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The Slow, Quiet Death of Hong Kong
The Slow, Quiet Death of Hong Kong
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0:00
This is China, and this is China, yet the degree of difference between the two sides of this line
0:06
far surpasses that of many, perhaps even most international borders. Growing from a fishing
0:12
village into one of the world’s wealthiest cities almost entirely within its 156 years
0:17
of British Colonial rule, the 27 years since Hong Kong’s return to China have done little
0:22
to blunt the full totality of its anomalies from the mainland, but Beijing’s now trying to change
0:27
that—and fast. This is proving challenging. Much of Hong Kong is quite literally as
0:34
different to the mainland as it can be. North of the border, vehicles drive on the right;
0:39
in Hong Kong, they drive on the left. Hong Kongers get their own passports—some of the
0:43
strongest in the world, in fact, with visa-free access to 172 countries. Mainlanders, meanwhile,
0:49
only get relatively weak Chinese passports granting the same rights to just 90 nations.
0:55
Hong Kong has unrestricted access to the entire internet, China’s is some of the most restricted
1:00
and censored in the entire world. In fact, Hong Kong is so isolated from the rest of China that
1:05
mainland residents are not even allowed to visit the territory without applying for
1:09
and being granted a permit, whereas the residents of the UK, US, and 168 other
1:14
countries can visit without any visa or permit—it is quite literally easier for most foreigners to
1:20
visit the city than Chinese people. But then there’s the less tangible
1:24
side—the general, international flair to the city borne out of Britain. For example,
1:30
Hong Kong’s traditional tea is closer to the British preparation since it relies
1:34
on milk—uncommon in traditional Chinese cuisine due to the lactose intolerance experienced by 90%
1:40
of ethnic Chinese. There’s also the ever-present egg tarts—a direct lineage of the British custard
1:45
tart, ubiquitous across the city's bakeries and restaurants, and even now in Hong Kong-style dim
1:50
sum restaurants in the rest of the world. With high levels of English proficiency, day-to-day
1:54
exposure to Westerners, access to international media, and more, Hong Kong, while in a category
2:00
of one, is far more similar to places like London or New York than any other Chinese city.
2:05
But Hong Kong’s distinction goes deeper than that. Perhaps the greatest source of difference is in
2:11
the very core of its legal and political system. China, after all, is a communist state—a political
2:18
structure just about as fundamentally different as possible to those used in the west. Hong Kong,
2:24
meanwhile, is a free-market, capitalist economy centered by a western, democratic system based
2:29
on English law. With the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, this system was adapted and
2:34
enshrined into Hong Kong Basic Law—in broad strokes, this guaranteed the maintenance of
2:40
the status quo of democracy, capitalism, and the English legal system until at least 2047.
2:46
So in the era since the handover, you have a strange, singular situation where a communist,
2:51
autocratic country oversees a capitalist, democratic territory—a fundamental
2:56
incompatibility that the pair have increasingly and painstakingly attempted to rectify, such as
3:01
in 2019 when the Hong Kong government proposed an amendment to the territory’s Basic Law.
3:08
It was called the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation.
3:13
The law was born out of a murder, as a 19-year-old Hong Konger killed his girlfriend in Taiwan,
3:19
admitted to doing as much, but then couldn’t be extradited back to Taiwan because there was
3:23
no formal extradition agreement between Hong Kong and Taiwan. To close what they called a loophole,
3:29
the pro-Beijing party, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong,
3:33
presented some changes to the law: that special surrender arrangements would be considered on a
3:37
case-by-case basis to any jurisdiction, regardless of their prior extradition relationship with Hong
3:43
Kong. While this would only apply to 37 specific schedule 1 offenses—which range from murder and
3:48
piracy to offenses involving the unlawful use of computers—it was received by the Hong Kong
3:53
public as a serious concern. Now, it seemed, any brush with the law could see Hong Kongers
3:58
whisked away from their western-style courts and legal system and thrown into those of mainland
4:04
China’s. For people with such a cultural distance from their next-door neighbor,
4:08
it seemed like another slide toward Chinese rule—and they wouldn't stand for it.
