Occupy Central is no threat to Hong Kong's economy

Students sitting in the streets; lots of colourful banners; some noisy chanting with people banging gongs; a sprinkling of jugglers, mime artists and the like; a few earnest types with megaphones - and legions of cops all itching to use their pepper spray.

If it goes ahead next summer, for some of Hong Kong's workers, Occupy Central's plan to block streets in the city's main office district will be an amusing diversion. For others, it will be an irritating inconvenience.

What it certainly won't be, however, is what the democracy movement's detractors say that it will be: a threat to Hong Kong's reputation as an international financial centre and damaging to the city's economy.

Hong Kong's position as a financial centre rests on the reliability of its legal system, the credibility of its regulators, the solidity of its institutions, the freedom of its information and the know-how of its financiers.

None of those will be jeopardised by a few thousand protesters temporarily blocking some streets.

If you doubt that, simply look at London, which has a long and turbulent history of street protests, many of them aimed directly at the institutions of "the City", the financial centre at the heart of Britain's capital.