Podcast

Making Sense of The New Hong Kong - Professor Brian Wong

Dr. Brian Wong is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines the ethics and dynamics of authoritarian regimes and their foreign policies, historical and colonial injustices, and the intersection of geopolitics, political and moral philosophy, and technology

In this episode, we explore the evolution of Hong Kong as a Chinese city.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 The Uniqueness of Hong Kong
08:31 Hong Kong's Value to China
14:46 Cultural Identity in Hong Kong
17:36 Contra-Western Perspectives on Hong Kong's Status
23:34 The Future of Hong Kong's Identity
32:31 The Ethnic Identity Crisis in America
36:36 Chinese Response to Trump
50:58 Understanding Chinese Bureaucracy
01:00:54 Hong Kong's Role in China's Geopolitical Strategy

Keith 00:00

The Uniqueness of Hong Kong

Dr. Brian Wong is an assistant professor of philosophy in the University of Hong Kong. His research interest focuses on geopolitics and philosophy. His work has been featured in notable publications like Foreign Affairs, Time Magazine and The Diplomat. So Dr. Wong, it's a pleasure to have you on.

Brian Wong 00:00

Thank you very much for having me here, Keith.

Keith 00:00

As a Singaporean, I'm deeply curious about Hong Kong. I wanted to ask you, what makes Hong Kong special?

Brian Wong 00:00

I think what we have to remember about Hong Kong is that it has always existed in a state of liminality or increasingly I would say over recent years this has morphed into quasi liminality. Now you might say this is a very chimp word to use but let me just explain what I mean by liminality. It's the idea that Hong Kong is in many ways beyond the norm. It defies and bucks expectations. It is extraordinary. Doesn't mean it is extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, it just means it is extraordinary in a way its institutional arrangements have always worked.

Prior to 1997, after 1842, we were obviously colonized by the Brits and existed basically as a colonial outpost in the Far East. We didn't necessarily have much intrinsic importance for many of the British overlords or the administrators and the colonial era officials, but we certainly served strategic and tactical usages. It had functions as essentially the base for the Brits in relation to military supplies, to trade routes and beyond, obviously in relation to British India, but also by extension many of Britain's interests in other parts of the Far East.

Subsequent to 1997, the reversion of sovereignty to China and our reintegration into our proverbial motherland China, Hong Kong was governed under this one country, two systems arrangement, which many would dismiss as merely sort of rhetorical floss or not particularly authentic or useful way of looking at Hong Kong's politics. But it is worth noting how integral and how remarkable One Country, Two Systems is when we are one of, well, we are the only full city level jurisdiction in China that adopts the common law in full and without interference. We're one of the two special administrative regions alongside Macau that enjoys a distinct and separate institutional and legal arrangement from the rest of China, mainland China.

We also have freedom of movement and entry and exit in ways that not necessarily afforded to those who are seeking to enter into the mainland. And that's to say that the immigration regulations or the visa regulations governing Hong Kong are wholly different from those governing that of mainland China. So when we look at all of these differences, it's hard to think that Hong Kong is just like any other Chinese city because legally, and also institutionally, we are not just any other. We are a Chinese SAR, but also a very distinct and unique one at that.

And in fact, when I travel around Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe, I often get asked a question or got asked a question prior to 2020, which is that how come Hong Kong enjoys so many perks? This is not fair, right? They would say, you're a Chinese city, but you're given the status of an independent and separate economy at a WTO table. You have your own representative at APEC, right? And you can attend APEC meetings as a separate delegate and delegation from China. Isn't that unfair?

And to that, I would always note that, well, it comes with a price, right? All of these perks, all of these uniqueness-adding features come with a price. And that is that between 1997 and up until a few years ago, we'd never really managed to have a full and complete understanding of Hong Kong's role in relation to the rest of China. We're always struggling to understand what Beijing expected of us. And there was this tendency on a part of many local elite, political and economic, to second guess Beijing, or worse yet, to not think about what China really needs and cares for and went on with business perfunctorily in a way that didn't necessarily do justice to either China's interests or the interests of the 7.4 or 7.5 million Hong Kongers in the city.

And that brings us then to of course Hong Kong today. Now the question I get asked these days when I travel abroad and overseas from sympathetic friends, acquaintances, colleagues I've known for a long while is, Brian is Hong Kong okay? I'm so sorry. And I would ask them, what are you sorry about my friend? What are you sorry about? Because I know the answer, right? But I wanted them to say it.

And they would say, well, I'm sorry that Hong Kong is not Hong Kong anymore. I'm sorry that Hong Kong is assimilated into the rest of China, that the institutional arrangements that governed it are apparently over. And I can understand where the concerns and where that sort of sentiment is coming from. If you look at the drastic changes that have taken place in Hong Kong over the past couple of years, it's not hard to observe that the city has indeed moved closer to Beijing, and that a special administrative region as a whole has become more politically integrated into the Chinese ecosystem and also institutional arrangements at large.

