Word: mainland
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...Even when it was a British colony, Hong Kong benefited mightily from a symbiotic relationship with the mainland. In the 1990s, the city prospered shipping goods manufactured in southern China by Hong Kong-owned companies. As south China's export-manufacturing economy exploded and the mainland's budding entrepreneurial class began seeking overseas investment, Hong Kong became a willing and able broker. This transition is reflected in the changing composition of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In 2003, Chinese companies accounted for only about 29% of Hong Kong's total market capitalization. By last September, that number had risen...
...because it offers an entrée to the outside world. China's capital markets, largely closed today, are being gradually opened, meaning ordinary citizens will eventually be free to invest some of their wealth outside the country - with Hong Kong, which is a Special Administrative Region of the mainland, as the likely first stop. Beijing last year proposed a new program, nicknamed "the through train to the Hong Kong stock exchange," that would allow individual Chinese to buy stock in Hong Kong for the first time. The city is a natural platform for Chinese investment, says Saskia Sassen...
...reality, though, 2017 is pretty much the only way. While the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini-constitution, holds full democracy as its "ultimate aim", the mainland has the last word on its interpretation, leading some observers to see Sunday's march as quixotic at best. Ma Ngok, a political analyst at Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that even if the mainland could be budged by mass popular protests, efforts to get the people out in large enough numbers "won't work because people have been much more pacified in recent years." Some 72% of Hong Kongers find Beijing...
...kidding. Hong Kong's economy has been on a tear lately: bolstered by a booming mainland and the Hong Kong dollar's peg to a weakening U.S. currency, the Hang Seng Index gained 39% in 2007. A recent survey by TNS and Gallup International showed that Hong Kong people are the most optimistic in the world on the general outlook for 2008, with 71% expecting the coming year to be better than the last. All that prosperity is causing headaches for Hong Kong's pro-democracy camp, who are finding it harder to make their cause relevant. In November...
...this regard against Beijing." Still, organizer Lee Cheuk Yan, a legislator from the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, points out that the rally was also intended to send a clear signal to Beijing that the relatively small number of demonstrators on the streets could drastically swell if the mainland reneged on its timetable promises. The next battle is to make sure that the electoral systems necessary for democratic elections are in place well before 2017. Mainland officials have hinted that they would like the current functional constituencies - professional voting blocs appointed by Beijing - to remain a feature of Hong...