My Take | How Hong Kong’s pandemic fight experience can help China escape the zero-Covid trap

Hong Kong is back in the game – that’s the message that the city’s government is working very hard to relay to the rest of the world, and judging by the crowds at the Hong Kong Sevens over the weekend and the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit last week, it may well be true.

For sure, as long as there are still mandates for mask-wearing in public places, QR code scanning to get into restaurants, and negative test results for kids to go to school, it remains debatable whether life has indeed returned to normal.

But it is probably true that the worst is behind us, not just according to the words of Hong Kong’s leaders, but also the public reaction.

When was the worst time for Hong Kong since the pandemic started three years ago? I would say it was between late February and mid-March this year, when the city was at the peak of its fifth wave and on the cusp of conducting its first mandatory universal testing, a step that could have led to an endless nightmare of mass quarantine and lockdowns, as we have been seeing in Macau and many mainland cities.

Hong Kong, blessed by the one country, two systems arrangement, never went that route. Instead, it has chosen a slightly different way to deal with the virus while adhering to the principle of “dynamic zero-Covid”.

The city has yet to reach the status of Singapore in terms of relaxation in Covid controls, but the relative ease of life in Hong Kong, along with an official promise that the city won’t move backwards in pandemic measures, has made it a subject of envy for many mainlanders, including those in Shenzhen and Shanghai.

Hong Kong has again set a good example for the rest of China on how things can be done differently, as it has for many years in many aspects. It would therefore be meaningful to review what happened in Hong Kong in the past months.