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Hong Kong politics
OpinionComment
Vijay Verghese
Vijay Verghese

Opinion | Capitalist greed is good: can Hong Kong reinvent its economic miracle?

  • Many long-time residents will say the city has lost much of its can-do hunger and ingenuity, where anything was possible at the right price
  • Hong Kong’s leaders must earn the people’s trust again as it is the one commodity in the equation that cannot be willed into being by any emergency decree

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A man looks at his phone at a popular viewing point, with Hong Kong Island in the background, on January 21. Photo: AFP
Vijay Verghese

Famous as the entrepot for trade with China and later a safe avenue for foreign investment, Hong Kong has long had another export up its sleeve that is rarely spoken of in polite company: capitalist greed.

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It is at the core of the city’s freewheeling capitalism, has changed much of Asia and attracted the attention of Deng Xiaoping, who was keen to lift China out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. This was when Hong Kong achieved lift-off and set about subverting its host with vast infusions of this powerful export.
Deng’s great gamble in the 1980s was opening up China to the West and its notions of economic development. It was hoped that Hong Kong could help change the quality and pace of life for millions. China learned, copied and changed.
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It is interesting that this gamble, which paid rich dividends for China, failed to secure the freewheeling future of one of its prime architects. The thinking was that, over time, Hong Kong would reshape China in its own mould. China feared the city’s rapacious capitalism as much as it coveted the rewards of the process, later refashioned with socialist characteristics.

With rapid development, rising GDP and growing wealth, China rebuilt trust in the Communist Party. This enabled a fraying social contract – woven with the people’s unquestioning faith – to stay securely in place.

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