Hong Kong’s proposed law worries companies

HONG KONG — As tens of thousands of protesters returned to Hong Kong’s streets on Wednesday to speak out against a proposed law that would allow extraditions to mainland China, one prominent voice has been largely silent: big business.

But quietly, a wave of concern has spread through the community of foreign consultants, investors and executives who depend on Hong Kong as a safe base from which to do business in China.

No major company dares to speak out publicly for fear of angering the Chinese government. Behind the scenes, they are grappling with difficult questions about whether the legislation would endanger foreign executives or undermine the city’s legal system, a preferred venue for resolving disputes over the mainland’s Communist Party-controlled courts.

‘‘The business and financial community is deeply concerned about what this may augur for Hong Kong,’’ said Fred Hu, founder of the investment firm Primavera Capital Group and former head of Goldman Sachs’ Greater China business.

“Any perceived erosion of independent judiciary and individual freedom could undermine investor confidence and negatively affect Hong Kong’s future as a leading global business and financial center,” Hu said.

The law could broadly threaten Hong Kong’s place as a middle ground between China and the business world. As the protests gathered steam on Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, issued a statement questioning whether Washington should reconsider a law that exempts Hong Kong from some of the trade and technology limits it imposes on the rest of China.

“Congress has no choice but to reassess whether Hong Kong is ‘sufficiently autonomous’ under ‘one country, two systems’ framework” if the government passes the bill, she said, referring to the arrangement that allows the Chinese city to function under its own laws.

There are signs that tensions in Hong Kong were already undermining business confidence. A Hong Kong property developer called Goldin Financial Holdings cited “recent social contradiction and economic instability” for its decision this week to walk away from its $1.4 billion bid for a plot of land at the city’s former Kai Tak airport. It did not detail its concerns.

For big business, Hong Kong was supposed to be safer than this.

When the British handed over Hong Kong, a former colony, to China in 1997 under the policy of “one country, two systems,” there was a promise that the territory would continue to operate under relative autonomy. Though Beijing effectively controls the system by which Hong Kong picks its top leaders, the city enjoys wide freedoms of speech and of the press. The government takes a light hand compared with the mainland when it comes to business regulation, and its courts are considered independent and well run.

For decades, major companies parked their Chinese or Asian headquarters in Hong Kong, making the city a major nexus of finance and commerce, though some of that power has ebbed as China grew wealthy in its own right and more companies began to deal with that market directly.