Hong Kong is no longer ‘Asia’s World City’. Time for a radical rebranding

Protests have eroded or made irrelevant the values first promoted nearly 20 years ago. Hong Kong’s brand needs rejuvenation, something that better showcases its different viewpoints, customs and even colonial past

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A tram advertising Hong Kong as “Asia’s World City”. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 6:30am, 14 Jan 2020Updated: 8:05am, 14 Jan 2020

Hong Kong is no longer “Asia’s World City”, as the government has promoted it for the past 19 years. The manner in which the authorities, police and Beijing have handled the democracy protests has tarnished the city’s image and reputation.

There is every need for rebranding to restore confidence and shore up business sentiment. But the tired old ways of the past will not do; there needs to be forward thinking and unadulterated creativity.

The violent clashes between protesters and the police, the clouds of tear gas and the vandalised shops have given outsiders the impression that Hong Kong is unsafe and dangerous.

My assurances to relatives and friends have sometimes been received sceptically; the videos and news images are just too vivid to be dismissed with a casual, “it’s safe, really”. The government’s two rounds of advertising campaigns in major international newspapers contending that freedoms and protections remain strong, and that visiting, doing business and investing can be done with the same confidence as before, have fallen flat.

Tellingly, no public relations company could be found in September to give advice on how to “address negative perceptions in key markets overseas to maintain confidence in Hong Kong”.

Making Hong Kong acceptable again is a big ask for a government that has lost the trust of most of its citizens. It is not doing itself any favours by parroting Beijing’s hard-line messages of foreign interference and nonsensical claims such as those of Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu, who last week contended that some protesters had received training from “non-local” individuals.