pro-democracy camp showed up in force.

For the first time ever,  they won in the popular vote—a full 57%—and won a colossal 388 of 452 seats—an absolutely massive  jump from their previous total of 126. With legislative council and Chief Executive elections  on the horizon in 2021 and 2022 respectively, Beijing decided it needed to make some changes if  it were to ensure its supporters stayed in power. China’s National People’s Congress—which itself  is a body whose members are technically elected but in a process almost entirely controlled  by the Chinese Communist Party—voted in 2021 to reform the composition of Hong  Kong’s legislative council.

Previously, half of the seventy seats were directly elected  by the general public, while the other half were elected by the functional constituencies. But  now, there’d be ninety total seats with just twenty directly elected by the public, thirty  elected by the functional constituencies, then another forty elected by the election  committee—which itself, of course, was made up of members voted in by the functional constituencies.  Overall, this massively tilted power away from the people and towards the historically  pro-Beijing functional constituencies.

But that was far from the full extent of the  reforms. The election committee, despite its perfect history in voting in a pro-Beijing chief  executive, was itself reformed too. Typically, the strongest block of support for pro-democracy  politicians comes from the functional constituencies made up of people, rather  than institutions.

For example, the education constituency, made up of 85,000 teachers,  academics, and administrative staff, was always one of the few pro-democracy constituencies.  But with the 2021 reforms, the number of seats filled by these functional constituencies made  up of real people was slashed—many by half, some by four times. Meanwhile, the number of seats  voted in by companies and organizations stayed about the same, while they also added more than  three hundred new ex-officio seats—those filled by someone already in another position, in this  case almost all inherently pro-Beijing positions.

If that wasn’t enough, all candidates for  essentially any political position in Hong Kong now had to be approved by a candidate  review committee—one that follows ambiguous criteria and has absolutely no mechanism  for appeal. The members of this committee, that decides among other things who can run for  the seats that vote for the Chief Executive, are directly appointed by the Chief Executive.  Democracy is dead in Hong Kong.

The pro-Democracy camp, which just years ago was able to win  the popular vote, now has absolutely no viable path towards any position of power. China has  remade the city in its own image—a political system that claims to represent the will of the  people, but in actuality hands near-complete control over to the central government.  Beyond and because of the changing political system, there is now also a widespread trend of  Hong Kong becoming more integrated—literally, functionally, and culturally—with the mainland. 

In 2018, a $20 billion bridge opened connecting the peninsula to both Macau, another autonomous  territory, and the mainland on the other side of the Estuary. This was considered by many a  symbolic project more than anything. After all, there was already a reliable and popular network  of fast ferries connecting Hong Kong to Macau, and road traffic between both territories and  the mainland is quite limited—the territories drive on the opposite side of the road  as the mainland, and even then, driving a vehicle across the border requires a separate  driving license, a permit, separate insurance, and approval by the neighboring Chinese  region, so very few even attempt it.

But a far more practical connection  opened with the West Kowloon railway station in 2018. This connected Hong Kong  to the Chinese high speed rail network, meaning one can now travel non-stop well over a  thousand miles across the country to Beijing or Shanghai in about eight hours. This was also  controversial.

After all, to make it nonstop, without a long wait at the border, mainland  Chinese immigration would have to happen at the station itself. This meant that mainland  officials would operate within Hong Kong and, most problematically to supporters of Hong  Kong’s autonomy, mainland law would be in force after the immigration checkpoint,  meaning there is now this small area in Hong Kong within West Kowloon Station and on the  tracks out from it where many believe Basic Law, stipulating the autonomy of Hong Kong’s legal  system, has been violated. After all, there have now been instances where individuals have  been arrested and prosecuted under mainland law while physically in Hong Kong, but after clearing  mainland immigration in West Kowloon station.

Beyond the increasing physical connection with  the mainland, there’s simultaneously a mounting intangible alignment with China. This is not  necessarily wrong—after all the vast majority of Hong Kongers are ethnically Chinese—but  it is often controversial and many see it as coming at the expense of maintaining Hong  Kong’s unique, singular identity. For example, the newly opened half billion dollar Hong Kong  Palace Museum displays artifacts from the Beijing Palace Museum, and focuses on educating the  public about the history of imperial China.

But they’ve been very careful to phrase it as  a partner, not a branch, of the Beijing museum, even if in function it could be either. Critics  suggest that its development could have been forced through by Beijing as a form of cultural  propaganda as Chief Executive Carrie Lam approved its construction without any consultation  from the legislative council or public—and critics say this is a violation of the rules  of the cultural district in which it’s built. COVID was another example of alignment with  China.

Pragmatically, Hong Kong had no choice but to align its prevention measures with Beijing’s  severe and scientifically controversial zero-COVID policies. After all, not doing so would act as  public doubt in Xi Jinping’s decision-making, which is not a realistic option for Hong Kong’s  ruling pro-Beijing leadership. But especially in the later years of the pandemic, this served as a  stark display of just how Chinese this supposedly Westernized city had become.

Throughout 2022,  the territory maintained strict policies like 21-day quarantines for arriving passengers,  legally-enforced isolation for the sick, vaccine passports for access to  public places, and more. Meanwhile, most of the western world got back to normal in  early 2022 as the Omicron-fueled surge subsided. Ultimately, Hong Kong’s strictness, borne out of  Beijing’s influence, seemed to get it the worst of both worlds.

The city had an extremely high COVID  death rate—higher than most Western countries, and far higher that most of the Asian continent.  And perhaps most notably, Singapore, perhaps Hong Kong’s closest equivalent, did not see the same.  2,024 people died of COVID in Singapore, or about one in 2,800 people.

In Hong Kong, though, 13,516  died—that’s one in 550. But Singapore’s COVID policy was far less strict. It opened its borders  to the world about a year before Hong Kong, and was devoid of almost all visible restrictions  by late 2022 while Hong Kong was still in the midst of its strict zero-COVID policies. 

This had an impact because the cities are direct competitors. They both portray themselves  as global business capitals—the perfect hub of east and west, with high English proficiency,  strong local talent, and easy access to financial services and other important institutions. And  they are each successful at this.

Singapore is home to the Asian headquarters of Apple,  Google, Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, Barclays, Microsoft, Boeing, and plenty more while Hong  Kong acts as the headquarters of J. P. Morgan, Prudential, Estée Lauder, and more, but the  composition of these lists reflects the changing nature of multinational enterprise in Asia.

Singapore is winning. It is consistently being chosen as the best city for western companies  to base their Asia operations out of. This is reflected by the fact that Hong Kong barely has  any tech presence, as the new wave of businesses has consistently chosen the city-state to the  south.

And they’re not losing out on new business, they’re also just simply losing business.  FedEx and the Wall Street Journal were two of the highest profile headquarters moves from Hong  Kong to Singapore in recent years, while others have selected elsewhere. The New York Times, for  example, moved its Asia headquarters to Seoul, while LVMH—the luxury goods conglomerate  including Louis Vuitton, Sephora, Tiffany, and dozens more brands—opted to move up to  Shanghai.

In fact, the number of American businesses with regional headquarters in Hong Kong  is now declining, and at 214, it’s at its lowest count since the year 2000, and a similar trend  is seen for British and Australian firms as well. Since 2018, Hong Kong’s economy has been  effectively flat—it’s only grown a marginal 5. 8% in five whole years.

Over the same span,  Singapore’s has exploded a full 33. 2%. Since 2021, Hong Kong’s historically red-hot property  market has been on a steady decline.

And tourism figures have been terrible,  at numbers not seen since the early 2010s. Hong Kong is just not what it once was.  Its quagmire seems centered around the fact that it’s losing what made it unique.

The destinations  of the businesses leaving the city reflect this. Shanghai is certainly the city best-suited to  international companies in mainland China, so it makes sense the companies that want to further  focus on the Chinese market, like LVMH, would move there. Singapore, meanwhile, has effectively  stepped in to be what Hong Kong once was.

It is tremendously cosmopolitan—at times  it’s hard to categorize it into any one continent—and yet it still has high exposure and  proximity to China. Also a former British colony, Singapore also runs on a western legal system,  also has high English language proficiency, and also runs as a democracy—although also an  imperfect one. But perhaps most importantly, Singapore is, of course, its own country.

