Mickey Mouse dons gas mask

for Hong Kong’s party

There’s a lot of backslapping in Hong Kong these days, and for obvious reasons. The 10th anniversary of the UK’s hand-over of the city back to China takes place on July 1.

By most accounts, Chinese rule has gone far better than expected. Individual liberties have been largely preserved and the Communist Party hasn’t destroyed Hong Kong’s reputation as a thriving capitalist hub. Clearly, the skeptics were wrong about the plight of its seven million people.

Yet the doomsayers may still have two reasons to be pessimistic: pollution and Mickey Mouse.

While these two topics are rarely thought of together, Hong Kong is an intriguing nexus point. A decade after its return to China, Hong Kong is literally choking on its economic success amid worsening air quality. Leaders also are relying too much on gimmick economics to solidify the city’s place as a global business center. The Disney theme park there is one example.

Hong Kong cartoonist and author Larry Feign humorously addressed this point. “Suddenly, it’s ‘We’re Chinese at last, we’re part of China, Chinese people running this place, colonialism is dead, good riddance to the gweilos,’” he told the International Herald Tribune, using the slang word for foreigners.

“Then as soon as there is a little economic crisis, it’s ‘Let’s bring in Mickey Mouse.’ So we go from British imperialism to American cultural imperialism.”

Actually, the 1997 Asian crisis was anything but “little.” It sent Hong Kong’s all-important property market into freefall and had the government bailing out stocks. Yet Feign’s point, as indelicate as it is, is one that often gets overlooked. 

Disneyland

Here’s how fashion mogul David Tang put it to Agence France Presse: “We frittered away the past 10 years. There are so many things that make Hong Kong special, and they have been ignored. Instead, our only achievement has been Disneyland.”

Hong Kong’s strategy is still essentially a diversification play on China. Hong Kong is betting its future on remaining a fund-raising hub for share sales by mainland companies. On that front, so far, so good; its stock market last year rivaled London in initial public offerings.

That’s great, until Shanghai comes into its own. And don’t forget Singapore, which is rapidly becoming a financial trading center for everything from currencies to energy and metals.

Hong Kong should be thinking about where it will be in 20 years, not celebrating dodging the bullet these last 10. Its future can’t lie in getting mainlanders to become more excited visiting Mickey Mouse, the government-owned Ocean Park or the Guggenheim museum developers have proposed.  

Oligarchs

The city needs to step up efforts to specialize in niche, high-value-added and high-quality services. Empowering small entrepreneurs and reducing the influence of billionaire oligarchs towering over the city is a work in progress.

In 1997, China needed Hong Kong’s first-world banking system, rule of law and global influence. These days, Hong Kong needs China more: the mainland’s drive to get more companies to raise funds at home is the latest reminder. And what if China experiences economic problems?

The strides Singapore is making as a center for trading, hedge funds and private banking should worry Hong Kong officials—especially as they look out their office windows at a skyline obscured by pollution.

Oddly, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, told Cable News Network in March that the city’s air quality is better today than in 1997. Presumably, Tsang’s office has no windows and he doesn’t get out much.  

Activism 

Reclamation projects make you wonder if you will be able to walk from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon in a few years. Many residents, for example, are enraged by the demolition of the clock tower at the Star Ferry complex, which some view as Hong Kong’s Big Ben.

Democracy or not, Hong Kong is confronting leaders more forcefully than ever. It’s a reminder that Hong Kong is a great city, a place where East meets West and where the buzz and inventiveness rival New York and London. It also has an impressive history of overcoming adversity—look no further than the crisis from severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003.

Yet Hong Kong’s biggest decisions are now made in Beijing, which is eroding freedom of speech. News outlets that don’t toe the party line, like BBC-style Radio Television Hong Kong, are under threat. That’s bad news as worsening air quality forces more and more expatriate professionals, who help bolster Hong Kong’s global image and culture of free speech, to leave.  

Gas masks?

When Christine Loh, chief executive officer of Civic Exchange and a former Hong Kong legislator, says “the government doesn’t get it,” she knows it’s a more complex problem. Tsang is Beijing’s handpicked leader and much of the pollution comes from the Chinese factories driving the mainland’s growth.

What’s more, thousands of those factories are owned by Hong Kong tycoons. Tsang, who isn’t democratically elected, can’t exactly cross them; nor can he run afoul of his comrades in Beijing. Expect continued denial over pollution.

It would be a tragedy if leaders squandered Hong Kong’s future by being complacent today. Then, Mickey Mouse wouldn’t be the only one needing a gas mask.   

William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

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