And there are reasons for which this happened, some of which are extraneous, for instance, Sino-American tensions and geopolitical turbulence, some of which are domestic, of course, all the events that befell Hong Kong in 2019 had only amplified this streak and this sentiment in Beijing that Hong Kong needed to be securitized against all ostensible foreign threats. And thus those who advocated securitization, firm and unbridled integration, had the way in the first two years after the protests in 19. And that also explains a lot of the drastic institutional reforms or changes that have led to, in the eyes of some, reduced room for citizen participation in Hong Kong and also structural changes to the way politics and the balance of power in Hong Kong had played out.

Whereby prior to 2019 and 20, you might have had a tentative and tenuous equilibrium and an emotive of any of sorts between the mainland Chinese authorities, pro-Beijing forces, the Democrats, the masters, the people, the tycoons, the property developers. It was a smorgasbord of disparate actors whose interests had to be balanced prior to 19 and 20.

Whereas these days it's becoming increasingly clear that Hong Kong would be special still, would be unique still, but within the sort of proverbial metaphor that a friend of mine likes to use, the Wuzhishan and the Buddha's hands, right? Where regardless of whatever we'd like to do, whenever we'd like to do it, however we'd like to do it, there exist boundaries to the actions and also the agency of folks on the ground in Hong Kong. And that is the palm of the Buddha.

And just as the Monkey King could not have flipped himself or flown himself out of the palm of the Buddha, I would say the same could be said now of Hong Kong post 2020, which is why it's no longer liminal. It's no longer sort of this unbridled laissez-faire, anything goes territory in a political sense. But even then, Hong Kong remains rather distinctive and unique and special still relative to the rest of China. We enjoy much higher levels of freedoms of speech, freedoms of press and also internationalization and engagement with the world outside and beyond that I truly hope we can continually preserve.

And by we, I don't just mean Hong Kongers and Hong Kong officials or the Hong Kong economic and political elite, but also Beijing, because I firmly think that a more open and more internationalist Hong Kong serves the interests of China, not just the Hong Kong people, but the entirety of the 1.4 billion people in China.

Keith 08:31

Hong Kong's Value to China

What is the value of Hong Kong specifically to China? Some say that it's maybe yourself included, you would say that it's a platform for track 2 diplomacy. Some would argue that it's the Sai Wai, right? [(塞外) - Beyond the frontier]

It's where the East and West meet for China. What do you think is the value of Hong Kong for China as a whole?

Brian Wong 08:31

I think there are three key functions, but the key preface before I launch into these functions is to note that Hong Kong's role has always shifted throughout history. Not going to go back too much in time, but just think about its original sort of status as an entrepôt for many of these colonialist and imperialist forces who were seeking to do trade and business with China.

Then upon Gaige Kaifang, [(改革开放) - Reform and Opening Up policy] it morphed into this bastion of capital, this engine and source of capital and investments going into the mainland. And of course, with China's acceding to WTO and the double-digit growth achieved at the turn of millennium and the first decade of this century, Hong Kong became the financing hub and heartland of finance for China.

Now, two decades into the 21st century, where do things stand for Hong Kong in relation to its country? Three things. The first, in my view, is experimentation. Hong Kong's value lies with the fact that it does things very differently from the mainland. Not just legally, bureaucratically, or economically and financially. Long may these practices continue. Long may we preserve these unique arrangements, because essentially, what I think is really crucial on the front of experimentation here, is that Hong Kong can serve as basically a testing ground and also as a role model and a mirror for China to observe the practices that work here and that don't work here. And through that, they can then figure out what is it, which of the practices and norms and institutions in Hong Kong is it that they would like to incorporate into the rest of the country?

Just look at Hainan, for instance, which is seeking to position itself as a new free trade island, a free trade zone, right? The entirety of Hainan would be converted into this low taxes, open and highly amenable to international trade and commerce island. That is in many ways modeled after Hong Kong when it comes to its legal setup and also financial arrangements. I think that is an area where Hong Kong could serve again as a pioneering sort of testing ground.

Not everything worked in Hong Kong. Clearly, if you look at the property-led model of economic growth in Hong Kong, which by the way, infected, or shall we say inspired, what happened in the mainland over the past two decades, I don't think that's necessarily healthy. And we've seen the consequences of this in relation to the need for Beijing to rein in the unbridled expansion of the property market, to de-leverage this huge bubble. And we're now sort of reeling from the after effects of these tightening up measures with the cratering property markets in the mainland today as we speak in anemic demand and also faltering prices.

But then going back to Hong Kong, I think what we should aim to do going forward is to say, well, look, China, we can do things differently from the mainland. Use us as a testing ground for crypto, for Bitcoin, for financial deregulation and technologies, for green financing. And that is where Hong Kong has an active role in pitching for more proactive agency and bandwidth when it comes to such experimentation.

