Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 2nd of September 2019 to The Sounding Line.

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With China now boasting the second largest economy in the world, it’s easy to forgot that just 25 years ago, when Hong Kong was still a British colony, Hong Kong’s economy was roughly 27% as large as the rest of China’s economy. After decades of breakneck growth in mainland China and comparatively tepid growth in Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s economy is now just 2.7% the size of the Chinese economy, as the following chart from Statista shows.

With no clear resolution in sight for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, China is reportedly accelerating efforts to dilute Hong Kong’s economic relevance further. China has unveiled plans to turn Shenzhen, Hong Kong’s mainland China counterpart, into a ‘demonstration area for Chinese socialism’ and one of the largest cities in the world. All of which is likely to further feed fears in Hong Kong that its destiny is to be slowly digested into mainland China.

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