Latest news with #StephenRoach
South China Morning Post
10 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong has been, and always will be, a very special Chinese city
So, Hong Kong is not going down the drain after all. What a relief! At least that's the latest reassessment of Stephen Roach, who is something of a big potato among the China commentariat. Some 16 months ago, the former Morgan Stanley, Asia boss seemed to have finally joined the 'death of Hong Kong' brigade, having declared that it is 'just another Chinese city' now. His claim – 'it pains me to say Hong Kong is over' – caused a bit of a shock because his views were usually considered moderate and measured. Actually, we are still 'just like any other big Chinese city', he concluded in a recent Financial Times op-ed, like 'Shenzhen with its technology, Guangzhou with its advanced manufacturing'. Hong Kong is 'special' only for its 'role as China's major international financial centre'. Well, Hong Kong had long been the main foreign exchange and investment funding source for communist China even under the British. Its functions may have expanded, but its key financial role remains. Not much has changed. Roach said he used three 'Hong Kong is over' metrics: worsening governance and collapsed autonomy; declining economy tied to the rest of the nation; and a victim caught in the US-China rivalry. It is the last criterion that Roach has changed his mind on, rather than the first two. Actually, he is a Johnny-come-lately. A while back, this newspaper, among others, was already pointing out how the city's capital market was roaring back, with its initial public offerings poised to regain the global top spot. Meanwhile, the Hang Seng Index has vastly outperformed the S&P 500 in the United States this year. Roach now admits: 'Hong Kong has benefited from the more powerful strain of financial decoupling between the US and China.
South China Morning Post
10-06-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Why Hong Kong is not ‘over' but must adapt to a changing world order
In his latest Bloomberg interview , former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach said the escalating US-China conflict is providing Hong Kong with 'more of an opportunity than a threat, as I had originally envisioned'. Advertisement That was seen as a revision of his controversial remark in February 2024 that ' Hong Kong is over '. Such pessimism was not the first of its kind: recall Fortune magazine's cover story headlined 'The Death of Hong Kong' in June 1995, only to confess that they were wrong in a June 2007 article, 'Oops! Hong Kong is hardly dead'. Roach argued previously that Hong Kong's demise reflected the confluence of three factors: domestic politics, the China factor, and global developments. He saw China's post-2019 clampdown as removing any remaining semblance of local political autonomy . Hong Kong was also caught in the US-China crossfire and the spillover of mainland economic slowdown stemming from debt, deflation and demography. Now, recognising the local stock market rebound , Roach has emphasised Hong Kong's unique position as China's most important window to international finance such that it is 'experiencing maybe a revival because of its Chinese characteristics, not in spite of it'. But that feature of the city has not changed over time. Only the context might change. The question is whether the city is suffering a temporary setback or walking down a gloomy path . China is indeed the deciding factor. Like other pessimists, Roach held bleak assumptions about China's economic future and a linear interpretation of international politics. His latest statement has not clarified his real position. Advertisement
South China Morning Post
09-06-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong's stock market has revived but what of the property sector?
Hong Kong needs all the help it can get. Since 2018, the city has suffered one shock after another, preventing a meaningful recovery from taking hold and fuelling concerns about its position as a global financial centre. Advertisement As an importer of US monetary policy with an economy that is far more synchronised with that of mainland China, Hong Kong has been the biggest casualty of economic and policy divergence between the world's two largest economies, prompting renewed questions about the suitability of the city's currency peg to the US dollar. Yet, over the past few months, a confluence of domestic and external factors has given Hong Kong a much-needed shot in the arm. The escalation of the US-China trade war and the damage to the US' safe haven status have provided a fillip to Hong Kong's markets, partly by buttressing the city's role as the leading offshore equity financing centre for mainland Chinese companies. Proceeds from initial public offerings and secondary share sales in Hong Kong have reached US$26.5 billion so far this year, compared with just US$3.8 billion in the same period last year, data from Bloomberg shows. Former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman Stephen Roach, who last year said Hong Kong was 'over' in part because of the intensification of the US-China conflict, said last week the city is benefiting from being mainland China's 'most important window to international finance'. Furthermore, the sharp drop in the US dollar since US President Donald Trump's inauguration, coupled with deeper concerns about the safety of US assets, forced the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to intervene aggressively to prevent the Hong Kong dollar from exceeding the upper end of its trading band against the greenback. Advertisement
The Star
07-06-2025
- Business
- The Star
Hong Kong's still ‘over' but Stephen Roach says city a surprise trade war winner
