In the backdrop of general protest and unprecedented crackdown, Hong Kong’s tourism industry is taking the toll, with 7% decline comparing to the same “Golden Week” from the previous year. What underlines such brief turbulence is, I believe, an accumulation of complicated social, economic and political issues.

Comparing Singapore and Hong Kong’s economic growth since Hong Kong’s reunion with China, we will begin to understand why people in Hong Kong bear grudges. When economy progress is relatively slow and political progress stagnant, it is easy to blame the government for inaction. Even as mainland Chinese, I find it impossible to deny that the government has not done enough to prevent Hong Kong from a relative decline, but I also believe that Hong Kong’s stagnancy has some internal reasons.

If we run a brief PESTLE analysis for any industry in Hong Kong before protests, we will discover that Hong Kong’s political and social climates, at least comparing to Singapore, are less friendly. I recall my own visit to Hong Kong earlier this year-I was annoyed by the need of an Entry-Exit Permit and customs officials’ bureaucracy (Back then I could enter Singapore with my study permit more easily, but I was stopped at the airport, as my permit was not “individual visit permit” but “group visit permit”). I believe that businessmen in China also have the same problem-if they spend too much time dealing with bureaucracy and miss fleeting business opportunities or major negotiations.

Hong Kong’s linguistic environment also appalled me. I have heard from friends that one needs to learn Cantonese to study in Hong Kong’s universities, but I was never told that many ordinary people have near-to-zero English proficiency. In Singapore, school education has already switched from traditional Chinese to simplified characters and Mandarin, while conversational English proficiency is taken for granted. Time has changed. When people in Guangdong Province know both Mandarin and Cantonese, Hong Kong is falling fast behind.

17 years after the reunion, Hong Kong is at crossroads once again. It is easy to identify factors that hinder economic growth, but it is not easy to make political changes, or transform a society’s habits overnight.

 

Reference:

“Hong Kong Protests Start to Hit Tourist Arrivals”<http://online.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-protests-start-to-hit-tourist-arrivals-1412310385>

Image source:

https://www.economy.com/dismal/graphs/blog/ach_112111_3a.GIF