HONG KONG: China’s crackdown in Hong Kong has left Japanese finance firms “very much afraid” and reconsidering whether to remain in the city, a senior banker said Monday in a rare public declaration of concern from within the industry.
“They are unlike me. I’m a very straightforward guy. But all the others, in their bellies, they think they should move out or won’t invest more in Hong Kong,” Kitao said in an interview published on Monday. Senior Chinese leaders have also called for “reform” of the city’s independent judiciary, a key component of Hong Kong’s status as a regional business hub.
In his interview with the newspaper, Kitao said businesses were now questioning whether it made sense to remain in Hong Kong — a city with notoriously high rents — if the business landscape becomes little different from mainland China. Kitao specifically mentioned Beijing’s security law as a reason Hong Kong was now “not a good place for financial institutions”, the report said.