American economist Stephen Roach has said that Hong Kong has benefited from the US-China trade war despite last year having declared the city to be 'over', even as he claimed that other aspects of the financial hub had worsened. The former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman sparked debate last year after he penned an opinion piece which argued, in part, that Hong Kong would be caught in the 'crossfire' of the worsening US-China rivalry. 'The word caught is the word that, if I had to write the piece again, I would probably change, because I think, ironically, Hong Kong has benefited from the crossfire between the US and China,' he told the Post in a recent interview. Despite worsening ties between the two superpowers since US President Donald Trump began levying his so-called reciprocal tariffs on China and the rest of the world, Hong Kong's stock market has seen solid gains. The benchmark Hang Seng Index is up by around 50 per cent since Roach made his original claim, while Hong Kong has rocketed to the top of the global fundraising table following a string of high-profile initial public offerings last month, including from mainland Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology. Roach, who is now a faculty member at Yale University, said the 'sell America' trade had become a 'global mantra' and Hong Kong was a beneficiary. But asked whether he felt his initial assessment of the city being 'over' was premature, he noted he would say the same again. 'No economy or city state is over ... but this image of a dynamic, powerful system as part of the 'one country, two systems' model, I think that's just as close to being over today as it was when I originally wrote the piece,' he said, referring to the city's governing principle. 'The governance story is still, I think, very much working against this notion of Hong Kong as a free, independent, autonomous city state. If anything, it's gotten worse.' Roach added that the strong performance of the city's stock market had 'instilled sort of a new swagger in Hong Kong bordering on denial'. He said there were 'questions that could be raised' about the city's independent rule of law, pointing to the departure of foreign non-permanent judges. He also raised concerns about the fast-tracking of the domestic national security law last year and what he described as continuing efforts to 'quash dissent'. While the Hong Kong government had 'risen to the challenge' to demonstrate to the world that the city should be considered 'special', American investors in particular had developed an 'unwillingness' to distinguish it from the rest of China, he said. 'Where I've come out, reluctantly, is that as great a city as Hong Kong is, it's just another big Chinese city,' he said. 'I think it's increasingly a one country, one system model with a solid financial capital raising infrastructure embedded in Hong Kong.' Executive Council convenor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, who previously hit back at Roach over his 'Hong Kong is over' remarks, maintained that the American economist did not understand the city. She said the 'pessimistic views' Roach expressed last year 'were primarily based on the Hong Kong stock market's poor performance'. 'He overlooked China's strength in technological innovations and Hong Kong's unique advantages based on its separate systems. We are the only part of China that can invest, manage and provide trading platforms for digital assets.' She cited the city's recently passed law on stablecoins, which she said would help Hong Kong be the country's 'testing ground' for cryptocurrencies. Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency token that maintain a fixed value by being pegged to a reference asset, typically fiat currencies such as the US dollar. The law, which was passed last month and is set to take effect later this year, establishes a regulatory regime for stablecoins, paving the way for issuers to obtain licences and sell the digital assets to the public. 'Despite ongoing US-China tensions, Hong Kong will continue to have an important role to play in building bridges between China and the West,' Ip said. - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
South China Morning Post
05-06-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong's still ‘over' but Stephen Roach says city a surprise trade war winner
American economist Stephen Roach has said that Hong Kong has benefited from the US-China trade war despite last year having declared the city to be 'over', even as he claimed that other aspects of the financial hub had worsened. The former Morgan Stanley Asia chairman sparked debate last year after he penned an opinion piece which argued, in part, that Hong Kong would be caught in the 'crossfire' of the worsening US-China rivalry. 'The word caught is the word that, if I had to write the piece again, I would probably change, because I think, ironically, Hong Kong has benefited from the crossfire between the US and China,' he told the Post in a recent interview. Despite worsening ties between the two superpowers since US President Donald Trump began levying his so-called reciprocal tariffs on China and the rest of the world, Hong Kong's stock market has seen solid gains. The benchmark Hang Seng Index is up by around 50 per cent since Roach made his original claim, while Hong Kong has rocketed to the top of the global fundraising table following a string of high-profile initial public offerings last month, including from mainland Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology. Roach, who is now a faculty member at Yale University, said the 'sell America' trade had become a 'global mantra' and Hong Kong was a beneficiary.
