Over a few days in November and December 1999, the world of multinationals changed forever. No longer was the free market seen as a liberal force for democracy. Instead, harking back to the protests of the 1960s and 1970s, in the public eye, transnational companies were again viewed as the epitome of evil.
The 'Battle of Seattle', as it was known, pitted business and the concept of global governance against a ragtag group of activists for causes ranging from sea turtles to underage workers. Those who had long assumed that the World Trade Organisation was a progressive force - it was holding its second general meeting in Seattle that weekend - were suddenly on the defensive.
Seattle's message for Hong Kong was more pointed than most. Hong Kong's edge is as the quintessential business-friendly city, with little in the way of politics or culture to distract its residents from the key task of making money. I was among several thousand witnesses in Seattle who learned that this was not the future. In the 21st century, post-cold war, post-September 11, business needs to learn new lessons in its relationship with communities and, above all, cities. Terrorists have targeted cities for the same reason that businesses establish their headquarters there: they are the new common denominators of global culture; they are convenient; and they register instantaneously on the developing global consciousness.
Hong Kong is an interesting case study for anyone who cares about cities, global terrorism or global community. It is vibrant, tolerant, diverse and wealthy. And yet it is a city in which business is only marginally more sensitive to social and environmental issues than in most developing countries.
According to Richard Welford, an urban planner at Hong Kong University, it is well behind Japan and Singapore and only slightly ahead of Malaysia and Thailand in terms of the social consciousness displayed by business. He thinks that this is partly an effect of the way in which Hong Kong's companies have played the multinational game, selling products to order rather than creating their own brands. A company which is globally known for its brand, like Nike or Body Shop, is vulnerable to charges that it employs child labour or uses innocent animals to test toxic ingredients for its products. A company that serves as an 'original equipment manufacturer' - like many Hong Kong and Chinese companies - is able to escape global customer backlash.
What this amounts to, however, is laziness on the part of owners and shareholders of the offending Hong Kong and mainland companies. Professor Welford supposes that many simply do not think very far ahead - if they survive the next year, it is good enough. Some will argue that Hong Kong's system is different from that in the west, reflecting the family-owned companies that dominate the Hang Seng Index. Single shareholders face fewer restrictions than companies with widely dispersed ownership, who have to answer to the public, governments and the media. Hong Kong companies are privileged in that sense, because few have a wide spread of ownership, and the influence of minority shareholders is negligible. There are cultural issues as well. Hong Kong companies see nothing wrong with driving workers to spend long hours in crowded offices.