One of Hong Kong's Most Famous Investors Gives His Vision of the City's Future

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:16)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:18)

So Joe, did I tell you that I got tear gassed recently?

Joe Weisenthal (0:22)

Oh my God, no, I think I saw a tweet from you that kind of hinted at that, but I couldn't totally tell whether you actually did or whether you were just at risk of it or whether it was just in theory or you or your colleagues were, so I wasn't sure. So you actually got tear gassed?

Tracy Alloway (0:41)

Yeah, so just to clarify, this is not the norm in financial journalism, but for those who haven't been following international news recently, there have been a series of very big and historic events in Hong Kong. We've had these massive protests now, two of which were very, very peaceful and very big.

And then on one occasion, we had a protest that descended into, I don't wanna say violence, but a little bit of chaos. There was a lot of police pushback, which I personally witnessed, and the police also fired rubber bullets and they also fired tear gas canisters. And it was sort of a surreal experience because all of this was taking place in an area of Hong Kong called Admiralty, which is sort of like a midtown Manhattan or maybe a Wall Street equivalent to New York. And so among all these big office buildings, including the Bank of America Merrill Lynch office building, which was very, very close to where all this was happening, you had these tear gas canisters being fired in the air as commuters were trying to get home. It was pretty crazy.

Joe Weisenthal (1:52)

Yeah, I was pretty struck by the images and obviously exactly that fact, because of course I was just visiting you in Hong Kong last November, I think it was, and realizing that this is just a normal business district that was utterly transformed and looking at those roads and saying, hey, I was walking on those roads, probably looking for Roast Duck at one point and then seeing the scenes that they had become was pretty extraordinary.

Tracy Alloway (2:22)

I think you did actually wander down that area looking, I'm pretty sure it was Chicken Wings and you told me about it.

Joe Weisenthal (2:28)

No, I literally did. I'm not exactly, that's literally what, yeah, that's literally what I was there for.

Tracy Alloway (2:34)

All right, well, the reason all of this was happening was because of a proposed piece of legislature that was working its way through the legal system in Hong Kong. People refer to it as the extradition bill and it was a new law that would basically allow Hong Kong residents or citizens to be extradited to China. And that was something that wasn't allowed before. And Joe, I don't know how much you know about the history of Hong Kong, but you're familiar with the one country, two systems principle, yes?

Joe Weisenthal (3:10)

Right, so after the British handoff of Hong Kong back to China, the stipulation was that for several years, I think maybe it was 50, Hong Kong would get to operate as it generally does as something more or less like a liberal democracy with free speech and protest and free trade and all that. And so that even on some level, it's politically now China, it is completely separate from a legalistic standpoint than the mainland.

Tracy Alloway (3:39)

Yeah, that's a good summation. And I guess the thing to be aware of is there's a sort of deadline hovering over this idea of one country, two systems, and that is the year 2047 And that's basically the date when that agreement sort of lapses. And no one really knows what comes after that, but most people assume that they have a few more decades at least of sort of having their own legal identity separate to China.

And when the legislature in Hong Kong proposed this extradition change, people were suddenly very worried, very up in arms, saying that this would bring that era to a close even sooner than they had expected.

There's one more thing to note about this whole drama, and that is the chief executive of Hong Kong is a woman called Carrie Lam. She's not elected in a democratic process, and she's become something of a controversial figure. She was pushing the extradition bill, and on the day that we're recording this, she's actually just apologized for pushing it through. She's also paused the bill, so it's no longer winding its way through the Hong Kong legislature, but it's still very unclear exactly what is going to happen to it. Is it actually dead and gone for good? And needless to say, a lot of people are still very, very upset about the events of recent weeks, and in particular, the violence and the pushback that we've seen from the police.