Hong Kong's International Financial Centre: Retrospect and Prospect

9. Finance, Autonomy, and the Achievement of Broader Prosperity
Hong Kong and its IFC have a huge stake in the continuing global experiment in economic
and financial openness. If we take as our starting point the strategic view noted above that
financial services and professional services are and will for some time remain two of its four
pillar industries, then we must conclude that a world that moves toward closure or narrow
regionalism would be a very bad one for Hong Kong.
Today, despite doubts spawned by the crisis of 2008, Hong Kong’s bet on continuing
systemic openness for the foreseeable future seems still to be sound. At the same time, HKSAR
remains on a political and economic trajectory leading toward ever-deeper integration with the
Mainland. In the great scheme of things, 36 years is not very long at all. Thus, any strategy for
Hong Kong’s IFC guided by the idea of independence—global or local—would rest on an
illusion. It could not succeed. So what should the objective be? In other words, to what ends
should the strengthening of Hong Kong’s IFC be directed?
It is hardly worthy of the distinguished history of the place, nor of the sacrifices of
previous generations of its residents, to hold that the objective should be to make Hong Kong’s
rich even richer and to defend their ability to move their wealth out if the need arises. Surely a
better objective, one with a higher chance of being realized, would be to ensure widening and
sustainable prosperity for all of the people who reside in Hong Kong. To the extent one agrees
with such an objective, and not just as a matter of empty sentiment, then one must conclude that
it is and will remain possible for those people to act as a collectivity. That is, through leaders
whose legitimacy derives from their sincere sharing of the common objective, the people of
Hong Kong will retain the ability to act like a community.
On the basis of that assertion, we can then argue that if there is agreement that the end is
general prosperity and the means is collective action, then the terms of debate on specific
measures to strengthen Hong Kong’s IFC will be clarified. Specific policy ideas will elicit
natural disagreements, but at least a basic standard will exist for the rational consideration of
options. The prior agreement that a community exists and will sustain itself creates a zone for
the making of reasonable and practicable choices, a political zone in between complete
integration in a larger collectivity and complete independence for the smaller community or for
any individuals within it. We might call it a zone of relative autonomy.
The challenge is actually to design and implement policies on that basis. Given its size, its
location, and the constitutional arrangement with the Mainland that already binds it, Hong
Kong’s actual powers must remain limited. The federal analogy is an imperfect one, but it is
roughly suggestive of a likely future. Hong Kong is now in some senses more and in some
senses less than a province within a federation, but it is also on a path that could lead to a
prominent place in a vital economic and political union. Under either the present scenario or the
likely future scenario, relative autonomy in integrating economic and social environments does
demarcate a feasible route to the common objective noted above--as long as one absolutely key
resource is in place. That resource is not necessarily a strong government, not necessarily a large
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