HONG KONG—When you fight for freedom, sacrifices have to be made. Even well-to-do hedge fund managers like Edward Chin of 2047 HK Monitor are not exempt.
Since he and other Hong Kong finance figures threw their weight behind the Hong Kong democracy movement in 2014, the cancellation of his regular newspaper column in the Hong Kong Economic Journal was only one indicator that the going would get rougher for him.
But this is not about his personal freedoms. It is about the freedom of Hong Kong and its future as Asia’s foremost financial center.
Why Are the Democracy Protests Worth it?
For the Occupy Central event, even Li Ka-Shing said the disruption was minimal. You are talking about that strip of road in Admiralty [the area around government offices in central Hong Kong]. It makes some inconvenience. But real estate and stock prices went up during that period.
But Hong Kong people have no choice. The white paper [Beijing’s idea of what democracy will look like] was thrown to us and also the decision on August 31st [Beijing’s decision to rule out open elections]. Beijing basically said: We give you rice to eat: If you don’t like it, we can take it away.
They are really breaching the joint-declaration between the U.K. and China which was signed in 1984. That’s the key thing that a lot of people are disappointed about. They even stopped a British MP from entering Hong Kong, when they tried to do an investigation.
