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Opinion | Asia’s world city: the old Hong Kong brand is no more. Perhaps we should try Asia’s Greater Bay Area city?
- The national security law, which the government used to raid a media outlet and arrest its owner, has left the Hong Kong brand in tatters
- The now-dead extradition bill was a precursor to events that changed how the world sees the city
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Rebranding is a tricky business. It involves changing public perception so that something that was good, then turned bad, is seen as good again. The Western perception of Hong Kong has turned so negative that no amount of rebranding can change that, at least in the foreseeable future.
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The Hong Kong the world knew is gone. It was a brand built over many decades: Asia’s top financial centre with a thriving semi-democracy, a freewheeling media, fearless free speech and unhampered anti-government protests.
That brand was already fading after what many in the international community saw as heavy-handed police tactics to crush last year’s often violent anti-government protests. The national security law imposed by Beijing, which the government used to raid a media outlet and arrest its owner, has left the brand in tatters.
It doesn’t matter how many times Beijing and local leaders insist today’s Hong Kong is as it always was despite the new law. Images can be more powerful than words. The images of more than 200 police officers raiding the headquarters of Next Digital, the parent company of Apple Daily, shocked not only many in Hong Kong but also the Western world.
Television and social media footage of police using social distancing rules or the security law to warn or arrest people singing protest songs or holding blank sheets of paper in protest in shopping malls didn’t help. Much of the West no longer sees Hong Kong as a city with a high degree of autonomy.
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It sees a Hong Kong where Beijing has reined in free speech and protests, disqualified opposition candidates, arrested activists, and instilled fear in the media with so many red lines that self-censorship is on the rise.
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