Without experimentation, I don't think there's any value to the one country, two systems arrangement as is, because we may as well call it a day and say, let's have one country, one system instead. It has to be through institutional differentiation that we serve the role as a sandbox for China. That's role number one.

Role number two in assisting Chinese capital enterprises and individuals with going abroad. There's a phrase you might have heard of here called Chuhai [(出海) - Going abroad/overseas expansion]. And Chuhai is sort of the Chinese terminology, nomenclature, in describing the very natural tendency in a part of enterprises, both SOEs and also private enterprises, to relocate and to move abroad, to move at least portions of their manufacturing processes and supply chains out of China.

And why is that happening? Well, bearing in mind that China Plus One has often been dubbed by the derisking approach or the key to derisking by Western MNCs, I would actually note that Chinese companies are also undertaking their own China Plus One as they realize, and we'll get on to this shortly, that American or European tariffs on directly China manufactured goods would only continually increase. There's a secular trend drifting towards more targeted protectionism and more targeted closure and also inhibition of trade flows between China and the global north.

And as such, in order to circumvent these restrictive measures, Chinese enterprises have no choice but to move abroad and to seek joint ventures and enterprises with counterparts in Southeast Asia, in the Gulf, and even Latin America. But here's where the challenge kicks in. Chinese enterprises may be very innovative in some industries. Chinese workers are very hardworking in some industries and there is certainly an immense and abundant volume of resourcefulness, innovativeness, and entrepreneurial dynamism from certain segments of the Chinese economy still, despite all that's happened over the past few years.

And yet what I posit here is that many of these companies, management and leaders do not really understand the world beyond China. Right. And it's natural because China is such a large market and have always thrived by just catering to domestic consumers, such that even if parts of the supply chains had been overseas, they weren't the mainstay, these overseas components, and there was no need on a part of these business owners and principals to know and understand the world beyond the boundaries or the borders of China.

And yet the times have changed. Globalization, not just for the world at large, but also for individual businesses and enterprises and investors has changed fundamentally. What's needed here is a more regionally oriented, strategically focused orientation in how investments and capital are deployed. And that is why Chinese firm owners have no choice but to go out themselves and to venture beyond their comfort zones.

And this is where Hong Kong as by far the freest and most open part of China with free flows of information, we don't have the firewall, with free flows of capital and also talents and human capital, et cetera. That is why we can serve as basically a stepping stone as a consultant of sorts or a source of strategic advice for Chinese firms who are seeking to navigate this incredibly complex international environment.

And very quickly, there's a third function. Hong Kong needs to tell a more nuanced, a more comprehensive, and a different side of the China story. We hear a lot of CPC officials bandy around the phrase, tell a good China story these days. But I listen to them and I think, well, what do you mean by telling a good China story? Because to me, a good story is not a story filled with only good things. You know, we like watching Wicked precisely because we want to understand how Elphaba eventually became the wicked witch, right? We're not interested in a story about a protagonist who started off incredibly benign and lived a very morally uptight life and end up being this saint, right? Because that's not an interesting story.

And I think the same metaphor or analogy could be drawn for China. China as an economy, as a people, as a country has undergone huge and immense challenges and tribulations over the past 40 years. And it is not without its defects and flaws that still persist till this very day. And yet, what we have to recognize is that the changes and also the overarching trajectory that the country has taken over the past four decades, ever since Deng Xiaoping set the country on this irreversible path with the third plenum and the Sanzhong Xuanhui [(三中全会) - Third Plenum of the Central Committee]in December 1978, that was really a turning point beyond which there was no going back for China.

And because there was no going back for China, I think it behoves Chinese leaders and administrators to reflect more candidly upon the challenges that they have had to overcome, the challenges and trials that still exist, as well as the predicaments that lie ahead. And whilst the mainland may not be the best platform for such reflections, in my view, Hong Kong is a platform that can serve that role and thus enhance all the conversations in a track two or track 1.5 setting that you might not be able to see or they might not be able to carry out in a mainland are certainly ones that could take place under the initiative of both Chinese officials and their counterparts abroad domestically right here in Hong Kong.

So these are the three functions I think Hong Kong could serve.

Keith 14:46

Cultural Identity in Hong Kong

The three functions, the way I was thinking about it as you were talking was the sandbox, the stepping stone and the storyteller, right? And I think in Singapore, we see ourselves as a parallel of that function, maybe not for China, but for Southeast Asia. Possibly because this is where the different streams of civilizations converge. Your former ambassador to Germany and also Attorney General Walter Woon penned a very interesting piece where he described Singapore as a neutral interpreter between the US and China.