4:13
The protest began in earnest here, well before it became global news, with a student-led sit-in at
4:18
the Central Government Complex. Then, the movement grew: 10,000 marched in protest two weeks later,
4:25
then, a month after that, a crowd that organizers claimed to be around 130,000 marched in protest
4:31
against case-by-case extradition toward the legislative council. Still, while the largest
4:36
protest in five years, the bill, and its most prominent proponent in Chief Executive Carrie Lam,
4:41
maintained that the extradition rules were to become law. But over the weeks and months
4:46
that followed, the protests continued to snowball into the massive demonstrations
4:50
that reached global headlines and ranked as the largest in the city’s history, and eventually
4:55
Carrie Lam gave in and withdrew the legislation. So in the short-term, the protests won the battle,
5:01
effectively striking down Hong Kong legislation that felt like it empowered the mainland. But it
5:06
also served as justification for another legal maneuver that may have forever displaced the
5:11
balance between eastern and western influence in the city. This was a new national security law,
5:17
and it was annexed, in its entirety—all 6 chapters and 66 articles—by a vote of
5:23
162 to zero. This criminalized acts that could be considered subversion from China,
5:29
or efforts of secession from China, or terrorism toward China. As Lam saw it, such an act had been
5:35
justified by the protests, but critically, unlike the extradition legislation, this new
5:40
law didn’t have to clear Hong Kong legislation, as it was introduced then passed by the National
5:46
People’s Congress, then signed by Xi Jinping—an almost unheard of instance of Beijing imposing
5:52
laws on the supposedly autonomous Hong Kong. This was a massive break from the norm. While
5:59
similar security legislation had been presented in 2003, it was brought to the fore by Hong Kong
6:04
officials, and it was subsequently dismantled by protestors. But now, in the grips of a global
6:09
pandemic that had Hong Kongers assembling in no larger than groups of eight, and in the
6:13
wake of what China viewed as a secessionist and terrorism upswell in the year prior,
6:17
the nation took legal reform into its own hands. The legal case to do so was dubious. The Hong Kong
6:25
bar association protested, the western world strongly denounced the move. But strangely,
6:31
the streets were quiet. Unlike during previous perceived oversteps by China,
6:35
Hong Kongers didn’t take to the streets, they didn’t organize in the thousands around the
6:40
universities. Rather, when reporters asked about the new laws, they stayed suspiciously mum. And,
6:47
one by one, organizers and activists focused their energy not on saving Hong Kong’s special status,
6:52
but getting themselves and their families out of Hong Kong as quick as possible. As the UK opened
6:58
up a path to citizenship for Hong Kongers who lived in the city during British rule,
7:01
well over a hundred thousand opted to move to the former colonizer, while hundreds of
7:06
thousands more opted to move elsewhere. For many, confidence was lost that the territory
7:11
could ever return to what it was before. But it is worth noting: Hong Kong has never been a
7:17
true, full democracy with universal suffrage. For much of the colonial period, like most colonies,
7:23
Hong Kong was essentially ruled outright by the Governor, who themselves was the representative
7:27
of the British monarchy. But in the 1980s, the system started to evolve into something
7:31
closer and closer to universal suffrage—where everyone gets to vote. In the 1990s and 2000s,
7:37
the territory experienced its most representative form of democracy ever, yet from the 2010s to
7:43
today, that has started to regress as Beijing institutes a series of so-called, “reforms.”
7:49
Now, Hong Kong’s elections system quite literally may be one of the most complex in the entire
7:54
world. But much of it stems from what’s called the Election Committee. This is a 1,500 member
8:00
body who votes for the Chief Executive—the head of the government. How this body is formed is
8:05
convoluted and has changed with each of the last three elections. In the 2016 election, though, 106
8:12
of the positions were just directly appointed—the President of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
8:17
Chairperson of the Drinking Water Safety Advisory Committee, and Chairman of the Antiquities
8:21
Advisory Board, for example, each automatically gained a seat in the Election Committee.
8:25
But the vast majority of seats were themselves voted upon by so-called functional constituencies.
