Professor Hung's presentation discusses the role of Hong Kong as China’s offshore financial market amidst the rise and faltering of the China Boom, as well as its implications to the local politics and society of Hong Kong. After China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, mainland China and Hong Kong remain to be two separate members in the organization with different terms of membership. While China continues to maintain a lot of restrictions on foreign financial capital, Hong Kong’s financial sector has been fully open to the world. In the meantime, US and other developed countries treat Hong Kong as a separate entity on import-export control and capital control, offering Hong Kong free access to their markets with privileges close to those enjoyed by any OECD country. This special status of Hong Kong, conditional upon international recognition of its autonomy from Beijing under “One Country, Two Systems,” lures Chinese state companies to use Hong Kong as an offshore platform for capitalization, investment, RMB internationalization, and importation of sensitive technologies from Western countries that are banned for China. One consequence of this special status of Hong Kong is the rising economic dominance and political influence of Chinese state companies and the princeling elite associated with them. Such domination, ironically, could erode Hong Kong’s autonomy from Beijing and jeopardize Hong Kong’s special status in the world economy.

Speaker

Ho-fung Hung is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy in the Department of Sociology and in the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the award-winning Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011) and The China Boom: Why China Will not Rule the World (2016). His articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Development and Change, Review of International Political Economy, Asian Survey, and elsewhere, and have been translated into nine different languages. His analyses of the Chinese political economy and Hong Kong politics have been featured or cited in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, BBC News, The Guardian, Die Presse (Austria), Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), The Straits Times (Singapore), The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Xinhua Monthly (China), and People’s Daily (China), among other publications.

Organizers

• David Lam Centre, Simon Fraser University
• School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University
• Hong Kong Studies Initiative, University of British Columbia