Brian Wong 14:46

So certainly you think, not only can you play that role, Keith, in relation to ASEAN as a storyteller, but there's also immense value in Singapore's strategic balancing and nuanced approach to both the US and China. That probably mirrors a lot of what the elite and also prominent stakeholders in other parts of ASEAN and beyond are thinking, right? Where they don't want to explicitly choose sides. They don't want to take the side of one power over the other. But all of these individuals, including of course, the Singaporean leadership, are unreservedly advocates of peace because they know very well that if there's a disruption to regional peace and stability, whether it be through overt military interference or covert interference through other forms of infiltration and espionage, any and all actions of such sort would only undermine the ASEAN agency and thus unity of this regional body.

Keith 17:36

Contra-Western Perspectives on Hong Kong's Status

I want to circle back to something that you pointed out earlier, which was Hong Kong as the Monkey King in the Wu Zhi Shan. [(五指山)Five-finger Mountain (from Journey to the West)]

I read about Margaret Thatcher in her later years. She confessed that she wished that Hong Kong would be under Britain's rule forever and that she wished that Hong Kong could be independent. And I think in a similar sense, there is a cultural zeitgeist in the West who kind of see Hong Kong as a failed experiment, you will. Many of them wish that Hong Kong was freer or in some extreme cases, independent. What do you think drives this thinking?

Brian Wong 17:36

The key here is that political imaginaries and political narratives are often weapons and tools, sometimes intentionally devised to achieve very specific ulterior motives, sometimes subconsciously adopted and performed for the sake of conformity, but also for the sake of finding answers to complex questions where the answerer doesn't really want to understand the full picture. So you jump to shortcuts and heuristics.

This is a not so roundabout way of saying what I think has long underpinned the ethos of how some folks in the West see Hong Kong, that they see it as essentially a colonial legacy, as a reminder of the responsibilities and the obligations of the colonial masters towards their former colonies. And I would posit that this mindset is not driven out of malice. It's not even driven out of a sense of superiority or so-called white supremacy. I'm inclined to think that the concern exhibited by many in the West for Hong Kong is genuinely motivated by goodwill. That they care for what in their view is a former colony to which the colonial masters has not necessarily made up their end of the bargain. And thus, there's this renewed pursuit of responsibility, dischargement, and also attempting to do what's right and what's just for the people of Hong Kong.

I'm inclined to think that most of the public in the West are not cynical Machiavellians who are treating Hong Kong as what some politicians say in DC or even in London are, i.e. as a battering ram with which they could score brownie points against China. But having said all of that, what I would like these individuals to know and what I've constantly sought to emphasize is this. Hong Kong today, de jure and de facto is a part of China. Symbolically and in terms of the normative discourses surrounding its status, as some in China would insist, Hong Kong has always been de jure, a part of China. And despite its being de facto, at one point colonized by the Brits.

And that is a view that's held by some in China and also their sympathizers. I'm not going to comment necessarily on that view, but I would just say after 1997, Hong Kong is both de jure and de facto part of China. So-called independence, right? And I'm saying this because I want to just emphasize or highlight how ambiguous this word means. It's unclear what independence actually entails. Some folks would say they crave more autonomy for Hong Kong. That's not independence.

Autonomy is perfectly and well enshrined under the Basic Law. It is a part of the provisions of the Basic Law that Hong Kong should be governed with high degree of autonomy. That is not independence. And then others that say, well, we want an independent Hong Kong that is not China. But then it's also unclear in that regard, what they intend for Hong Kong's relationship with China to look like in that hypothetical. Is it a relationship between Singapore or akin to the relationship between Singapore and Malaysia? Is it akin to a relationship between Canada and the UK, who knows? Unclear.

But instead, what we've seen thus with this term is that independence is bandied around as a rallying cry, almost as a metonymy. As a substitute, as a code word for a bunch of often incoherent and ill-fleshed out thoughts and wants in relation to Hong Kong's future. So all of this is to say I do not see independence as A, legal, B, viable or C, desirable for the city of Hong Kong. But I also don't think that for a majority of folks who are using this term in their petitions and vocal demands for redressing of the grievances, I don't think they were genuinely intending to advocate bona fide independence.

Many of them had merely wanted a preservation of autonomy, had sought to seek better improvements and enhancements of the livelihoods and life chances within given institutional frameworks and wanting an accountable government and a responsive government in Hong Kong that could take into consideration the needs and the demands of the people. And in all honesty, if independence were something that he associated these qualities with, then I would say I can understand why there's this vociferous chorus of voices, especially on a local level, advocating this clearly unrealistic and impracticable ideal.

And yet at the same time, as I've written repeatedly over the past six to seven years, the moment independence is invoked as a term, whether it be by sympathetic folks abroad or by local activists and political agents, that is when the red line, the absolute fundamental red line of China is crossed. And this is a purely sort of realism informed take, right? This is also what Ambassador Bill Harikasakan said to me when I interviewed him in Oxford around five years ago or four and a half years ago at New College, where any and all attempt in the eyes of Beijing to subvert its territorial sovereignty would only be met with one singular and predictable response. And that is securitization and entrenchment, the digging in of the heels of positions.