8:31
In 2016 there were 38 of these each representing a variety of interests—there was one for the
8:36
financial sector with 18 seats, another representing Chinese Medicine with 30,
8:41
even one representing religious interests with 60 seats. Now, each functional constituency
8:46
itself has a different way of determining who fills its election committee seats. Some,
8:51
like the education constituency, allow for widespread voting—every registered teacher
8:56
and many higher-level administrative staff in educational institutions are allowed to
9:00
vote on who they send to the committee, and therefore have an indirect say in who gets
9:04
appointed as Chief Executive of Hong Kong. But bizarrely, about 42.5% of total election
9:10
committee seats were voted upon by organizations and corporations. In the finance constituency,
9:16
any registered bank that has been operating for at least three years votes—not individuals
9:20
working at the banks, the banks themselves. Yet for other constituencies, like that of transport,
9:27
the eligibility criteria is simply just a list of companies. There are 229 that can register to
9:32
vote in this constituency, and that’s how Gate Gourmet, for example, the Swiss-Owned airline
9:37
catering company, ends up with the right to vote for the individuals who then go on to vote for
9:41
the most powerful politician in the territory. Clearly, this system had its critics. The very
9:48
fact that the head of the government was voted on by 246,440 voters, rather than all seven million
9:53
residents of the territory, would be enough to elicit controversy, but then there’s the question
9:58
of the composition of this voter-base to begin with. Politics in Hong Kong typically are split
10:03
into the so-called pro-Beijing and pro-Democracy camps. There’s the group that supports increased
10:08
control by the central government, then there’s the group that supports increased autonomy and
10:12
democracy for Hong Kong. These functional constituencies, and therefore the election
10:17
committee, consistently skew more towards the pro-Beijing camp than the general public.
10:22
For example, in the 2012 legislative council elections, some seats were voted upon by the
10:27
general public in geographic constituencies, while others were voted upon by the same functional
10:31
constituencies. The pro-Democracy camp actually beat the pro-Beijing camp in the directly elected
10:37
seats—winning 18 to their 17. But considering pro-Beijing won the vast majority of functional
10:43
constituency seats, 26 to pro-Democracy’s 9, the pro-Beijing politicians won a strong majority in
10:50
the legislative council—as they have in every single election in the Chinese era.
10:55
But something changed in late 2019. In the midst of the wide scale anti-extradition protests,
11:01
the territory held its District Council elections—essentially, the local elections.
11:06
Unlike the territory-wide legislative council or Chief Executive elections, the vast majority of
11:10
District Council seats were directly elected by the general public. And the pro-democracy
11:15
camp showed up in force. For the first time ever, they won in the popular vote—a full 57%—and won a
11:24
colossal 388 of 452 seats—an absolutely massive jump from their previous total of 126. With
11:32
legislative council and Chief Executive elections on the horizon in 2021 and 2022 respectively,
11:38
Beijing decided it needed to make some changes if it were to ensure its supporters stayed in power.
11:43
China’s National People’s Congress—which itself is a body whose members are technically elected
11:47
but in a process almost entirely controlled by the Chinese Communist Party—voted in
11:51
2021 to reform the composition of Hong Kong’s legislative council. Previously,
11:56
half of the seventy seats were directly elected by the general public, while the other half were
12:00
elected by the functional constituencies. But now, there’d be ninety total seats with just
12:05
twenty directly elected by the public, thirty elected by the functional constituencies,
12:10
then another forty elected by the election committee—which itself, of course, was made up of
12:15
members voted in by the functional constituencies. Overall, this massively tilted power away from
12:21
the people and towards the historically pro-Beijing functional constituencies.
12:25
But that was far from the full extent of the reforms. The election committee, despite its
12:30
perfect history in voting in a pro-Beijing chief executive, was itself reformed too. Typically,
12:36
the strongest block of support for pro-democracy politicians comes from the functional
12:40
constituencies made up of people, rather than institutions. For example, the education
12:45
constituency, made up of 85,000 teachers, academics, and administrative staff, was always
12:50
one of the few pro-democracy constituencies. But with the 2021 reforms, the number of seats
12:55
filled by these functional constituencies made up of real people was slashed—many by half,
13:00
some by four times. Meanwhile, the number of seats voted in by companies and organizations stayed
13:06
about the same, while they also added more than three hundred new ex-officio seats—those filled
13:11
by someone already in another position, in this case almost all inherently pro-Beijing positions.
