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Can Hong Kong’s economy survive China’s political crackdown? – Al Jazeera English

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Hong Kong, China – Rumours that the Hong Kong dollar will be unpegged from the United States dollar percolate through local brokerages. Thousands of middle-class families have sold their flats and cashed out for a new life abroad. Hong Kong’s powerful developers cringe when Beijing demands that they alleviate the territory’s housing shortage.

Over the past year, Hong Kong’s society has been torn apart by the Beijing-imposed national security law and changes to the electoral process designed to ensure only people deemed “patriots” can hold office in the territory.

Now attention is turning to whether its famously free economy and status as a global financial centre can survive.

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Observers are not optimistic.

“Economic freedom without democracy and other freedoms is not stable in the long term,” said Fred McMahon, a resident fellow with the Fraser Institute, an independent non-partisan think-tank in Canada.

Last month, the institute’s annual report on economic freedom still crowned Hong Kong’s the freest economy in the world, but it pointed to the national security law and the city’s “descent into tyranny” as threats to holding on to the title for much longer.

“The key aspect of economic freedom is the rule of law, which doesn’t bow to power but enforces justice and independence of the government,” McMahon told Al Jazeera. However, for the Chinese Communist Party “the law is subservient to politics,” he added.

Experts question whether Hong Kong can remain economically free in the wake of the national security law [File: Jerome Favre/EPA]

Last year, The Heritage Foundation, which for decades toasted the city as the poster child of laissez-faire economics, dumped Hong Kong from its ranking.

Within months of the security law coming into effect, Next Digital, a thriving business that published the popular pro-democracy Apple Daily, was forced to close after owner Jimmy Lai was accused of “colluding with a foreign power”, and the company’s assets were frozen.

While Lai is behind bars awaiting trial and has since been charged with other offences, businesspeople are wondering whether the tycoon’s prosecution under the new law proves to be a singular exception – or the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

“This is a special case that has put the international business community on guard,” said George Cautherley, vice chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce – Hong Kong. “They’re waiting to see if the government will go further than this and how this is going to evolve.”

Hong Kong’s economy still seems to be humming along for now, but Beijing’s recent mainland crackdowns on tech giants, tuition centres and debt-binging real-estate developers have raised suspicion about what might be in store.

Assuming history is any guide, it could be only a matter of time before Beijing extends its interest to Hong Kong’s economic affairs.

A case in point: The national security law was promulgated in mainland China only a few years before it was imposed on Hong Kong, bypassing the territory’s own elected legislature.

More recently, the city’s “big four” developers, faulted for some of the world’s highest home prices and smallest flats, were told to do their bit to solve the territory’s housing problems.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (left) has made it clear that aligning the territory with China, including over the territory’s punishing COVID-19 quarantine policy, is her priority [File: Jerome Favre/EPA]

For businesspeople, there is also the spectre of the past: when China was a command economy and private ownership outlawed.

“Businesspeople are worried perhaps not so much as their own personal freedom as the value of their assets invested in Hong Kong and China,” said Joseph Lian, former commentator and top editor at the city’s business press who now teaches economics at Yamanashi Gakuin University in Japan. They “would be in for a tough ride”, he said.

Eye on Beijing

But it is not only the well-heeled who worry. Middle-class families convulsed by the crackdowns are also looking to protect their money and investments.

Tens of thousands of Hong Kong people who are planning to emigrate have put up the family flat – often their most valuable asset – for sale. Some – and not only those who are planning to leave – are also opening offshore bank accounts out of concern that the territory may soon be subject to the same kind of capital controls as the mainland.

The world’s longest and most costly quarantine mandate – between 14 and 21 days in a hotel for all residents returning from overseas – has also been weighing on the minds of business and once-regular travellers.

The European Chamber of Commerce warned earlier this month that many of its member companies were considering relocating some of their operations elsewhere – including Singapore – because of the mandate, which the local government has shown little willingness to relax even for the fully vaccinated.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam has hammered home her objective of aligning the city’s pandemic control with the mainland’s zero-COVID goal – whatever the cost.

But the price of an increasingly restricted economy could end up being hefty.

Next Digital CEO Cheung Kim Hung – shown here arriving at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre in Hong Kong – has, along with other top executives, been charged with ‘collusion with a foreign power’ and the company has now been wound up [File: Jerome Favre/EPA]

Hong Kong’s separate economic system has long underpinned its status both as China’s most important financial hub and a global one.

