by Lam Pun Lee

The economy of Hong Kong has been impacted since the anti-extradition law protests started last June. In January this year, the Wuhan pneumonia (COVID-19) spread from Mainland China to Hong Kong and later became a pandemic with over 8 million confirmed cases so far worldwide and over 400,000 deaths, causing phenomenal economic losses. The Wuhan pneumonia in the past six months has exposed the failure of the local government to face the root cause time and again in the series of events that have happened.

Blame the protesters but silent about Mainland’s cover-up

Back in October last year, the Hong Kong government banned face masks by enforcing the “Emergency Law”, in the belief that it would stop riots and violence. The result was, on the contrary, further aggravating civilian-police conflicts. The campuses of the Chinese University and the Polytechnic were turned into battlefields. In late January, when the Wuhan pneumonia was spreading from the Mainland into Hong Kong, the government, out of concern to save face, advised citizens that face masks were not necessary in normal social occasions. Chief Executive Carrie Lam even went further to forbid civil servants to put on masks at work, and they were told to take it off if they did wear one. If it had not been for the self-consciousness of the citizens who learned the lessons from SARS and took the initiative to wear masks instead of trusting what the government said, the number of infected cases would have had gone through the roof. In fact, in some countries where the use of face masks is restricted by law, at the early stage of the pandemic only few people wore masks as many were afraid of breaking the law. As a result, the pandemic spread quickly, and sadly many lives were lost.

In face of the virus spreading across the Mainland border into Hong Kong in late January, some medical professional associations asked the government to close the border in order to stop the inflow of cases, or they would go on strike. However, Carrie Lam gave priority to political concerns and ignored the demands of frontline medical practitioners. She refused to close the borders for fear that it would be seen as giving in to the threat of strike. The border was closed partially only later as the epidemic went worse. A total close-down of the border was not enforced until March when the pandemic broke out globally, and visitors from the Mainland and other countries were blocked from entry. The number of entries at the airport dropped from a daily 200,000 to less than a thousand. After the close-down, Hong Kong finally escaped from a community outbreak and economic activities did not have to come to a complete stop.

Since the anti-extradition demonstration last year, there had been violent protests targeting the airport, the metro, and malls and shops, leading to economic recession in Hong Kong. Government officials and business representatives blamed the protesters for their “mutual- destruction” strategy that caused a close to 3% drop in GDP in the third and forth quarter last year. In the first quarter this year, with the hit of the Wuhan pneumonia, GDP of Hong Kong shrank significantly to a record of -8.9%. The government increased the economic rescue funding ten times from 30 billion to about 300 billion Hong Kong dollars, jetting up the financial deficit to 10% of GDP. And this number has not yet taken into account the 30 billion allotted to save the Ocean Park and the Cathay Pacific Airways. Never did citizens hear the government and the commercial sector blame Mainland officials for covering up the epidemic outbreak, for not learning lessons from SARS, not quitting cultural misdemeanors and continuing the indiscriminate killing and eating of wild animals, all of which together caused the spread of the pandemic to Hong Kong and the rest of the world. In the past, the Hong Kong political elites stressed the importance for Hong Kong to integrate economically with the Mainland. How ironic it is now that the border was closed due to the pandemic, that the elites asked the citizens to “set out again” to spend more in the territory to boost the local economy instead.

Be humble, autocratic or democratic rulers

Since June last year, citizens have been concerned if the police have been deploying excessive force against protesters, while the government and their supporters have been blindly in support of the police force. On telecasts we saw young people arrested with no means of resistance were beaten up in bloodshed by the police. Till today, not a single policeman has been charged for using excessive force. In early May this year, a South Asian man died after being pressed in the neck by a policeman. For a prolonged period, the Hong Kong police have been reluctant to disclose the identity of the dead and the cause of his death. Soon, in the United States, an African American man was killed by a white policeman kneeling on the back of his neck. The incident triggered large scale protests against police brutality and racism in the United States and around the world. This was the obviously an awakening call to the Hong Kong government to take the problem of police brutality seriously.

In the past 9 months, from the Hong Kong government banning masks to people around the world wearing masks, from the refusal to close down borders to lockdown everywhere in the world, from accusing protesters of damaging the economy to the Wuhan pneumonia setting off global recession, from backing up police brutality to global demonstrations against police brutality… How paradoxical things are in this world! And, to add to that, the chain of anti-extradition law protests in Hong Kong started from a murder case in Taiwan, and the large- scale anti-police and anti-racism demonstrations in the United States was also triggered by a case of homicide. President Trump, who claimed that he had asked President Xi not to send the army to suppress the Hong Kong protests, did consider deploying the army to suppress the demonstrations in his own country.

All these events did not happen by chance. They showed the ugliness and hypocrisy in politics. They also reminded those in power not to live in conceit and arrogance, not to abuse their power to bully the powerless, not to abuse the law, not to lie, not to ask others to love the country while they themselves are quitting, not to indulge in the scrambling for power and wealth, and not to put personal gains and party interests above people’s lives and the nation’s interests. Those in power should be humble. They should serve the people. They should confront the limitations of their political and economic system which has caused global economic disparities, ecological disequilibrium, corruption, and discrimination and suppression of minorities. If they are not willing to take these problems seriously, they cannot expect long lasting social stability, be it in an autocratic or democratic country, with or without national security and anti-terrorist laws.

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