Opinion | Hong Kong has not lost its shine

Tom Fowdy 2023.05.01 18:03:00

By Tom Fowdy

The past four years in Hong Kong have been a very difficult experience for those who live in the city. First, not only was the territory swept by violent riots and protests, deliberately promoted, and encouraged by foreign forces, leading to the implementation of the National Security Law (NSL), but it also had to simultaneously face the covid-19 pandemic which restricted access to the city and disrupted everyday life up until just recently.

Because of these factors, many mainstream media outlets in the West, particularly out of political bias, frequently proclaimed the end of Hong Kong as a globally influential financial centre, arguing that the NSL and covid related restrictions would annul its competitiveness, provoke an exodus of capital and talent, and therefore end its famous self-depiction as "Asia's World City." These narratives were easier to back up given the British government, through the implementation of the British National Overseas (BNO) passport scheme, deliberately sought to provoke an exodus from the city, with other Anglosphere countries implementing favourable visa schemes.

After having not been to Hong Kong myself since 2019, which was during the peak of the riots and on the eve of the global pandemic, I took the opportunity to visit the Special Administration Region (SAR) for the first time in four years. Such a trip was a nostalgic boon for me, given the time I had spent living there from 2015-2016 studying at HKU, but it was also triggered by my curiosity to see how things had changed in the city after all these traumatic events. So, it was a little surprise that as travel returned to normal, I rushed to visit Hong Kong again at the first possible opportunity.

Having went during the Labour Day Holiday period, I first discovered that the city was very quickly returning to "business as usual" amidst a surge of tourists from Mainland China. Hotels and restaurants were full, and attractions were extremely busy, all of which will give lift off to a tourism industry that has been battered by covid and political chaos prior. While some places, such as Stanley and Wan Chai markets, shown visible strains from the pandemic era with many small businesses have been struck hard, the city's way of life above all was returning to normal, with streets bustling and its fast-paced way of life has quickly regained its former character.

More encouraging to see was that the NSL and the political propaganda pushed by the West against the city has not made one jolt of difference to Western tourism or expatriates in the city. All throughout Hong Kong, tourists from Europe, America and Australia were clearly visible, as well as those who continue to live and work there. This is an important development as the Western media has repeatedly sought to depict Hong Kong as an authoritarian dystopia and long crowed the hope that it would become unappealing to Westerners and financial institutions, with the United States government even putting ludicrous politically motivated training warnings against the territory. There's no sign of any discouragement whatsoever.

In exploring the political angle, every single trace of the riot movement which rocked the city is gone. Traffic lights were repaired, pavements were rebricked, the MTR and Police stations they burned down were all repaired, with graffiti removed, almost as if none of it ever happened. On visiting my former University at HKU, an institution that had developed a highly radical and aggressive activist culture even by the time I was studying there, there was now not even a single poster to be seen on the campus. That student culture, which I witnessed personally blockading the University administration in a building in 2016 because they deemed it "pro-Beijing", no longer exists. The instability which once plagued the city, is gone.

Of course, is there a population exodus or a brain drain going on? And are people leaving the city in droves? Since implementing the BNO scheme in Hong Kong, about 100,000 residents or so have left for Britain. We might understand this cohort as the "hardcore" dissidents, the most prejudiced against China and those who were most active in the protest movement. However, the number is actually far less than expected, with the British government having forecasted 320,000. Not only that, but according to a new report by Bloomberg, the number of new applications is now shrinking, having fallen 44% in the third quarter of 2022. The idea of course that a huge number of Hong Kongers would pack up and leave was itself an assumption based purely on ideology. The reality is that people have, however begrudgingly it may be, come to accept the national security law and life simply goes on. You might want to question after all is it really worth it to uproot your whole life, family, say goodbye to all your friends, and move halfway across the world to another country where economic conditions are currently miserable?

As a British person, I can honestly say that the UK has oversold itself on that based on its own inflated sense of ideological virtue, because I can see a country where as a Bank of England economist described, is "getting poorer", where inflation is surging and incomes are shrinking. I of course love Britain, but that's because that's my home and not because I would ever consider it a prospective place to move if I were another nationality. Yet, for the most ardent of Anti-China Hong Kongers, who are starry-eyed by the memories of Imperialism, it might be just that after all.

Yet from what I have seen, these people are not being missed in Hong Kong, and the city has recuperated itself miraculously amidst its struggles. It has lost none of its shine. It continues to be city of awe and wonder it has always been, a fasting moving and thriving city with its own iconic culture. While it was a creation of British Imperialism, which continues to leave its imprinted legacy on it across so many areas, it is ultimately a Chinese City and contrary to all of the propaganda, coming to terms with and accepting that reality has not took any shine away from it. Asia's world city lives on.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

Opinion | Hong Kong has not lost its shine

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