Right, once the status of Hong Kong and China's sovereign claim over it were contested, there was no going back. That was something that I had hoped more folks in Hong Kong would realise when the 19 protests took place. Yes, you're perfectly entitled, and it's perfectly within your rights as a citizen, to complain about ineffectual governance, to socioeconomic inequalities, rampant injustices when it comes to access and affordability of housing, and also, of course, the cultural dissimilarities and incompatibilities between the mainland and Hong Kong. There was a long list of grievances I can rattle off right now with you that fueled the sort of ground sentiments in Hong Kong in a run-up to 19. And yet none of these demands, in my humble opinion, could ever have been met by a movement that clearly didn't understand China, that didn't understand the CPC and how the CPC would very predictably react to the events unfolding in the city.

Keith 23:34

The Future of Hong Kong's Identity

Once again as an observer in 2019, I realized that in Hong Kong, you had a very strong state capacity, but there wasn't a strong hardware in a sense. You had a very efficient bureaucracy, you had a very good system of running the region. So the special administrative region, you really have that special administration. Its integration to the greater China wasn't as much. You didn't feel that the Hong Kongers truly felt Chinese, they felt different.

Which was something that I think in Singapore's experience, I think that's where it was different because in Singapore, I think the moment we were cleaved off from Malaysia, there was a lot of intention in building up the hardware. Like you're from different parts of the world, but now you're a Singaporean. What does it mean to be Singaporean? So that's a question that has been consistently asked. Five years on, I wanted to ask you, do you think Hong Kong today culturally now better identifies with China? Are the Hong Kong people more inclined to see themselves as Chinese?

Brian Wong 23:34

I would say the following. Yes, there's a willingness to identify themselves as culturally Chinese, perhaps, and that is a sort of bottom line has always been there. Even prior to 2020, Hong Kongers had not shied away from admitting that they were culturally Chinese. But the key crux, of course, remains, which is, do they see themselves as politically Chinese citizens? And what was their relationship with the ruling regime in Beijing?

And on that front, I would say I don't detect any palpable increase or decrease in a sense of identification and affinity with a political regime amongst many of the old guard, which is to say the residents of Hong Kong that been here for several generations. You've got to understand that these folks have a very complex relationship with Beijing, simply in virtue of the fact that many of these individuals are descendants from folks who'd fled China during the unrest with regards to the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the long list of periods of turbulence and tumultuousness in contemporary Chinese history.

When it comes to immigrants that coming in, folks were coming to Hong Kong and have migrated to Hong Kong thanks to Talent Pass scheme or other pro-immigration schemes over recent years. I definitely say that for mainland folks coming through to Hong Kong, they would, of course, by definition, identify themselves as political citizens and subjects of the Chinese state rather voluntarily and strongly.

But it would also do so as concurrently believing that Hong Kong is special. And that's the reason why they've applied to live or to work in Hong Kong, because they see Hong Kong as unique. And from speaking with many of my students who are born in the mainland, from the mainland, families in the mainland, but they come to study and work here in Hong Kong, and they're very upfront about why they're here. They say it's because Hong Kong is much more international, much more global, much more westernized, and they like it here in Hong Kong.

So even whilst there remains this pretty strong sense of political affinity with the system and the political institutions of China amongst this new batch of immigrants. I would also say that they have taken, many of them have taken a liking and also predisposition to, if not having already cultivated this leaning and inclination in a direction of Hong Kong's unique culture and openness.

And then of course, the final subset in this demographic distribution are migrants from beyond Hong Kong, from outside China, and beyond China as whole. And we've seen an increase in immigration from Southeast Asia and also to a lesser extent, the Gulf and also parts of Europe over the past few years. And of course, for these individuals, I don't think they would see themselves as ethnically Chinese or culturally Chinese.

Even though, for Chinese diaspora or Chinese ethnic Chinese migrants and citizens overseas who have relocated to Hong Kong, they might see themselves as ethnically Chinese and partially culturally Chinese, but many of them don't see themselves as either ethnically Chinese or culturally Chinese. And indeed, they certainly wouldn't see themselves as they aren't Chinese citizens as politically Chinese citizens.

And yet this is where the beauty of Hong Kong comes in, because even though these folks may not identify themselves with China in any meaningful dimension, they could still identify themselves strongly with Hong Kong. And that's because Hong Kong is amongst the very few jurisdictions in the world where you can vote even if you're not a citizen. As long as you are a PR, then you're eligible to participate in a local elections. Now that is extremely rare, because this basically means that you could also be, in theory, a Canadian citizen or a British citizen and cast a vote in Hong Kong's elections, so long as you have the PR card.

