https://www.scmp.com/rss/328948/feed Mark L. Clifford was executive director of the Asia Business Council from 2007 to 2021. He is the author of "The Greening of Asia: The Business Case for Solving Asia’s Environmental Emergency". Previously, he was editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Standard, and Asia regional editor for BusinessWeek. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, was a Walter Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University and holds a PhD in history from the... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Beijing’s stress test of Hong Kong has entered a new, more critical stage. What’s at stake is whether business can be divorced from politics – whether a steadily less free city can not only remain economically prosperous but continue as an international financial centre. If Hong Kong survives this test, the territory will be an exceptional case, perhaps the only city ever that has thrived as a global hub even as its political and civil freedoms are taken away. Global financial centres are hard... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3110062/beijing-casting-more-doubt-hong-kongs-future-financial-hub?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3110062/beijing-casting-more-doubt-hong-kongs-future-financial-hub?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 17 Nov 2020 14:00:18 +0000 Covid-19 is hastening the arrival of the long-promised Asian century, with China leading the world in economic growth as it comes out of coronavirus-induced depression. The pandemic is acting as an accelerant – whether in adoption of new technologies or in allowing China to take more of a leadership role, economically and politically. The West is exhausted and uncertain, leaving the field open for China. Can Beijing seize the moment? China led the world into the Covid-19 pandemic and it is... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3106204/china-wasting-its-covid-19-leadership-moment-world-stage?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3106204/china-wasting-its-covid-19-leadership-moment-world-stage?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 20 Oct 2020 19:30:13 +0000 The worst is over, or at least that’s what many Asia Business Council members think about economic prospects for the next year. They believe it will be another year or perhaps more, though, until economies return to pre-crisis levels. More jobs will be cut on the path to recovery. It will be a long, hard road back to economic growth, one which is going to be especially tough for many workers who aren’t in the digital world. These are among the findings of the council’s latest annual members... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3102403/long-hard-coronavirus-recovery-ahead-asian-companies-especially?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3102403/long-hard-coronavirus-recovery-ahead-asian-companies-especially?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 23 Sep 2020 01:15:11 +0000 “Everyone knows where the red lines are now,” a senior member of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s administration said at a closed-door meeting which I attended. That was right after Financial Times journalist Victor Mallett had been kicked out of Hong Kong following a Foreign Correspondents’ Club event he moderated featuring Hong Kong National Party founder Andy Chan Ho-tin. This was late 2018 and the official had an air of smug satisfaction as he celebrated a job well done. Today... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3092982/national-security-laws-grey-lines-blur-hong-kongs-future-global?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3092982/national-security-laws-grey-lines-blur-hong-kongs-future-global?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Jul 2020 17:00:11 +0000 Back in the 1980s, it was fashionable to talk about Japan and the “four Asian tigers” – Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan – and the “Asian miracle”. These economies were said to have a unique mix of can-do Confucianism and market know-how that allowed them to post the fastest economic growth the world had ever seen. The World Bank even commissioned a major report looking for the secret to the tigers’ success, the “East Asian miracle” study. Then Japan’s asset bubble deflated and the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3079770/battle-against-coronavirus-japan-and-four-tiger-economies-offer?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3079770/battle-against-coronavirus-japan-and-four-tiger-economies-offer?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 14 Apr 2020 14:00:08 +0000 Why has the response to the Covid-19 outbreak been so panicked, both by the Hong Kong and Chinese people and their governments? Is there anything we can do to help us get through what is likely to be another difficult month or months? First, we need to accept that we live in a time of hyper-global diseases. In the early 1830s, cholera took two years to make its way from India to England. Covid-19 jumped continents in weeks, just as the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak did in 2003. Some... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3051079/coronavirus-was-no-black-swan-hong-kong-and-china-just-werent-ready?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3051079/coronavirus-was-no-black-swan-hong-kong-and-china-just-werent-ready?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 18 Feb 2020 19:00:08 +0000 “How will it end?” It’s the most common question I get from friends abroad who want to know about Hong Kong. Last November, it looked like protests might end with the big bang of a crackdown. Ironically, given our government’s distrust of democracy, the district council elections provided a kind of firebreak that stopped an escalation of violence. But those who somehow think the protests have been reduced to a whimper are likely to be disappointed. There is no end in sight to Hong Kong’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3045965/companies-must-help-defuse-hong-kongs-crisis-and-do-what-government?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3045965/companies-must-help-defuse-hong-kongs-crisis-and-do-what-government?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 15 Jan 2020 01:15:08 +0000 Who would have thought that we would be calling on experts from conflict areas like Northern Ireland to help Hong Kong sort out its troubles? As recently as June, the idea would have seemed crazy. Yet that is where we are today. Even Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi would struggle to find a way out for Hong Kong. We are in our sixth month of protests. Each month has brought new levels of intensity and fury. The sorts of violence that shocked the city in June and July are now... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3038274/hong-kong-protesters-have-shown-they-can-paralyse-businesses-now?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3038274/hong-kong-protesters-have-shown-they-can-paralyse-businesses-now?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 19 Nov 2019 09:00:11 +0000 The attack on Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet (“Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong”) put China’s vision for a new world order in stark relief for an American audience, showing the lengths to which China will go in its campaign to squelch free speech. Xi Jinping’s administration is doing to foreign businesses what it has long done to domestic dissenters: punishing those whose words stray outside ever-narrower red lines. Airlines have had to redraw maps. T-shirt slogans... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/nba-winnie-pooh-china-isnt-acting-confident-nation/article/3033152?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/nba-winnie-pooh-china-isnt-acting-confident-nation/article/3033152?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Oct 2019 10:02:04 +0000 The attack on Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey ’s tweet (“Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong”) put China’s vision for a new world order in stark relief for an American audience, showing the lengths to which China will go in its campaign to squelch free speech. Xi Jinping’s administration is doing to foreign businesses what it has long done to domestic dissenters: punishing those whose words stray outside ever-narrower red lines. Airlines have had to redraw maps. T-shirt slogans... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3032868/chinas-targeting-nba-shows-why-it-may-fail-building-soft-power-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3032868/chinas-targeting-nba-shows-why-it-may-fail-building-soft-power-and?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Oct 2019 19:00:11 +0000 China made Cathay Pacific an offer it couldn’t refuse: sack CEO Rupert Hogg or see the airline’s all-important China routes put at risk. So Hogg went. The dismissal of the Cathay chief heralds a new era of China risk. The days of China hiding its strength and biding its time are over. Business is increasingly exposed to China political risk. With China’s threat to vet the political correctness of flight crew, China is turning back to the days of the Cultural Revolution, when to be “Red”... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3023454/cathay-feels-heat-political-risk-china-its-time-remember-lessons?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3023454/cathay-feels-heat-political-risk-china-its-time-remember-lessons?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 20 Aug 2019 22:15:12 +0000 Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin famously said that well water and river water do not mix. Jiang’s point, made soon after the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, was that Hong Kong shouldn’t try to pollute the mainland with ideas about democracy. Cadres from up north, in turn, wouldn’t try to inflict communism on postcolonial Hong Kong. Of course, the idea that Hong Kong would be as separate from China after 1997 as it was during British colonialism was never realistic. Now, although Hong Kong’s... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3018662/hong-kong-financial-centre-could-drown-if-river-water-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3018662/hong-kong-financial-centre-could-drown-if-river-water-china?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 17 Jul 2019 01:00:12 +0000 Hong Kong officials have warned repeatedly that the city will be hurt by an escalation of the cold war between China and the United States. They are right. Even if the current round of trade talks between Beijing and Washington results in a truce, the outlook for the foreseeable future is stormy. US President Donald Trump enjoys bipartisan support for the tougher line he has taken towards China. This is one of the only areas where he has broad support. Trump is, in fact, likely to face pressure... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2186745/hong-kong-caught-between-china-and-us-their-new?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2186745/hong-kong-caught-between-china-and-us-their-new?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 20 Feb 2019 00:34:15 +0000 Will China Save the Planet?, by Barbara Finamore. Published by Polity As oceans warm and ice caps melt, it is hard to be optimistic about slowing, let alone stopping, global warming. Barbara Finamore nonetheless finds reason for optimism in her authoritative look at China’s unfolding energy transition. China is becoming a bigger sea threat. How should the US respond? China burns half the world’s coal. It is the world’s largest carbon emitter, overtaking the US despite a smaller economy. China is... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2182978/will-chinas-changing-energy-and-environmental-policies-save-planet?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2182978/will-chinas-changing-energy-and-environmental-policies-save-planet?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 21 Jan 2019 12:34:55 +0000 Deng Xiaoping promised that Hong Kong people would rule Hong Kong when the British left. We need to continue to take Deng at his word. Management at the Tai Kwun cultural centre’s flip-flop over whether novelist Ma Jian could speak looks like self-censorship. It’s this sort of looking over our shoulders, worrying about “up north” or “the western district,” as officials are fond of saying privately, that we don’t need, whether it’s in museums, government offices, universities or newspapers. This... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2173736/vital-importance-keeping-special-special-administrative?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2173736/vital-importance-keeping-special-special-administrative?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Nov 2018 11:00:00 +0000 After kicking off negotiations in Beijing for the Hong Kong handover in September 1982, Margaret Thatcher visited the colony, where Jittery businessmen peppered her with ideas for extending British rule beyond 1997. Li & Fung’s Victor Fung argued for “the continuation of the status quo indefinitely, with 25 or 50 years notice of termination”, according to a secret British document that has now been declassified. Fung worried that China didn’t understand capitalism and “without the free market... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2168446/curbs-hong-kongs-freedoms-could-suck-lifeblood-out?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/hong-kong/article/2168446/curbs-hong-kongs-freedoms-could-suck-lifeblood-out?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Oct 2018 12:45:00 +0000