‘There you go again!”came to my mind naturally, as I was reading a recent article in The Guardian about former media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying’s ongoing court case under Hong Kong’s National Security Law (NSL).

The article began with the sentence: “The dwindling freedom in Hong Kong has been described as ‘death by a thousand cuts’.” This sensationalist soundbite is attributed to The New York Times, which depicted a Hong Kong socioeconomic dystopia in its March 19, 2024 article titled, “In Hong Kong, China’s Grip Can Feel Like ‘Death by a Thousand Cuts’.”

To promote its point, The Guardian article accused the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s national security authorities of wielding “the powers of a police state” under the NSL, quoting Paul Harris, a former chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, who fled Hong Kong in 2022 after being interviewed by the city’s national security police officers investigating seditious activities.

For those who know little about him: Harris, one of the fiercest critics of the NSL, is the founding chairman of the nongovernmental organization Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, which had received as of February 2021 over HK$15 million ($1.9 million) in funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, which had assumed several former activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to US official records, the money was to “enable mobilization of activists in Hong Kong and help organize public protests” (Tony Kwok, “Paul Harris Poses Existential Threat To The Bar Association As Chairman”, China Daily Hong Kong Edition, Feb 26, 2021).

Yet, both articles in The Guardian and The New York Times glaringly failed to tally with the reality on the ground.

According to the Economic Freedom of the World 2024 annual report compiled by Canada-based public policy think tank, the Fraser Institute, Hong Kong ranked first among 165 economies surveyed — up one place from the previous year.

The SAR’s ranking in the 2024 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index has remained unchanged, while the city continues to hold sixth place in East Asia and the Pacific, and is placed 23rd among 142 countries and jurisdictions globally, with its global rankings in “regulatory enforcement” and “civil justice” climbing one spot each, and remaining unchanged in “open government”.

Unfortunately, the national security regime implemented in Hong Kong and the enforcement of relevant laws in recent years have been used as an excuse for spouting doomsday rhetoric. It is predictable that more pronouncements or assertions of Hong Kong’s “demise”, which are curses in nature, will come. But a reminder for those who are fond of cursing others: Curses come home to roost

Hong Kong also retained third spot worldwide in the latest Global Financial Centers Index, published early this month by the UK-based Z/Yen and the Shenzhen-based China Development Institute, distancing itself from regional rival Singapore, and closing the gap with top-ranked New York and London.

The authors of both The Guardian and The New York Times articles owe their readers an explanation as to how a jurisdiction whose law enforcement authorities wield “the powers of a police state” and massively “encroach upon” individual rights and freedoms can become the world’s freest economy, can continue to be a leading international financial center, and consistently scores highly in a widely recognized global rule of law index?    

Doomsday predictions, or curses in disguise, on Hong Kong have lingered over the past three decades since Fortune Magazine — a US business magazine — predicted in 1995 “The Death of Hong Kong” after its return to China in 1997, asserting that “the naked truth about Hong Kong’s future could be summed up in two words: It’s over. … What’s indisputably dying … is Hong Kong’s role as a vibrant international commercial and financial hub”.

In the past three decades, Hong Kong has gone through the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the SARS epidemic in 2003, the global financial tsunami in 2008, the “black-clad” riots in 2019-20, and the COVID-19 pandemic without diminishing its role as a prominent global financial center, and the city’s economic size, in terms of gross domestic product, has more than doubled since 1997.

Fortune Magazine’s infamous doomsday prediction about Hong Kong has long been a laughingstock in the international community, particularly in media and business circles. Yet, it seems that Western media and business circles haven’t learned from the publication’s fiasco.

Just a month before The New York Times published its Hong Kong dystopia commentary — on Feb 12, 2024 to be exact — The Financial Times ran another doomsday commentary titled, “It Pains Me To Say Hong Kong Is Over”, written by Stephen Roach, an economist and a former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. Ever since, the notion of “Hong Kong is over” has been hyped up again and again by the Western press.

Roach cited the underperformance of Hong Kong’s stock market in recent years in advancing his point, which surprised many. While the stock market used to be a good barometer of economic performance, this function has significantly diminished since the invention of quantitative easing (QE) following the 2008 global financial tsunami. Global stock markets have been driven more by the flow of international hot money which, in turn, has been influenced by QE policies, as well as geopolitical dynamics in recent years.

The Hong Kong stock market has been one of the world’s top bourse performers in recent months, with the benchmark Hang Seng Index recording a strong year-to-date surge of about 24 percent on March 19, closing at 24,874.39 — a three-year high. Now, would Roach make a more optimistic assessment of Hong Kong’s economic prospects in response to its strong stock market performance despite the uncertainties posed by Donald Trump’s trade, technology and tax policies?

The reality on the ground doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to Western media’s doomsday predictions or narratives about Hong Kong. Such sensational comments tend to be aimed at increasing media exposure, and are ratcheted up whenever they want to promote a certain ideological or geopolitical agenda. This is particularly true since Washington designated China as the United States’ key strategic rival, with Hong Kong increasingly being targeted by Washington and its allies as they proceed with their China-containing strategy, thanks to the HKSAR’s significance to the nation as a global center for finance, trade and logistics.

Unfortunately, the national security regime implemented in Hong Kong and the enforcement of relevant laws in recent years have been used as an excuse for spouting doomsday rhetoric. It is predictable that more pronouncements or assertions of Hong Kong’s “demise”, which are curses in nature, will come. But a reminder for those who are fond of cursing others: Curses come home to roost.

The author is a current affairs commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.