I certainly hope that this system would continue into the future though, because this is part of, once again, the quasi-liminality of Hong Kong, the fact that we exist outside and beyond the usual conventions and norms governing jurisdictional authority and also political participation across most sovereign states. So I hope that answered your question. It's a very complex question to unpack though.

What does it mean to be Chinese, right? And Professor Wang Geng-Woo, for instance, would criticize, and he has criticized very openly in the past the usage of the term diaspora, because it suggests that we're talking about an extension of the original people, whereas frankly, I'd say Malaysian Chinese, Singaporean Chinese, they're Malaysians, they're Singaporeans, respectively, right? They're not Chinese.

Maybe they have Chinese ethnicity, but it would be delusional for any political actor, whether it be a sovereign state or individual actors on their own right, to think and to portray these individuals as politically Chinese or even a part of the Chinese state sort of international community. That's a very dangerous and perilous path to go down. The idea that you can be subsumed into this overarching amorphous collective simply in virtue of the genetics or the genetic composition that you have. I find that a very jarring thought.

Keith 32:31

The Ethnic Identity Crisis in America

And I think, for example, you saw that a lot more during Trump administration when there was a lot of rhetoric around and there was a lot more doubt cast on them as opposed to maybe the other immigrants.

Brian Wong 32:31

I genuinely fear the implications of a Trump return for many ethnic Chinese denizens in America, including longstanding proud American citizens who are not politically identifying themselves as politically Chinese or culturally Chinese. Maybe they are ethnically Chinese, but these ABCs, second gen, third gen, fourth gen immigrants are more likely than not to see themselves as bona fide Americans and yet the sort of ethnic essentialization adopted by certain factions and parts of Trump's incoming administration, as with those during his first administration, these are the individuals that are basically transforming America into an ethnically centered nation as opposed to a civically oriented nation.

And part of America's longstanding appeal as a lighthouse, as a city upon a hill, the Shining City, mind you, is that it is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society that's willing to accommodate folks from all corners of the world so long as they agree with and concur with the basic core tenets of American values. Now, I'm not saying that this vision, this almost Pollyannish vision, has always been fulfilled in every single way by the American society in the political system, but at the very least, throughout, I would say, the second half of the 20th century, America had by and large managed to wean itself and also rid itself of the toxic afrimony of McCarthyism and also prior to that the sort of yellow peril narratives and that it is in a final few decades of America that there was a genuine sense that you could be an American even if you're born in Haiti, you're born in Cuba, born in China, it doesn't matter, you can be an American.

That sense of hope and inclusivity I fear has been all but effectively permanently dashed and undermined by the past 10 years of political developments on American soil and territory. And this is not to say that America is a racist country or that it is any more or less racist than other countries with a dominant or nominally plural, in other words, most plural ethnicity, but it is to say that America needs to do some serious soul searching today.

But on a different note, whilst on one hand, of course, we've seen the perils of weaponization of identities by state authorities to target perceived opposition or geopolitical rivals, I'd also like to bring in the other side of the equation, which is that we need to be mindful of, regardless of whether it's China or European countries or America, we need to be mindful of attempts to leverage overseas migrant communities as tools of influence and also interference with the politics of the countries in which these communities are situated.

And I travel quite extensively through Southeast Asia as an educator and as a speaker and also as an analyst. And what I often hear from my interlocutors is that whilst they welcome Chinese investments and also financial participation and involvement in the development, that's all fair and square, what almost everyone is unreservedly concerned by amongst this business community and investment community I speak with is undue and overt interference, right? Using essentially ethnic Chinese residents as proxies, as agents of change.

You know, it's not to say that you can't be supportive and affirmative of China whilst being a Singaporean or an Indonesian or a Thai citizen. That's perfectly fine. But I do think that when there's a perception that individuals of a certain ethnicity might be co-opted and employed to accomplish geopolitical objectives on behalf of a foreign state, this perception alone is worrying. And indeed, the enactment of such actions, the actual manifestation of such activities are even more nefarious.

And we must guard against those too, because as you said, Keith, the actions of a few who decidedly break laws could well end up tarnishing the reputation of the many. And that is the unfortunate and yet also inevitable nature of what I call the perceptual battle and the perception battle in relation to international politics.

Keith 36:36

Chinese Response to Trump

We have Trump coming to the office in 2025. It's clear what his playbook is going to be. It's going to be a lot more tariffs, a lot of attempts at reshoring, a lot of attempts at trying to whack China in that sense. What should China's response be?

Brian Wong 36:36

I penned a piece for the South China Morning Post around a month ago saying, when they go low, we go high. And that's to say, when we look at Trump's foreign policy and its likely trajectory or constitution, it is highly likely that he'd be more transactional than not just Biden, also than he was in the first term. It would be driven by a desire to shore up short term and near term American economic, financial and political interests. It would also be propelled by a desire to basically settle domestic grievances and to settle the sort of score on a domestic front by Trump and his team or his gang, and thus domestic politics would be the priority and the focal driving point of Trump's foreign policy.

