A close look at the marvelous outcomes of the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, concluded on Nov 3, decodes the reactions from some United States politicians who sought to derail the event by trying to dissuade financial experts with American ties from participating. Such irrational behavior to undermine the success of an international event in the financial field has not come as a great surprise when people with ulterior political motives realize that the three-day summit drew over 200 top bankers and investors from 120 international financial firms around the world — one-third being presidents or chief executive officers of the financial firms on the guest list.
The event was indeed reckoned by the financial heavyweights from across the globe as an extraordinarily high-level gathering of financiers that reaffirms the metropolis’ status as a superconnector between the Chinese mainland and the rest of the world. These international financial leaders were reported to have frankly disclosed their real experience during the conference with the city’s vibrancy and extensive opportunities of building up asset-management businesses in China using the special administrative region as a springboard. They also mentioned that their firsthand experience deviated vastly from what they had heard about the city from foreign media reports.
During the summit, a total of 26 global financial specialists spoke on a variety of topics, addressing viable ways to develop and grasp opportunities amid global uncertainties and geopolitical complexities that are challenging world economics. Partaken by financiers of international stature, the message of the HKSAR coming back to business and pleasure for investors and visitors from across the world will travel far and wide. Right before the kickoff of the financial investment summit, two US congressmen urged the country’s preeminent bankers to pull out from the top-level business forum. In a high-pitched but groundless tone, these two American lawmakers went so far as to assert that attending the conference would mean a complicity in Chinese and SAR officials’ “human rights abuses”. Rebuking such absurd claims, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po dismissed the irresponsible comments as “attempts to smear, or even obstruct the proper interactions and exchange of ideas within the financial sector”. With the summit having actualized the goal of evidencing to the global community that the HKSAR is opening up and returning to normalcy, he said that the city will host a second financial summit next year.
What then followed from the baseless politics-driven attack was that three executives of world acclaim were subsequently absent from the investment seminar. Among them, Blackstone President Jonathan Gray did not turn up since he was confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus. His role was quickly taken up by another top financial expert — Blackstone Chief Financial Officer Michael Chae. Citigroup’s CEO also abandoned his plans to visit the city after contracting COVID-19. Meanwhile, Barclays’ CEO scrapped his plans to travel to Asia. In reviewing the turnout of invited personalities, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu noted it was “just a small number of absentees”, comprising “two guests who were about to attend the summit (who) got infected with COVID-19”, and one speaker deciding to defer his Asian tour. He added that attendance by more than 200 guests is “in line with” the authorities’ expectation, which was further endorsed by other international events hosted by the SAR, including the Hong Kong Sevens rugby tournament and Hong Kong Legal Week.
Highlighting the complementarity of the city’s “irreplaceable” edges and those in its motherland that enable each other to bring out its best in offering “exciting growth opportunities to the business world” that were said to “far outnumber the challenges” with the SAR’s “robust institutions, resilient financial system and also enabling ecosystem and very enterprising people”, Chief Executive John Lee proudly declared the city is regaining its stability and thus turning over a new leaf.
Concurring with the city head’s view, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui Ching-yu stressed that the SAR’s advantages as a global financial hub would not be “easily whipped off” by the negative comments from a handful of foreign politicians. He remarked that the FinTech Week alone, which preceded the Global Financial Leaders Investment Summit, managed to attract 300 international enterprises and over 12,000 participants.
With a looming global recession and escalating inflation across continents, there is a pressing need for especially the leading countries to voluntarily iron out undesired differences and find more hot spots for worthy investments around the world. With full confidence in its tenacity and future as demonstrated substantially by the impressive support of leading financiers across the globe for the groundbreaking investment summit this time, the HKSAR has obviously offered “a clear understanding of the trajectory of the capital market” against a backdrop of “significant amount of uncertainties” getting into 2023 (CEO David Solomon, Goldman Sachs). The city’s status as a global financial hub has become reassured in consequence to the rare gathering of Wall Street’s top bankers attending the summit and discussing topics like market volatility and global risks. This evaluation is further substantiated by Governor Yi Gang of the People’s Bank of China, saying Hong Kong is already a ‘‘high-quality capital market’’ capable of playing ‘‘a very important role in helping grow the Chinese economy’’.
If only for the extremely selfish motive of pushing for the long-despised hegemony in all spheres of development, the willful move to sabotage the Hong Kong financial investment summit by a few American politicians was doomed to fail from the very beginning. As leaders of the world’s largest economy, the US political leaders should initiate to reboot the ailing global economy to reaffirm the country’s premier economic standing, not to wreck positive efforts in this direction mounted in other regions. Their ugly and abortive venture this time has driven home the hard lesson that Western political figures should “never bet against China and its HKSAR” (Yi Gang). The “irreplaceable” advantages of Hong Kong as a global financial hub cannot be stripped from it by just a few subversive words!
The author is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.