HONG KONG: Plans for China’s first free trade zone —seen as a threat to Hong Kong’s status as a finance hub — are also a tool to dampen political protest in the city, analysts say.
The FTZ in Shanghai will allow unfettered exchange of China’s yuan currency as part of a bold push to reform the world’s second largest economy, according to proposals revealed earlier this month.
Experts have already urged Hong Kong to improve its economic environment, including tackling high rents and labour costs, if it wants to compete with the new trade and finance hub.
But senior Beijing officials last week warned the ex-British colony that it also needs to curb increasing political dissent if it wants to thrive and analysts say the promotion of Shanghai is an indirect message to Hong Kong to cooperate politically, or be marginalised economically.
“Beijing is using a softline economic approach to groom Shanghai to compete with, or possibly replace Hong Kong. The implicit message is clear that if Hong Kong continues to have political squabbles, its economic status will suffer greatly,” Sonny Lo, a social scientist at Hong Kong Institute of Education, said.
Yu Zhengsheng, the leader of Beijing’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and Wang Guangya, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, both called for “unity” in the city last week.
“(Wang) called on us to think clearly whether Hong Kong should be a city for political struggle or economic development,” said Walter Kwok, part of a Hong Kong delegation addressed by Wang in Beijing Tuesday, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. Yu spoke to the same delegation, asking Hong Kong to “stay united and comply with the Basic Law under all circumstances,” if it wanted to enhance its competitiveness, the Post reported. He described Hong Kong society has having unwelcome “noise”, local media said.
Ma Ngok, a political scientist at Hong Kong’s Chinese University, said the remarks by Beijing officials were a bid to “create a stabilising force” amid current political unrest.
Under British rule, Hong Kong was transformed into one of the freest world economies and an international finance centre, outpacing economic development in Chinese cities.
Doubts were cast over its ability to retain its status after the handover from Britain to China in 1997, while Shanghai flourished during a period of stellar economic growth overseen by president Jiang Zemin.
After Jiang retired from the last of his national posts in 2005, several members of his powerful “Shanghai Gang” political clique were dismissed in corruption trials, widely seen as a move by new president Hu Jintao to rein in the city’s powerbase.
AFP
