China's objectives in Hong Kong

BBC has an article out today describing the steady strangulation of Hong Kong by Beijing that makes the point that foreign companies are increasingly reluctant to invest in and through Hong Kong because of increased Chinese Communist control of the rules of the economic road.  The point of the article is that China is making a giant economic mistake.  The article notes the rise of other economic centers like Singapore that are benefitting from Hong Kong’s impending demise as an international financial center.  I find it interesting that BBC does not even mention Shanghai, or BRICS, nor does it speculate that China may have wanted to destroy Hong Kong because it was controlled by representatives of Western economic powerhouses.  (I am not surprised.  BBC is, after all, British and Hong Kong was London’s cash cow for a very long time.)

I agree that China may well have made a huge mistake by its actions, but I suggest that it is part of a policy set that Western nations, including the United States, do not fully understand.  China is trying to change the fundamentals that undergird the world economy.  Our reluctance to come to grips with this point is a major source of confusion in Washington and results in tactical economic policy decisions that are ineffective in protecting our own international economic position.  I am without an adequate understanding of the world economy to pass judgment on any individual action by Beijing, vis-a-vis Hong Kong, but I am able to see broad trend lines fairly clearly and I argue that they are not consistent with our interests.  In overly simplistic terms, China’s economic influence is expanding while ours is shrinking.  Hong Kong’s deterioration and Shanghai’s emergence on the world’s economic stage is consistent with this trend.

I am not saying that China is winning, only that they are engaged in a much larger struggle than most Americans understand and they are making enough progress to continue their policies.  Because we are a democracy, this ignorance on our part goes a very long way toward explaining our ineffectiveness in adequately meeting the economic challenge that China presents.  We elect politicians that play on our emotions rather than politicians that think.   The American public is aware of tactical problems such as China’s involvement in the drug epidemic here in this country, but we are studiously oblivious of Beijing’s effort to reorient the world economy to their benefit.  I argue that purposeful blindness inevitably leads to tactical mistakes and seriously risks strategic defeat and/or nuclear obliteration.   It is high time for the American public to open its eyes, do its homework, and start thinking more broadly than self about all manner of things to include China.