Hong Kong Businesses Take a Side, Uncomfortably
The protests have put the city’s tycoons in a no-win situation.
No police please, we’re neutral.
Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg
After 10 weeks of silence, Hong Kong’s business elite have started voicing opposition to the city’s increasingly violent protests. The cracking in the facade of neutrality comes amid mounting damage to the Hong Kong economy and pressure from Beijing for public displays of loyalty. Being forced to take sides is unlikely to end happily for them.
On Monday, property billionaire Peter Woo called on protesters to quit and wrote that some people were aiming to “purposely stir up trouble.” A day later, Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., the city’s biggest developer by market value, issued a statement condemning violent protests. Former Wheelock & Co. Chairman Woo, Sun Hung Kai Chairman Raymond Kwok and his brother Thomas Kwok are among Hong Kong’s 10 richest people, each worth more than $10 billion.