Plans for China’s first free trade zone -- seen as a threat to Hong Kong’s status as a finance hub -- are also a tool to dampen political protest in the city, analysts say.
The FTZ in Shanghai will allow unfettered exchange of China’s yuan currency as part of a bold push to reform the world’s second largest economy, according to proposals revealed exclusively by AFP earlier this month.
Experts have already urged Hong Kong to improve its economic environment, including tackling high rents and labour costs, if it wants to compete with the new trade and finance hub.
But senior Beijing officials last week warned the ex-British colony that it also needs to curb increasing political dissent if it wants to thrive and analysts say the promotion of Shanghai is an indirect message to Hong Kong to cooperate politically, or be marginalised economically.
“Beijing is using a softline economic approach to groom Shanghai to compete with, or possibly replace Hong Kong. The implicit message is clear that if Hong Kong continues to have political squabbles, its economic status will suffer greatly,” Sonny Lo, a social scientist at Hong Kong Institute of Education, told AFP.
Yu Zhengsheng, the leader of Beijing’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and Wang Guangya, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, both called for “unity” in the city last week.