US-China trade war: how Hong Kong workers are getting caught in the crossfire of tariff spat between global superpowers

The story of a cross-border container truck driver underscores the damage to workers and businesses all along the global supply chain

Part one of a two-part series on the US-China trade war’s effect on Hong Kong looks at the trade sector, which employs about 478,000 people

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Kwok Yip-biu has been a container truck driver for 37 years. He said he has never seen business so slow as it has been since the US-China trade war started. Photo: Edmond So

Published: 7:03am, 4 Mar 2019Updated: 3:53pm, 4 Mar 2019

Kwok Yip-biu’s container truck is these days tucked away in a car park deep in the New Territories, near Hong Kong’s border with mainland China.

Until a few months ago, the 58-year-old driver hauled about 30 containers across the border each month. Six days a week, Kwok delivered cargo from the factories around Shenzhen to Hong Kong’s bustling Kwai Tsing Container Terminal, where it was shipped overseas. Some months, he said, he had more work than he could handle.

Since the US-China trade war intensified in September, Kwok’s work has slowed to a trickle. In February, he made only one delivery. The 100 spaces in the car park were now half-full with idle trucks.

Kwok looked over the scene and reflected that in his 37 years as a cross-border driver he had never seen business so slow.

“Look at this car park, it is like a car show now. If business was normal, you wouldn’t see any of these vehicles here on a weekday morning,” he said. “The trade war has hit factories on the mainland hard, and as a result our lives have been affected too.”

Kwok’s lament and thousands like it echoed across Hong Kong as the city’s workforce was caught in the crossfire of the US-China trade war. Hong Kong’s trade sector employs about 478,000 people, or 12 per cent of the city’s total workforce, and contributed 17.7 per cent to its economy in 2017.

Some 43 per cent of Hong Kong’s total trade consists of re-exports going between mainland China and the US, according to the US government. Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau Tang-wah estimated that in 2017 nearly half of all the products China exported to the US went through Hong Kong.