Outside In | ‘Death of Hong Kong’ predictions were wrong in 1997 and are still off the mark today
- Western media eager to call time on Hong Kong in 1997 focused solely on the city’s political prospects and ignored its economic strength
- Although Hong Kong has retained its edge over the past 25 years, a doomsday narrative persists, one that the incoming administration must work hard to quell
Our core thesis was that “the Hong Kong we read about in the Western press often bore limited resemblance to the Hong Kong that we have come to know … widely discussed but not widely understood”, that the Western narrative was obsessively focused on the politics of the transition, and that any analysis that failed to take economic factors into account was doomed to misinterpret Hong Kong’s future prospects. As we noted, “ignoring the economic story is to miss the political story as well”.
Our economic analysis revealed a “Hong Kong advantage” – a unique combination of economic strengths that made Hong Kong immensely more resilient than most commentators appreciated. While the transition was unprecedented and intrinsically challenging, “Hong Kong’s economy and its industries are likely to be able to ride out even relatively substantial storms”.
