Referring to Yi’s post, I couldn’t agree more with Yi ‘s comments on Hong Kong’s economy has a bad influenced by this political issue, and the action what protesters did was a paradox. I didn’t know well about the politics in Hong Kong, and how far the political side plays the role in this event, but I want to say what I have seen is the bad influences on the economic and business in Hong Kong.
Firstly, this civil disobedience movement happened during the national day holiday, at this time Mainland-based, free-spending visitors usually provide a boost to Hong Kong’s retailers; however, the condition for this year was roads blocked, shops closed, sales fell 20 per cent compared with a normal holiday. If businesses keep losing profit, lay-offs may happen, which will increase the unemployment rate in Hong Kong. No one wants this happen.
In the second place, I totally agree with what Yi said “Beijing would be willing to sacrifice Hong Kong’s economy to ensure the power control and the stability of society, especially when Hong Kong is no longer the only open broader in China.” The establishment of Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) will be a strong competitor of Hong Kong in the future. It definitely will threat Hong Kong’s status as one of the top global market financial centers. What’s more, Comparing with Hong Kong, mainland has a so much bigger demographic; therefore tourism can gain a lot of customer in mainland alone, so mainland’s tourism will not suffer much influence by losing Hong Kong tourist, but Hong Kong can ‘t afford the price of losing mainland, free-spending visitors.
So as for as I concern, in the short term, this democracy activists, Occupy Central hurts the business and economics, shops loss profit. In the long term, there are too much uncertain factors. No one can guarantee that economics will recover if democracy activists success, and Leung Chun-ying steps down. I don’t think Beijing government will continue support Hong Kong’s economics development of that happen. Hong Kong may lose its unique advantage to China markets, and its economic will be more competitiveness. Of course this will not happen, because Beijing government will not give up control in Hong Kong, Protest is doomed to fail. I hope Beijing government and Hong Kong government can find a peacefully way to ease the contradiction.
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