Hong Kong sees signs of life amid political stasis
Joseph Yu-shek Cheng
At the beginning of 2023 Hong Kong followed mainland China as it dramatically relaxed COVID-19 related travel restrictions. This considerably improved the territory’s economic mood. The tourism industry and retail trade are expected to be immediate beneficiaries of the change.
The Hang Seng Index — an indicator of Hong Kong’s market performance — stayed above the 21,500 mark in the week before the Chinese New Year, a substantial rebound from its low of below 15,000 in 2022. Even the real estate market promised a little optimism, anticipating buyers from mainland China. Government statistics show that Hong Kong’s real GDP contracted by 3.5 per cent in 2022, and in January 2023 a Bloomberg survey predicted a growth rate of 3.3 per cent in 2023.
There is still concern that COVID-19 will continue to spread in mainland China and Hong Kong because of the relaxation of social restrictions. The business community is weighed by the danger of a global economic recession in 2023. Talent outflow also remains a worry. The government admitted that 2214 civil servants resigned in the first half of the 2022–23 financial year, compared with 3732 resignations — 2.1 per cent of the civil service workforce — in the 2021–22 financial year.
Despite attractive remuneration in the police force, there were still 5706 vacant positions in 2021–22, a rise of 8.5 per cent from the previous year. Many schools complained about a shortage of teachers because of emigration. The Chief Executive offered initiatives to attract external talent in his 2022 policy address.
Read this piece by Joseph Yu-shek Cheng at the East Asia Forum.
Related Publications
-
Contemporary Hong Kong-Taiwan Relations in China’s Shadow
On November 25, 2022, the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP) arranged a webinar titled “Contemporary Hong Kong-Taiwan Relations in the Shadow of the People’s Republic of China”. The […]
-
Risk Reduction and Crisis Management on the Korean Peninsula
The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inherently intertwined with the growing instability of the East Asian security environment, where high tensions significantly increase the risk of unintended incidents and armed […]
-
Taiwan and the Diplomatic Squeeze
In mid-March 2023, the self-governing island of Taiwan lost another one of its already few diplomatic allies. Announcing the severing of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Honduras on Twitter on March 15, […]
-
ASEAN’s Evolving Alignment Strategy in the South China Sea: Between Middle and Major Power Dynamics
ASEAN is a region of vital strategic importance where the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) collide. To avert geopolitical uncertainty and to avoid being […]
-
Russia-DPRK Space Cooperation: It’s Politics, Not Science
The recent Vostochny summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin has attracted much international attention. The fact that both leaders pledged to strengthen bilateral […]
-
Taiwan’s Southbound Drive towards Southeast Asia
This article examines Taiwan’s foreign policy towards Southeast Asia during Ma Ying-jeou’s two-term (2008–2016) and Tsai Ing-wen’s first-term (2016–2020) presidencies. It discusses the context of East Asian regionalization and regionalism, […]