Hong Kong police arrest 115 after biggest outbreak of protest violence since coronavirus crisis
- Government warns resurgence of violence, with city in throes of public health crisis, poses major threat to the economy
- Chaos erupts over the weekend in Kowloon as police and protesters trade tear gas, petrol bombs, while officer draws firearm
“The blocking of the roads and the use of petrol bombs in Mong Kok [on Saturday] ... was worrying,” Chan said in a television talk show on Sunday. “If the violent clashes continue, that would harm citizens’ safety, hurt consumer sentiment and affect businesses.”
The financial secretary warned that if the protest violence continued, foreign investors would lose confidence in Hong Kong’s business environment – a concern he had heard during his visit to the US and Britain in October last year.
“Foreign businessmen in Hong Kong have started to ask themselves if they should move their families out of Hong Kong, and if they need to have other plans for their business,” he said.
Chan struck a more optimistic note in a separate blog post on Sunday, saying the economy had rebounded significantly after the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) crisis of 2003, as well as after the financial tsunamis of 1998 and 2008.
In his budget speech last Wednesday, Chan forecast that gross domestic product would range from a 1.5 per cent decline to growth of just 0.5 per cent. He offered cash handouts, tax breaks and a raft of subsidies in a HK$120 billion (US$15.4 billion) package aimed at easing the financial burden on citizens and injecting new life into the ailing economy.