But with the territory on an ever-shorter leash from Beijing, Lian expects the investment dollars that propelled it into pre-eminence over the last half-century could soon give way to an influx of speculative funds, known as hot money.

“A mature financial centre has a lower proportion of hot money; Hong Kong may be going in the opposite direction,” said Lian. “It may still make money for a lot of people; casinos do, too, but that’s not what a financial centre is for.”

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Opinion: Canada's foreign policy and its domestic politics on Israel's war against Hamas are shifting – The Globe and Mail

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The vote in the House of Commons last week on Israel’s war against Hamas represents a shift in both Canada’s foreign policy and its domestic politics.

The Liberal government is now markedly more supportive of the rights of Palestinians and less supportive of the state of Israel than in the past. That shift mirrors changing demographics, and the increasing importance of Muslim voters within the Liberal coalition.

Both the Liberal and Conservative parties once voiced unqualified support for Israel’s right to defend itself from hostile neighbours. But the Muslim community is growing in Canada. Today it represents 5 per cent of the population, compared with 1 per cent who identify as Jewish.

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Although data is sparse prior to 2015, it is believed that Muslim Canadians tended to prefer the Liberal Party over the Conservative Party. They were also less likely to vote than the general population.

But the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper deeply angered the community with talk about “barbaric cultural practices” and musing during the 2015 election campaign about banning public servants from wearing the niqab. Meanwhile, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was promising to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected.

These factors galvanized community groups to encourage Muslims to vote. And they did. According to an Environics poll, 79 per cent of eligible Muslims cast a ballot in the 2015 election, compared with an overall turnout of 68 per cent. Sixty-five per cent of Muslim voters cast ballots for the Liberal Party, compared with 10 per cent who voted for the NDP and just 2 per cent for the Conservatives. (Telephone interviews of 600 adults across Canada who self-identified as Muslim, were conducted between Nov. 19, 2015 and Jan. 23, 2016, with an expected margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points 19 times out of 20.)

Muslim Canadians also strongly supported the Liberals in the elections of 2019 and 2021. The party is understandably anxious not to lose that support. I’m told that Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly often mentions the large Muslim community in her Montreal riding. (According to the 2021 census, 18 per cent of the people in Ahuntsic-Cartierville identify as Muslim.)

This is one reason why the Liberal leadership laboured so mightily to find a way to support last week’s NDP motion that would, among other measures, have recognized the state of Palestine. The Liberal caucus was deeply divided on the issue. My colleague Marieke Walsh reports that dozens of Liberal MPs were prepared to vote for the NDP motion.

In the end, almost all Liberal MPs ended up voting for a watered-down version of the motion – statehood recognition was taken off the table – while three Liberal MPs voted against it. One of them, Anthony Housefather, is considering whether to remain inside the Liberal caucus.

This is not simply a question of political calculation. Many Canadians are deeply concerned over the sufferings of the people in Gaza as the Israel Defence Forces seek to root out Hamas fighters.

The Conservatives enjoy the moral clarity of their unreserved support for the state of Israel in this conflict. The NDP place greater emphasis on supporting the rights of Palestinians.

The Liberals have tried to keep both Jewish and Muslim constituencies onside. But as last week’s vote suggests, they increasingly accord a high priority to the rights of Palestinians and to the Muslim community in Canada.

As with other religious communities, Muslims are hardly monolithic. Someone who comes to Canada from Senegal may have different values and priorities than a Canadian who comes from Syria or Pakistan or Indonesia.

And the plight of Palestinians in Gaza may not be the only issue influencing Muslims, who struggle with inflation, interest rates and housing affordability as much as other voters.

Many new Canadians come from societies that are socially conservative. Some Muslim voters may be uncomfortable with the Liberal Party’s strong support for the rights of LGBTQ Canadians.

Finally, Muslim voters for whom supporting the rights of Palestinians is the ballot question may be drawn more to the NDP than the Liberals.

Regardless, the days of Liberal/Conservative bipartisan consensus in support of Israel are over. This is the new lay of the land.

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Recall Gondek group planned to launch its own petition before political novice did – CBC.ca

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The third-party group helping promote the recall campaign against Mayor Jyoti Gondek had devised plans to launch its own petition drive, as part of a broader mission to make Calgary council more conservative.

