Political turmoil a greater threat to HK than the coronavirus
Ru Yan says that the city may enter another period of prolonged political upheaval after the coronavirus threat eases, and the US has not helped matters with its anti-China rhetoric
Everything eventually ends. The novel coronavirus that is raging across the world will be no exception. But here in Hong Kong, there is every indication that protracted political turmoil will remain a lasting and greater threat to the stability and prosperity of the city, which is still reeling from an outbreak of violence and lawlessness that beset local residents for a good part of last year.
Lingering protest violence and political extremism has left in its wake a devastated economy and a tattered social fabric. Hong Kong has entered its first recession in a decade. A growing number of businesses are on the verge of bankruptcy. More households are helplessly watching their breadwinners being made redundant. People are consciously or subconsciously aligning themselves with the anti-government “yellow” bloc or the pro-establishment “blue” camp.
Gone are the days when the seven colors of the political rainbow coexisted peacefully.
Hong Kong has also lost to Singapore the “freest economy” title it held for 25 years in a row. “The ongoing political and social turmoil has begun to erode (Hong Kong’s) reputation as one of the best locations from which to do business, dampening investment inflows,” warned the Heritage Foundation in its 2020 Index of Economic Freedom report.
The onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic did result in a short-lived lull in violence. But while the government and medical workers are pulling out all the stops to contain the virus, the rioters are busy making bombs. For the past few weeks, the police have foiled a string of bomb plots and seized tons of explosives and chemicals.
With global containment efforts beefed up and summer approaching, scientists believe the virus will start to abate and life will eventually return to normal in most parts of the world. However, there is ample evidence to suggest that Hong Kong will remain in the grip of post-pandemic political turmoil, while the double whammy of economic recession and social unrest will join forces to render normal life a luxury for local residents.
Despite the city being still engrossed in the battle against the coronavirus, the rioters, their apologists and the power-hungry opposition already can’t wait to step up the anti-government movement in the run-up to the September Legislative Council election. Encouraged by a landslide win in last year’s District Council polls, they are ganging up once again in a desperate attempt to upset the pro-establishment majority in the legislature, by hook or by crook.
Another factor that threatens to perpetuate the city’s political mayhem is the US’ blatant intervention in the affairs of Hong Kong.
In a hegemonic move to secure its geopolitical interests, the US Congress passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act late last year, threatening to repeal the city’s special trade status and to sanction officials and entities should Washington find “freedoms and autonomy” undermined in Hong Kong.
But of course it’s no secret in the international corridors of power that some of the Sinophobes in Washington care about rights and freedoms in Hong Kong only when the issue can be weaponized against China to serve the interests of US foreign policy.
On that front, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is the captain leading a horde of China-bashers in Washington in waging a diplomatic war on Beijing. The former spymaster tends to view the world, China in particular, through the prism of ideology and conspiracy.
He broke with his predecessors such as Hillary Clinton and Colin Powell, who conducted diplomacy mostly on a parallel approach of engagement and competition when dealing with China. All that is left on Pompeo’s diplomacy playbook is confrontation and containment. As a leading purveyor of far-right conservative ideology and conspiracy theories, Pompeo has been flying around the world peddling the “China threat theory” and anti-communist rhetoric.
Pompeo’s hawkish approach toward Beijing of course has no dearth of followers among the independenceminded protesters in Hong Kong. Fantasies about toppling the 90-million-strong ruling Chinese Communist Party still go down well with the antigovernment malcontents in the city, especially some of the doe-eyed youngsters on the front line of the protest movement.
In this US-waged geopolitical war on China, Hong Kong’s geographical proximity to the Chinese mainland is proving to be, more evident than ever, a double-edged sword. Whereas the city’s lasting prosperity intrinsically hinges on its closeness to the mainland, it is inevitably caught in the crossfire of Sino-US diplomatic tensions.
Until the likes of Pompeo and US flag-waving followers in Hong Kong come to respect diversified models of governance as much as they embrace biological diversity, the city will remain gripped by ideological bigotry and political violence. The bomb plots and sporadic violence on our streets in the past few weeks are just a taste of more to come.
There is ample evidence to suggest that Hong Kong will remain in the grip of post-pandemic political turmoil, while the double whammy of economic recession and social unrest will join forces to render normal life a luxury for local residents.