13:16
If that wasn’t enough, all candidates for essentially any political position in Hong
13:20
Kong now had to be approved by a candidate review committee—one that follows ambiguous
13:25
criteria and has absolutely no mechanism for appeal. The members of this committee,
13:30
that decides among other things who can run for the seats that vote for the Chief Executive,
13:34
are directly appointed by the Chief Executive. Democracy is dead in Hong Kong. The pro-Democracy
13:41
camp, which just years ago was able to win the popular vote, now has absolutely no viable
13:48
path towards any position of power. China has remade the city in its own image—a political
13:54
system that claims to represent the will of the people, but in actuality hands near-complete
13:59
control over to the central government. Beyond and because of the changing political
14:04
system, there is now also a widespread trend of Hong Kong becoming more integrated—literally,
14:08
functionally, and culturally—with the mainland. In 2018, a $20 billion bridge opened connecting
14:14
the peninsula to both Macau, another autonomous territory, and the mainland on the other side
14:18
of the Estuary. This was considered by many a symbolic project more than anything. After all,
14:23
there was already a reliable and popular network of fast ferries connecting Hong Kong to Macau,
14:28
and road traffic between both territories and the mainland is quite limited—the territories
14:32
drive on the opposite side of the road as the mainland, and even then, driving
14:36
a vehicle across the border requires a separate driving license, a permit, separate insurance,
14:41
and approval by the neighboring Chinese region, so very few even attempt it.
14:45
But a far more practical connection opened with the West Kowloon railway
14:48
station in 2018. This connected Hong Kong to the Chinese high speed rail network,
14:53
meaning one can now travel non-stop well over a thousand miles across the country to Beijing or
14:59
Shanghai in about eight hours. This was also controversial. After all, to make it nonstop,
15:05
without a long wait at the border, mainland Chinese immigration would have to happen at
15:09
the station itself. This meant that mainland officials would operate within Hong Kong and,
15:15
most problematically to supporters of Hong Kong’s autonomy, mainland law would be in
15:20
force after the immigration checkpoint, meaning there is now this small area in
15:24
Hong Kong within West Kowloon Station and on the tracks out from it where many believe Basic Law,
15:29
stipulating the autonomy of Hong Kong’s legal system, has been violated. After all, there
15:34
have now been instances where individuals have been arrested and prosecuted under mainland law
15:39
while physically in Hong Kong, but after clearing mainland immigration in West Kowloon station.
15:44
Beyond the increasing physical connection with the mainland, there’s simultaneously a mounting
15:48
intangible alignment with China. This is not necessarily wrong—after all the vast majority
15:53
of Hong Kongers are ethnically Chinese—but it is often controversial and many see it
15:58
as coming at the expense of maintaining Hong Kong’s unique, singular identity. For example,
16:03
the newly opened half billion dollar Hong Kong Palace Museum displays artifacts from the Beijing
16:07
Palace Museum, and focuses on educating the public about the history of imperial China.
16:12
But they’ve been very careful to phrase it as a partner, not a branch, of the Beijing museum,
16:17
even if in function it could be either. Critics suggest that its development could have been
16:21
forced through by Beijing as a form of cultural propaganda as Chief Executive Carrie Lam approved
16:26
its construction without any consultation from the legislative council or public—and
16:30
critics say this is a violation of the rules of the cultural district in which it’s built.
16:35
COVID was another example of alignment with China. Pragmatically, Hong Kong had no choice but
16:40
to align its prevention measures with Beijing’s severe and scientifically controversial zero-COVID
16:45
policies. After all, not doing so would act as public doubt in Xi Jinping’s decision-making,
16:50
which is not a realistic option for Hong Kong’s ruling pro-Beijing leadership. But especially in
16:55
the later years of the pandemic, this served as a stark display of just how Chinese this supposedly
17:00
Westernized city had become. Throughout 2022, the territory maintained strict policies like
17:06
21-day quarantines for arriving passengers, legally-enforced isolation for the sick,
17:10
vaccine passports for access to public places, and more. Meanwhile,
17:14
most of the western world got back to normal in early 2022 as the Omicron-fueled surge subsided.