Project YYC had planned with other conservative political organizations to gather signatures demanding Calgary’s mayor be removed, says group leader Roy Beyer. But their drive would have begun later in the year, when nicer weather made for easier canvassing for supporters, he said.

Those efforts were stymied when Landon Johnston, an HVAC contractor largely unknown in local politics, applied at city hall to launch his own recall drive in early February. Since provincial recall laws allow only one recall attempt per politician per term, Project YYC chose to lend support to Johnston’s bid.

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“Now we have to try to do door-knocking in the winter, and there’s a lot of preparation that you have to contemplate prior to starting. And Landon didn’t do that,” Beyer told CBC News in an interview.

Project YYC has helped gather signatures, created a website and erected large, anti-Gondek signs around town. It has supplied organizational heft that Johnston admits to lacking.

Their task is daunting.

According to provincial law, in order to force a recall plebiscite to oust the mayor before the term is up, they have two months to gather more than 514,000 signatures, an amount equal to 40 per cent of Calgary’s population in 2019.

They have until April 4 to collect that many signatures, and by March 21 had only 42,000.

Beyer criticizes the victory threshold for recall petition as so high that it’s “a joke,” and the province may as well not have politician recall laws.

So if he thinks it’s an impossible pursuit, why is he involved with this?

“You can send a message to the mayor that she should be sitting down and resigning … without achieving those numbers,” Beyer said.

Project YYC founder Roy Beyer, from a Take Back Alberta video in 2022. He is no longer with that provincial activist group. (royjbeyer screenshot/Rumble)

He likened it to former premier Jason Kenney getting 52 per cent support in a UCP leadership review — enough to technically continue as leader, but a lousy enough show of confidence that he announced immediately he would step down.

Gondek has given no indication she’ll voluntarily leave before her term is up next year. But she did emerge from a meeting last week with Johnston to admit the petition has resonated with many Calgarians and is a signal she must work harder to listen to public concerns and explain council’s decisions.

The mayor also told the Calgary Sun this week that she’s undecided about running for re-election in 2025. 

“There used to be this thing where if you’re the mayor, of course you’re going to run for another term because there’s unfinished business,” Gondek told the newspaper.

“And yes, there will be unfinished business, but the times are not what they were. You need to make sure you’re the right leader for the times you’re in.”

The last several Calgary mayors have enjoyed multiple terms in office, going back to Ralph Klein in the 1980s. The last one-term mayor was Ross Alger, the man Klein defeated in 1980.

Beyer and fellow conservative organizers launched Project YYC before the recall campaign. The goal was to elect a conservative mayor and councillors — “a common-sense city council, instead of what we currently have,” he said.

Beyer is one of a few former activists with the provincial pressure group Take Back Alberta to have latched themselves to the recall bid and Project YYC, along with some United Conservative Party riding officials in Calgary. 

Beyer’s acknowledgment of his group’s broader mission comes as Premier Danielle Smith and her cabinet ministers have said they want to introduce political party politics in large municipalities — even though most civic politicians have said they don’t want to bring clear partisanship into city halls.

Although Beyer admits Project YYC’s own recall campaign would have been a coalition effort with other conservative groups, he wouldn’t specify which ones. He did insist that Take Back Alberta wasn’t one of them.

A man in a grey baseball cap speaks to reporters.
Calgary business owner Landon Johnston speaks to reporters at City Hall on March 22 following his 15-minute conversation with Mayor Jyoti Gondek. (Laurence Taschereau/CBC)

Johnston says he was approached by Beyer’s group shortly after applying to recall Gondek, and gave them $3,000 from donations he’d raised.

He initially denied any knowledge of Project YYC when documents first emerged about that group’s role in the recall, but later said he didn’t initially realize that was the organizational name of his campaign allies.

“They said they could get me signatures, so I said, ‘OK, if you can do it by the book, here’s some money.’ And it’s worked,” he said.

Johnston has said he’s new to politics but simply wants to remove Gondek because of policies he’s disagreed with, like the soon-to-be-ended ban on single-use plastics and bags at restaurant takeouts and drive-thrus.

He’s no steadfast conservative, either. He told CBC’s Calgary Eyeopener that he voted for Rachel Notley’s NDP because one of its green-renovation incentives helped his HVAC business.

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump – CNN

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Larry David shares how he feels about Trump

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” star Larry David shares how he feels about former President Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Watch the full episode of “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” streaming March 29 on Max.


03:21

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CNN

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