What does that mean at large? It means that we should expect a more protectionist, a more isolationist America that is nevertheless keener to weaponize trade flows, economic assets, financial institutions and structures to targetedly attack and undermine what America perceives to be its primary strategic rival, at least under Trump's leadership. And that is not Russia. Russia, in the eyes of America, is an annoyance, is a nuisance, but is not the primary rival and threat to American hegemony and dominance.

The chief threat, quote unquote, in the eyes of the American establishment, especially the sort of small-gas-board amalgamation of the neocons of quasi-isolationists and cynical realists surrounding Trump, the chief rival that they have in mind is, of course, China. And that is why Beijing, if I were in Beijing, I'd prepare and brace for abrupt, sudden and deeply un-conducive raising of barriers of trade by American counterparts.

I'd also expect a weaponization of everything ranging from military to military talks and defense to defense communications through to AI and science and tech collaboration, the weaponization of each and every portion and part of this sort of zone of convergence and overlapping interest between China and America by Washington to extract further concessions from China. So what should Beijing do? Three observations.

Firstly, I reckon it's imperative for China to recognize that economically, structurally that is, economically China remains an incredibly export dependent economy. And that is especially the case if you look at these sort of macro economic orientation of this current leadership towards promoting the sort of new three things, right? What are these three things? Batteries, lithium batteries, solar panels, and also electric vehicles. It's all fair and square and lovely to produce these super good and super cheap products for consumption. But a challenge kicks in when there's insufficient domestic consumption.

And until China can really get its domestic consumption rates up from its rather low standards, as they stand in comparison with the world average, China would remain an incredibly export-dependent economy for the next two to three years. And who's going to buy these EVs? Who's going to buy these solar panels or these advanced manufacturing goods? It's not going to be countries with limited purchasing power and even more limited consumption propensities with immature middle classes, it's instead going to be countries in the global north.

So the harsh reality that China needs to recognize is that the global north, despite all the rhetoric that Beijing's advanced concerning the global south, the global north remains incredibly powerful. It might be divided. It might be unstable. It might be arrogant. But the global north is here, like it or not. And as such, whilst America raises the barriers to trade, it is all the more important for Beijing to ensure that it retains market access to other developed economies, including European economies, Northeast Asian economies in Japan and South Korea, and also, of course, parts of the Anglo-American bloc, whether it be Canada or Australia or even the UK, to potentially, at the very least, potentially provide them with a failsafe if they struggle to or fail to prop up domestic consumption in a near to short term.

So that's the first piece of advice I'd give, which is that China needs to ensure that it addresses the concerns of European manufacturers, addresses the worries of the British economic establishment in relation to trading with China, and also actively court South Korea and Japan in shoring up the openness of these consumer markets so that all of these fantastically produced goods, which I agree, they're amazing, they're incredible, but at the very least, there's some place for them to go.

Because otherwise, it doesn't matter how many EVs you make per minute, per second, and it might be the best EVs across the world. But if geopolitics and domestic politics of these other economies interfere with the importing of these goods, then China's going to be in deep, deep trouble. That's point number one.

Point number two, China should also recognize that the global South is certainly ascendant, and that this heterogeneous entity, or this heterogeneous, loosely defined collective of countries with competing interests, and competing values is a group of countries that want and crave their own strategic autonomy and agency to be respected and acknowledged. And why do I emphasize strategic autonomy and agency? It's because these are the terms that China has long emphasized that it desires too on a world stage.

If you look at Premier Zhou Enlai's foreign policy and the fact that China was a founding member of non-alignment or non-alignment movement, way back in a Bandung conference, where the NAM was cemented, all the way through to Deng Xiaoping's emphasis upon a pragmatic foreign policy, where China would prioritize economic growth and development. This, I would say, is a mindset and logic that's mirrored by many up and coming burgeoning economies with growing strategic influence.

When I spoke with Babak Hashim Yohada Kusuma, who's a brother of President Proboa, around seven months ago, he said to me that the priority for his brother was twofold. One, to redress inequality, and two, to ensure that Indonesia could grow comprehensively across the board as a strategic player in Asia, to be friends with everyone, right? One enemy is an enemy too many, so to speak.

And that is a sign that Indonesia is not only seeking to become a more economically developed and advanced country per se, but also hoping to build up its strategic autonomy on a world stage by emphasizing that it is not subservient or subordinate to any other sovereign state. As the fourth most populous nation in the world and the largest ASEAN economy, it's fully within Indonesia's rights to be an autonomous power and for its government to fend for its own people and not work on behalf of other foreign powers.

