Hong Kong protests have an easy solution: spread the wealth, end social discontent


Conversations with fellow world travellers at the Rugby World Cup usually begin by asking about your hometown. The questions flowed when I mentioned Hong Kong.

What is happening there? Is it dangerous? How safe are you? When are you leaving? There is palpable disappointment when you tell them that conflicts are intense but localised, often sensationalised, and regular tourists are unlikely to see or sense any trouble.


No one believed me, of course. Two big rugby lads said they had cancelled their 2021 trip to the city. So the police shooting of a violent protester at point-blank range will only serve to heighten the fear of both tourists and businesspeople in coming to Hong Kong. It was a shot not only heard but, thanks to modern video, seen all round the world.

Carrying a revolver is standard police procedure and the rioters must have imagined that they could be used in extremis. The shooting was an instinctive decision by an officer wound up by a febrile 16 weeks of rioting. However, if you attack a police officer on the floor and repeatedly strike his buddy with a bamboo pole, it is a fair engagement.


The hope is that the shooting will shock the rioters into calming down, especially as the attraction of National Day will not be repeated. They have been out of control, overcome by the red mist of the adventure of smashing up public and pro-Beijing property.

The police have not covered themselves with glory but they have at least not led with lethal force - having a force of Dirty Harrys out there is not where we want to be.

Still, you have to wonder about the competence of police leaders who have had an almost limitless budget for crowd control resources since 1967 and yet appear not to have sublethal weapons like the electric stun gun, the taser, effectively used by forces around the world.

And where in the training manual for operational leaders on the street does it allow for their officers to become isolated within an angry mob?


Yet my comment to the rugby players is still relevant. The "water revolution" has been damaging to Hong Kong's economy but it is not fatal or permanent. Law-abiding visitors are highly unlikely to come into contact with trouble.

Tourism and retail are only 4 per cent of Hong Kong's economy; the real money is made inside financial and logistics offices, and they are largely untouched, although employee morale and confidence will doubtless be affected as shops and restaurants close down and jobs are lost.

Hong Kong's slump is a guiding light to what we might expect globally if consumers stop buying. The world economy is also operating "just in time" from month to month. The collapse of zombie businesses after a mere two or three months of weak trade during a period of historically low interest rates indicates that many companies are only surviving hand-to-mouth. A global recession could, therefore, happen very quickly.

The bigger danger facing Hong Kong, however, is the potential loss of our special status that derives from our history as a colonial economic powerhouse.

Uniquely, Hong Kong holds its own seat at many supra-national organisations, including Apec, the two WTOs (trade and tourism), the Asian Development Bank, the Bank for International Settlements, the IMF and the Financial Action Task Force, the International Trade Union Confederation, the World Customs Organisation, the World Meteorological Organisation, and the Universal Postal Union, and it is a sub-bureau of Interpol.

We have free trade agreements with economies representing nearly one-third of the world's GDP, including mainland China and Macau, the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and others like Australia, Mexico, New Zealand and Switzerland; and we are exploring options with desperate Britain.

Hong Kong is also a proud member of the International Olympic Committee. I expect our young people to do well in Japan next year having recently practised running, throwing, boxing, wrestling - and shooting.

These representations exemplify the successful "one country, two systems" policy, but is also likely to raise the question of why China effectively has two seats at these organisations. Imagine the damage if the US wants to add tariffs to Hong Kong goods as well as those of China.

The solution to the situation is really quite easy - it's the economy , stupid. The transformation of our young people from peaceful protesters to hot-headed, vandalising rioters would not have occurred had the Hong Kong government understood and acted on the root causes of the discontent three months ago.

The obvious formula is to spread our enormous wealth more widely by spending a large proportion of Hong Kong's huge reserves on the general population, rather than subsidising the rich cartels. Those reserves will only lose value when the global recession comes - we must spend it on our future today. If not now, then when?

Richard Harris is chief executive of Port Shelter Investment and is a veteran investment manager, banker, writer and broadcaster, and financial expert witness

Copyright (c) 2019. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.



https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion...ce=LINEtodayID


Semudah itu ya?