- This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 9 years, 8 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
HONG KONG — In this city awash with money from mainland China, a former hedge fund manager hopes to incite a political awakening among the bankers, stockbrokers and financial traders whose livelihoods have become increasingly enmeshed in the mainland’s cash and influence.
If Edward C. K. Chin and his 70 or so supporters have their way, growing numbers from the city’s financial class will join a campaign that in coming months plans to stage civil disobedience protests in Central — the business district where many of them work in sleek office towers — demanding unfettered elections for Hong Kong’s leaders in 2017 and beyond.
In a letter to China’s president, Xi Jinping, to be published in newspapers on Wednesday, the financial industry activists say Hong Kong’s economic health and social integrity have been jeopardized by threats to independent news media, an influx of suspect money and political cronyism that undermines fairness in banking and financial services, a mainstay of the economy.
Edward C.K. Chin is helping to lead a civil disobedience campaign of financial professionals demanding unfettered elections for Hong Kong’s leaders in 2017 and beyond. Credit Daniel Groshong for The New York Times“Hong Kong’s existing political system has become the stumbling block to the city’s long-term social, political and economic growth and is the root cause of social division and disharmony in Hong Kong,” says the letter, a copy of which Mr. Chin provided.
The answer, the letter says, lies in ensuring that Hong Kong’s elections are open, without Beijing’s wielding power to engineer the outcome by excluding candidates or skewing the voting procedures. China’s national legislature has said that the election of the Hong Kong chief executive in 2017 “may be implemented by the method of universal suffrage,” but critics say the Hong Kong government’s proposals to deliver that broad promise could be fatally compromised by limits demanded by Beijing. Hong Kong’s chief executive is currently chosen by an elite committee of about 1,200 people, many of them seen as beholden to the Chinese government.
Mr. Chin and his supporters, who call themselves a financial arm of the “Occupy Central” movement, embody a trend that could prove increasingly troublesome for Beijing’s efforts to manage Hong Kong, which maintains its own administration and laws. Anxiety over mainland influence is reaching up the social ladder to include members of the professional establishment who outwardly appear to have much to gain from avoiding confrontation with the Chinese government and its supporters. Critics of Occupy Central warn that the movement could hurt economic confidence, but its backers say Hong Kong’s long-term economic health requires political action to press for change.
“Most people think people who work in banking or finance only focus on work, or people say we are the beneficiary of this system,” said Lai Chong Au, a marketing manager at an investment firm, who has joined the group started by Mr. Chin.
“But that’s not true,” she said. “In the long run, if you want to maintain an international banking and financial center in Hong Kong, you need to have a good system, a good framework, in order to protect it.”
Michael E. DeGolyer, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University, said a forthcoming study of public opinion showed levels of public discontent with the Hong Kong government similar to those seen before mass protests in 2003, when the government tried to introduce Beijing-backed antisubversion laws.
“People in Hong Kong have been characterized as politically apathetic, but that’s the wrong term,” he said. “They are extremely alert to things that might threaten them, their families and their fortunes.”
Long a British colony, Hong Kong returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. In recent years, the “one country, two systems” arrangement that was created to preserve Hong Kong’s legal and administrative autonomy has come under pressure from Chinese political and economic influence. Despite the echoes of Occupy Wall Street, Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central With Love and Peace” is focused on winning political and electoral rights, not challenging capitalism.
But Mr. Chin, who runs an investment fund, said that in Hong Kong, too, wealth and opportunity have risen beyond the grasp of many middle-class residents, even financial professionals. The city’s boast of being the world’s freest economy is belied by realities, he said. “In Hong Kong, honestly, it’s like 0.01 percent is what I call the ruling class,” he said.
Mainland China’s deepening presence has been accompanied by an influx of suspect cash — possibly from corruption — and cronyism that have compromised Hong Kong’s financial sector, Mr. Chin said. The most lucrative jobs and deals tend to go increasingly to people who are relatives of China’s Communist Party elite or those who have their patronage, he said.
“They definitely don’t compete on the same level playing field,” Mr. Chin said.
He said that his group, mainly Hong Kong-born Chinese, had received support from some mainland Chinese people living in Hong Kong, who feared that the territory’s relatively clean business environment could be tainted by rough-and-tumble practices and corruption more common on the mainland.
“They have seen how it works on both sides,” he said. “They don’t want this city to die.”
He and other members of his group said they were not surprised by allegations, pursued by United States investigators, that JPMorgan Chase used a jobs program to recruit family members of the Chinese Communist Party elite while the bank fought to win business on the mainland. Neither JPMorgan nor any of the other banks under scrutiny for similar practices has been accused of wrongdoing.
Last week, Chinese Communist Party investigators began an inquiry into Song Lin, the chairman of China Resources, a state-controlled conglomerate, after a journalist went public with allegations that Mr. Song had laundered money with the help of a mistress, a Chinese banker working in Hong Kong. Mr. Song has been removed from his job.
“Gradually the apple has become rotten,” said another activist backing Occupy Central, Bill Tsang, who recently retired as a senior manager at the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, or HKEx.
“The mainlanders, they get big deals, not because of their competence, but maybe for political relationships or guanxi,” he said, using the Mandarin word for connections. “Corruption culture has now already come to Hong Kong.”
He and others said China’s political and commercial sway also threatened to stifle Hong Kong newspapers and broadcasters that have produced critical coverage of the mainland and its policies in Hong Kong. Growing worries about pressure on the local news media reached a fever pitch in February, when Kevin Lau Chun-to, the former chief editor of Ming Pao, a newspaper with a tradition of independent journalism, was attacked with a cleaver.
Mr. Lau is recovering, and the police said the authorities in China had arrested two suspects.
Hong Kong’s financial services sector is a mainstay of the economy. It accounts for 16 percent of gross domestic product and provided 228,000 jobs in 2012 in a population of 7.2 million, according to the government. A public opinion survey conducted in December indicated that a majority of professionals and managers supported the Occupy Central campaign, a higher proportion than among blue-collar and menial workers.
But members of the financial group supporting Occupy Central said they did not expect most of Hong Kong’s financial sector workers to turn private support into public action. They said that many were too wary of recriminations, while others believed Hong Kong’s best course was to accommodate or quietly resist mainland pressures.
“I think this is a long-term battle,” said Ms. Au, the marketing manager. “It might not succeed, but at least when I look back, I will know I tried.”
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.