It is  not subject to the same game of tug of war between the world and China as Hong Kong. It is therefore  perceived by many as a more stable environment. Hong Kong is changing fast, and when a company is  deciding where to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build a headquarters, fast change is  not attractive.

In 2021, the US Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security  jointly issued an advisory warning US companies about the growing risks in operating in Hong Kong.  The document notes the risks to foreign nationals and businesses placed by the new National Security  Law, that data security is no longer a guarantee, and that there could be challenges with access  to information given growing constraints on the freedom of the press in the territory. And  beyond the direct implications of these threats, multinational companies rely on the ability to  convince key talent to move to their offices in Asia, and there’s a significant number of  westerners who are wary of moving to a place that is increasingly influenced by Beijing. 

So to the decision-makers, it’s now hard to see what Hong Kong uniquely offers. There’s the option  of Shanghai if a business wants a cosmopolitan city with direct access to mainland China, and  then there’s Singapore if they just need proximity and familiarity. The city is just consistently  losing, and the trend-line is the scariest bit.

It’s tough to know what Beijing’s end-game  is. Hong Kong is a useful tool for the central government as it’s difficult for western  companies to operate in China’s unique economic and legal system, so the city almost acts as  a connecting node between China’s socialist economy and the western capitalist one. This  almost certainly increases the flow of capital into the country while simultaneously  allowing the Chinese Communist Party to maintain their brand of socialism. 

Perhaps it’s just instinct. Xi Jinping and the other autocratic leaders in China  just don’t know how to deal with dissent. This has been demonstrated by the Tiananmen  Square Massacre, by the lack of free press, by the censorship of media—the instinct is to  just prevent dissent from happening in public, rather than confronting its cause.

But in  a democratic system, dissent is inherent. In a democratic Hong Kong, therefore, there will  always be an anti-China camp. So perhaps, in the long term, one country, two systems was never  going to work, but it’s also possible that in the future the world will look back on Hong Kong  as an example of Chinese short-sightedness—the destruction of a once-great city out of  fear of what democracy could do to Beijing.

Rather than do a traditional ad-read here at  the end, I’m just going to play the trailer for the new show me and my team made called  the Getaway. Although I’ll say now: there is a bit of a twist in this trailer, so it’s worth  watching at least halfway through…
 “Welcome to The Getaway where these six creators are taking a  road trip to transport a $10,000 prize across the great American West. The problem… there's a Snitch  among them!

Sabotaging the group at every turn. The Gamer? Am I 1,000% sure I am not the Snitch? 

Absolutely. The Zoologist? Is there nothing I can say to change your mind?

The Therapist? You guys  trust-trust each other? Actually trust each other?

The Card Counter? I'm not— I'm not throwing shade  at you. But the way that I think it would be smart to do it— Steven!

The Finance Guy? This Snitch  thing is very stressful. I go to bed at night, and I worry.

The Political Scientist? I  have this suspicion that. .

. we did get the Snitch. You really never know.

Sure. Okay.  This is a tense moment.

Okay, here we go. What am I? Alright, nice.

Ohh yeah. Snitch.  So here's what's actually going on.

We really like shows that have, you know, a sabotage  element. But there's already so many that have a saboteur. Okay.

Alright. I have this  special role. I'm really carrying this entire series.

There's even the ones that have a couple  of saboteurs. Boston I don't believe in. Jersey I don't bel… It's Boston.

Boston was never the  city. But as far as we know, there's none that have everyone as the saboteur. And we thought  that would be funny.

In some way, I'm like, are there two Snitches here? We got— We gotta run!  Oh my (bleep) god!

There's no script for this. So, you know… That's a great—Oh, that's gonna make  the trailer, dude. Yeah.

Yeah. You mother—” You can watch the Getaway  exclusively on Nebula, so head over to Nebula. tv/Wendover to sign up and you’ll even  get 40% off an annual subscription, bringing the cost down to just $2.

50 a month. With that you’ll  get access to the full catalog of top-notch Nebula Originals made by creators you probably already  watch and love, plus access to all of our normal videos early and ad-free, and you’ll be helping  support our work, so thank you in advance.