17:20
Ultimately, Hong Kong’s strictness, borne out of Beijing’s influence, seemed to get it the worst of
17:26
both worlds. The city had an extremely high COVID death rate—higher than most Western countries,
17:32
and far higher that most of the Asian continent. And perhaps most notably, Singapore, perhaps Hong
17:37
Kong’s closest equivalent, did not see the same. 2,024 people died of COVID in Singapore, or about
17:44
one in 2,800 people. In Hong Kong, though, 13,516 died—that’s one in 550. But Singapore’s COVID
17:55
policy was far less strict. It opened its borders to the world about a year before Hong Kong,
18:00
and was devoid of almost all visible restrictions by late 2022 while Hong Kong was still in the
18:05
midst of its strict zero-COVID policies. This had an impact because the cities are
18:10
direct competitors. They both portray themselves as global business capitals—the perfect hub of
18:16
east and west, with high English proficiency, strong local talent, and easy access to financial
18:21
services and other important institutions. And they are each successful at this. Singapore
18:26
is home to the Asian headquarters of Apple, Google, Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, Barclays,
18:31
Microsoft, Boeing, and plenty more while Hong Kong acts as the headquarters of J.P. Morgan,
18:35
Prudential, Estée Lauder, and more, but the composition of these lists reflects the changing
18:40
nature of multinational enterprise in Asia. Singapore is winning. It is consistently being
18:47
chosen as the best city for western companies to base their Asia operations out of. This is
18:52
reflected by the fact that Hong Kong barely has any tech presence, as the new wave of businesses
18:57
has consistently chosen the city-state to the south. And they’re not losing out on new business,
19:02
they’re also just simply losing business. FedEx and the Wall Street Journal were two of
19:07
the highest profile headquarters moves from Hong Kong to Singapore in recent years, while others
19:10
have selected elsewhere. The New York Times, for example, moved its Asia headquarters to Seoul,
19:15
while LVMH—the luxury goods conglomerate including Louis Vuitton, Sephora, Tiffany,
19:20
and dozens more brands—opted to move up to Shanghai. In fact, the number of American
19:25
businesses with regional headquarters in Hong Kong is now declining, and at 214, it’s at its lowest
19:31
count since the year 2000, and a similar trend is seen for British and Australian firms as well.
19:37
Since 2018, Hong Kong’s economy has been effectively flat—it’s only grown a marginal
19:43
5.8% in five whole years. Over the same span, Singapore’s has exploded a full 33.2%. Since 2021,
19:52
Hong Kong’s historically red-hot property market has been on a steady decline. And
19:57
tourism figures have been terrible, at numbers not seen since the early
20:01
2010s. Hong Kong is just not what it once was. Its quagmire seems centered around the fact that
20:09
it’s losing what made it unique. The destinations of the businesses leaving the city reflect this.
20:14
Shanghai is certainly the city best-suited to international companies in mainland China, so
20:19
it makes sense the companies that want to further focus on the Chinese market, like LVMH, would move
20:23
there. Singapore, meanwhile, has effectively stepped in to be what Hong Kong once was.
20:29
It is tremendously cosmopolitan—at times it’s hard to categorize it into any one
20:33
continent—and yet it still has high exposure and proximity to China. Also a former British colony,
20:39
Singapore also runs on a western legal system, also has high English language proficiency,
20:44
and also runs as a democracy—although also an imperfect one. But perhaps most importantly,
20:50
Singapore is, of course, its own country. It is not subject to the same game of tug of war between
20:55
the world and China as Hong Kong. It is therefore perceived by many as a more stable environment.
