Hong Kong’s role in the trade war should be to explain to the world how far China has come
- Christine Loh says Hong Kong firms with mainland operations will be seriously hit by further US tariffs and the city has nothing to gain from demonising China
- Instead, Hong Kong should use its unique position to explain the history of China’s development and the progress it has made in opening up
The message should be clear. Hong Kong companies will need to diversity their export markets and/or take advantage of the growing mainland domestic market in the longer term to survive. They cannot ignore geopolitical shifts any more.
Watch: How the US-China trade war affects Hong Kong
One of China’s top diplomats, Fu Ying, explained what this means: “The causes for these tensions are many and various. Competition among the new drivers of growth, industry and technology is a source of unease. So, too, are the seismic political realignments in liberal democracies. It also seems that the US and other Western countries, driven by their suspicion of different political systems, have become more wary or even fearful of China's success under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”
China sees things differently. It argues that the US should not worry as it is still top dog and globalisation has benefited America greatly: US gross domestic product grew from US$5.98 trillion in 1990 to US$19.39 trillion in 2017, an increase of US$35,577 per capita. Meanwhile, China’s GDP per capita over the same period grew by US$8,509. It would be fairer to say America and China grew together but the US is still a very long way ahead.
The second strand has to do with China’s constitutional and political system, which Western liberal democracies see as a competing system because it has succeeded in pulling the country out of dire poverty and helped it develop steadily.
There’s no doubt Hong Kong should want the mainland to continue to develop. Yet, within the context of a “systems conflict”, the special administrative region is in a real bind.
There is likely to be growing negative rhetoric not only over trade but about the nature of China’s political system as a socialist state with a ruling Communist Party. The purpose of this rhetoric is to show the Chinese system in the worst light possible. Hong Kong should have no interest in jumping on that bandwagon.
From a day-to-day perspective, the national authorities have performance legitimacy on their side. This is a time when Hong Kong can make an active choice to learn more about the mainland from the vantage point of contributing to national betterment and not get dragged into the big power “systems conflict”.
It would take enormous wisdom for Hong Kong to stake out a path that enables its electoral development to evolve. If it could do so, Beijing might be able to see it as not a threat to national security but as a sign of its confidence to experiment in a controlled manner with such reform.
Christine Loh, a former undersecretary for the environment, is an adjunct professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology