Opinion | Amid reopening, don’t let old mainland frictions haunt Hong Kong’s new normal
- Unhappiness about painkillers being sent to the mainland amid a local shortage and mainlanders looking for vaccines in Hong Kong risk raising cross-border distrust
- The government must defuse these tensions before they detract from the already difficult job of reopening and recovery
New beginnings are in order and worth celebrating for 2023. I hate to break it to all of us, but there’s much to do and a lot of hardship to overcome before we can usher in the new normal.
We know this because the last three years have given us anything but what we’ve planned. After a thousand days of having to cancel school, celebrations and flights, we’ve surely learned to live with uncertainty and tempered expectations. As soon as we settle into a new routine, changes are abruptly thrown at us. This is how Hong Kong will be opening up.
And the sooner we get over the euphoric optimism that comes with celebrating the new year, the hangovers from bubblies, the lifting of pandemic restrictions, and the opening of borders, especially with the mainland, the better. Inertia is a bitch.
We have been pressing for all these for months, and we know it will be increasingly difficult for our economy to bounce back with every day that we are shut out from the motherland and isolated from the rest of the world.
