Greed, for lack of a better word, is good for Hong Kong

GORDON Gekko, the slick but amoral Wall Street protagonist would have felt completely at home amid the wheeler-dealer skyscrapers of Hong Kong.

Long famous as the trade springboard to China and, later, a legally ironclad conduit for international funds, Hong Kong has long had another sly export up its sleeve that is rarely spoken of in polite company. Not opium or foreign expertise. It is something far simpler yet extraordinarily powerful.

At the heart of the territory's capitalist lifestyle is a virus. A virus that changed much of the East. It even attracted the attention of a cautious Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader, then keen to lift his country out of the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. This was when Hong Kong, an otherwise innocuous, if nettlesome, burr on the rump of a vast stirring dragon, set about subverting its host with vast infusions of its most powerful export - capitalist greed.

Deng's great gamble in the 1980s was the opening up of China to the West and its notions of economic development. It was hoped Hong Kong could help change the quality and pace of life for millions. It did. China learned, copied, and changed, eventually outdoing Hong Kong.

It is interesting then that this gamble, which paid rich dividends for China, failed to secure the freewheeling future for one of its prime architects.

Sanguine thinking was that over time Hong Kong would change the Mainland in its own mould. China feared the territory's rapacious capitalism as much as it coveted the rewards of the process, later refashioned with socialist characteristics. But there the fairytale ended.

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With rapid development, rising GDP, and growing wealth, China rebuilt trust in the Communist Party, thus enabling a fraying social contract to stay securely in place. The Party would dramatically improve the people's lot and, in turn, no citizen would question its omniscient paternal motives.

Then Donald Trump threw a trade tantrum and the Covid cataclysm struck. As the Chinese leviathan slowly pivots back to the safer and more comforting waters of Mao's vision, Hong Kong has been caught in a debilitating downdraft.

The city has weathered the passing storms across the border with varying success. Yet, confidence in its own government has eroded.

The plucking of the National Security law out of the hands of the Legislative Council (the rightful, if blundering, trustee) has generated more underground turbulence with long-term ramifications when it comes to business trust in common law and the judiciary, the scope of police operations, and Hong Kong's very autonomy. This requires muscular nuanced action by the HKSAR government, not haughty pooh-poohing.

The arrest of prominent publisher-activist Jimmy Lai Chee-Ying along with a crop of young political aspirants is not the harbinger of a beautiful red dawn. Yet, for many, the new sense of unfettered government and operation by diktat represent a return to a normalcy of sorts and a chance to get on with business of making money.

But another stark response was visible in the immediate 300 per cent rise in the stock value of Next Digital Limited (the parent group of Lai's Apple Daily newspaper) as people voted with their wallets.

Where does this leave Hong Kong, a city built on laissez faire Keynesian economics extrapolated to mythic levels and driven almost solely by the property-value calculations of a handful of tycoons?

Many long-time residents will say that the city has lost much of its can-do hunger and ingenuity where anything was possible at the right price. Hard work remains the core "value" of the city that never sleeps but it is a softer version today.

Greed (and the phenomenal growth it spawned) is the reason lazily motoring post-handover administrations failed to respond to the city's glaring socioeconomic and political needs. The protests have been a sobering chapter. Talk of affordable housing has rightfully crept back into the official lexicon and this is to be welcomed.

The task before the city's leaders today is the development of both vision and consensus-building political acumen - along with humble head-bowed introspection as it might be termed across the border. Simplistically equating social discontent with a problem of law-and-order (rather than of governance and policy neglect) and the substitution of sharp dialogue with blunt police action resulted in a monstrous train wreck. The city must not fall through that trapdoor again.

A naively apolitical territory in 1997 where any talk of self-determination would have been met with blank stares, found itself by 2019 at the frontlines of extreme political radicalism, arson, and smoking barricades.

This shook the city to its core. While scapegoating "too liberal" education is fashionable for hardliners, much of the blame for the past deadlock must be laid at the administration's feet. Dystopia does not suddenly pop out of a can. It is a slow creep.

Trust will have to be earned. It is the one commodity that cannot be willed into being by any emergency decree.

Whether that greedy heart beats again with vigour to firmly position Hong Kong at the centre of the visionary Greater Bay development to take on all imposters remains to be seen. It is not beyond grasp for a city that prides itself on resilience and reinvention.