New wave of unrest risks further sinking HK

Illegal public gatherings are staging a comeback in Hong Kong, while experts warned that a resurgence of unrest would further damage the city’s economy and social order, which had been showing signs of recovery after the double blow of months of riots followed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Protesters started to gather at 3 pm on Monday in shopping areas in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay, singing anti-extradition bill songs and shouting pro-Hong Kong independence slogans.

As night fell, protesters moved and gathered on streets in Mong Kok, where some of them lit fires on the street and threw objects at the police, according to media reports.

Hong Kong police on Monday said they had issued penalty tickets to 19 people for violating the regulation that bans illegal group gatherings. Some 230 people between the ages of 12 and 65 were arrested for various offenses.

Protests at this moment aim to disturb China’s pace in resuming production and shaking off the impact of the COVID-19, Li Xiaobing, an expert on Hong Kong studies at Nankai University in Tianjin, told the Global Times on Monday, noting that the gatherings must be the result of collusion of exterior and interior forces.

They are also a warm-up for the 2020 Hong Kong Legislative Council election scheduled in September. The protesters’ aim is to enter the committee that elects the chief executive, according to Li.

“While the epidemic situation is improving, social issues are seemingly staging a comeback, which would hurdle Hong Kong’s recovery,” the city’s Finance Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said in a signed article released on Sunday. Chan noted that the Hong Kong economy is facing unprecedented pressure.

According to Chan, Hong Kong’s economy contracted 8.9 percent yearon-year in the first quarter of 2020, the city’s worst quarter since 1974.

Wang Dan, a Beijing-based senior China analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told the Global Times that new protests may spread the virus and will hit consumption, which had just seen signs of revival.

“Until Hong Kong’s social order returns to normal, investors will diversify their investment destinations to places such as Singapore and Malaysia. Tourists, mainly from the mainland, will also choose other places, and retail, catering and hotels will take a hit,” Wang said.