21:02
Hong Kong is changing fast, and when a company is deciding where to invest hundreds of millions of
21:06
dollars to build a headquarters, fast change is not attractive. In 2021, the US Departments of
21:12
State, Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security jointly issued an advisory warning US companies
21:17
about the growing risks in operating in Hong Kong. The document notes the risks to foreign nationals
21:22
and businesses placed by the new National Security Law, that data security is no longer a guarantee,
21:27
and that there could be challenges with access to information given growing constraints on
21:30
the freedom of the press in the territory. And beyond the direct implications of these threats,
21:35
multinational companies rely on the ability to convince key talent to move to their offices
21:40
in Asia, and there’s a significant number of westerners who are wary of moving to a place
21:44
that is increasingly influenced by Beijing. So to the decision-makers, it’s now hard to see
21:50
what Hong Kong uniquely offers. There’s the option of Shanghai if a business wants a cosmopolitan
21:56
city with direct access to mainland China, and then there’s Singapore if they just need proximity
22:00
and familiarity. The city is just consistently losing, and the trend-line is the scariest bit.
22:07
It’s tough to know what Beijing’s end-game is. Hong Kong is a useful tool for the
22:12
central government as it’s difficult for western companies to operate in China’s unique economic
22:16
and legal system, so the city almost acts as a connecting node between China’s socialist
22:21
economy and the western capitalist one. This almost certainly increases the flow of capital
22:26
into the country while simultaneously allowing the Chinese Communist Party
22:29
to maintain their brand of socialism. Perhaps it’s just instinct. Xi Jinping
22:36
and the other autocratic leaders in China just don’t know how to deal with dissent.
22:40
This has been demonstrated by the Tiananmen Square Massacre, by the lack of free press,
22:44
by the censorship of media—the instinct is to just prevent dissent from happening in public,
22:49
rather than confronting its cause. But in a democratic system, dissent is inherent.
22:55
In a democratic Hong Kong, therefore, there will always be an anti-China camp. So perhaps, in the
23:01
long term, one country, two systems was never going to work, but it’s also possible that in
23:06
the future the world will look back on Hong Kong as an example of Chinese short-sightedness—the
23:12
destruction of a once-great city out of fear of what democracy could do to Beijing.
23:20
Rather than do a traditional ad-read here at the end, I’m just going to play the trailer
23:23
for the new show me and my team made called the Getaway. Although I’ll say now: there is
23:29
a bit of a twist in this trailer, so it’s worth watching at least halfway through… “Welcome to
23:34
The Getaway where these six creators are taking a road trip to transport a $10,000 prize across the
23:40
great American West. The problem… there's a Snitch among them! Sabotaging the group at every turn.
23:49
The Gamer? Am I 1,000% sure I am not the Snitch? Absolutely. The Zoologist? Is there nothing I can
23:56
say to change your mind? The Therapist? You guys trust-trust each other? Actually trust each other?
24:02
The Card Counter? I'm not— I'm not throwing shade at you. But the way that I think it would be smart
24:07
to do it— Steven! The Finance Guy? This Snitch thing is very stressful. I go to bed at night,
24:13
and I worry. The Political Scientist? I have this suspicion that... we did get the
24:18
Snitch. You really never know. Sure. Okay. This is a tense moment. Okay, here we go.
24:29
What am I? Alright, nice. Ohh yeah. Snitch. So here's what's actually going on. We really
24:35
like shows that have, you know, a sabotage element. But there's already so many that
24:40
have a saboteur. Okay. Alright. I have this special role. I'm really carrying this entire
24:48
series. There's even the ones that have a couple of saboteurs. Boston I don't believe in. Jersey
24:53
I don't bel… It's Boston. Boston was never the city. But as far as we know, there's none that
25:00
have everyone as the saboteur. And we thought that would be funny. In some way, I'm like,
25:11
are there two Snitches here? We got— We gotta run! Oh my (bleep) god! There's no script for this. So,
25:31
you know… That's a great—Oh, that's gonna make the trailer, dude. Yeah. Yeah. You mother—”
25:54
You can watch the Getaway exclusively on Nebula, so head over
25:58
to Nebula.tv/Wendover to sign up and you’ll even get 40% off an annual subscription, bringing the
26:00
cost down to just $2.50 a month. With that you’ll get access to the full catalog of top-notch Nebula
26:03
Originals made by creators you probably already watch and love, plus access to all of our normal
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videos early and ad-free, and you’ll be helping support our work, so thank you in advance.
