HONG KONG: PROBLEM OR SOLUTION?

香港：待解難題

IT’S ONE ACCOLADE Hong Kong’s glamorous retail industry doesn’t like to boast about: the city is the world’s biggest market for ivory products.

Those products may have been legally acquired, or they predate the ban in ivory trading, but the example to the world isn’t a good one – especially when there’s good evidence of a thriving illicit trade over the border to mainland China.

The city’s authorities plan to ban all trade in ivory by 2021. Pressure groups like World Wide Fund for Nature want to bring that date forward and fight claims for compensation from the traders. ‘Compensation will only make the market more attractive,’ says Connie Tam, the group’s communications manager in Hong Kong.