Shirley Ze Yu

Opinion | China would rather see Hong Kong lose its role as a financial gateway than ever cede political control

Under China’s control, Hong Kong’s DNA is changing and there’s no going back. Beijing may be looking to replace the city with London as a offshore financial hub

In China’s long history, the Hong Kong unrest will be but a minor blip in the country’s progress; the question is whether Beijing needs to wield soft or hard power

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Demonstrators spray paint a security camera at a Mong Kok branch of the Bank of China. Photo: Bloomberg

Shirley Ze Yu

Published: 9:00am, 15 Oct 2019Updated: 1:43am, 16 Oct 2019

China’s ambassador to Britain, Liu Xiaoming, faced off with BBC Newsnight a few hours after the face-mask ban was declared in Hong Kong. He repeated that Hong Kong’s situation is “under control”. And, contrary to the anarchy and chaos the rest of the world observes, he is correct.

Hong Kong has been under China’s control, territorially and administratively. In fact, Hong Kong has also increasingly fallen into China’s economic orbit. It is only a matter of time before Hong Kong’s political system follows.

The transitory promise to Hong Kong of “one country, two systems” is good for 50 years only, a blink of an eye in historical terms. To take a fatalistic view, all the liberal rights Hong Kong protesters are fighting for were handed over when Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997.

Hong Kong is under China’s full control. It is virtually impossible to conceive of an alternative future for the city, come 2047, or even 2097, other than a collective future.

In 100 years, mainland China and Hong Kong will both have fundamentally transformed themselves. Given that China has transformed at a speed and on a scale beyond the world’s imagination, there is no telling where it will be in a century’s time. But one thing is certain: Hong Kong’s destiny lies with China.