Similarly, I had a pleasure of welcoming a delegation from Mexico recently to Hong Kong. And the Mexican official with whom I conversed, I can't name him here, essentially affirmed Mexico's commitment to having and maximizing its autonomy in an era of growing protectionism from America, not so much by taking sides in a Sino-American or Sino-European tension or relationship, but by courting both powers to its west via positioning itself as a Pacific power and also powers to its east, i.e. European the European Union, also the African Union, by actively leveraging the Atlantic and also Pacific facing parts of Mexico respectively, and accomplishing the said objectives here.

So countries like Mexico, Indonesia, Tokyo, and even Australia, I'm really naming the members of MIKTA here, if you've noticed a trend here. These are important pivot states whose ability to offer and also withhold strategic resources grants them significant leverage in relation to great powers and also regionally dominant powers. And in my view, China needs to recognize these incentives and disparate motivations that guide these countries and guide the entrepreneurs and businesses and enterprises in them and work in tandem with them.

Treat them as partners. Don't treat them as dumping grounds for goods. Don't treat them as places where Chinese companies come in, build their own factories, have very insular tech environment where essentially the management and also all the technically advanced personnel are sourced from China. And you have the local workers perform the sort of menial labor and the more de-skilled or low skilled jobs. I don't think that's a sustainable mode of operandi. In fact, that's the MO that America has adopted for many years in Africa and also Latin America. Look at what it's gotten America, a lot of resentment on the ground. People saying, all we get from the Americans is lectures after lectures. And they're not wrong.

You know, there's a lot of patronizing, paternalistic narratives that are being promulgated by representatives and extensions of the American state. But China would do better by learning from the mistakes of America and thinking about the optics and the perceptions of its actions on the ground from the populations that it's interacting with, including the reservations of those in the northern states of Malaysia over Chinese investments. Or indeed, residents in Sabah and Sarawak who are concerned about essentially what a Chinese investment means for the plantations and also the renewable transition on the ground in these regions.

I'm not here to advocate at all the narrative that Chinese investments or Chinese presence overseas is apparently something we should worry about. I don't think so. I don't think there's much to worry about fundamentally in relation to the huge developmental dividends and gains that countries would benefit from having Chinese presence in promulgating and stimulating. And yet what I am concerned about is if Beijing thinks that economic development is sufficient to win over hearts and minds, I'm afraid I disagree with that premise. I think more needs to be done to assuage the fears and anxieties, could be rational, could be irrational, but they're certainly extent of people on the ground in reaction to Chinese presence in their economies and countries.

And a final point to note, and a final prong here, is that I think China genuinely needs to uplift and bolster its soft power and ability to reach out to populations and demographics across both the global north and the south. And that is also why I'm a firm believer in subnational engagement. Around one year ago, Hong Kong U, the University of Hong Kong, where I work, welcomed Governor Gavin Newsom from California for a visit where he showed up and delivered a very impressive set of remarks on climate change and the need for cooperation between China and America in tackling climate change.

At that, or during that particular trip, Governor Newsom also announced that California would be working hand in hand with the Greater Bay Area in Guangdong province, and the Californian Bay Area, Greater Bay Area in Guangdong in pioneering climate change oriented, green initiatives and renewable initiatives that are aimed at bolstering the resilience of both regions in the face of climate change and rising sea levels and extreme weather and all of the instilling deleterious consequences.

This is to me testament to the importance of sub-national engagement that even whilst relations between the two central governments, Beijing and Washington, would remain incredibly strained for the foreseeable future, not just for the next four years, but would say for the next 10 to 15 years. But hey, at the end of the day, we've still got to talk. The two largest and most important economies and countries in the world still have to talk. The two great powers, one a superpower, the other a regionally prominent power, with potential eventually of achieving superpower status, although I'm a bit skeptical on that front.

These two powers have to engage in meaningful and considerate collaboration on issues that affect not just them, but the entirety of the planet, climate change, rise of artificial intelligence, public health crises and pandemics, food shortages and agricultural crises, denuclearization, containing geopolitical strife and preventing serious kinetic conflict. I mean, these are all prerogatives and also imperatives that both sides, leaderships and also those close to them, must indeed step up to fulfilling and undertaking.

And that is why I personally think even when America, the American people have chosen Donald Trump, and even when you might say they have gone low, even though I don't want to sort of disparage democratic decisions as such, China must take the high road and must open itself up unilaterally, asymmetrically, in a way that opens up even against the tides of surging protectionism and insularity coming from the other side, of opening up its market institutions and incorporating more, not less, market dynamism and entrepreneurial spirit and re-injecting that into not just its private sector, but also the way its public sector operates. That to me is key and integral to how China can weather the storms ahead.

Keith 50:58

Understanding Chinese Bureaucracy

China benefited a lot from globalization in the sense that what you've outlined, especially in your second point about how it has enabled technology transfer from the more advanced economies into China as a result of policy is something they can empathize with developing economies because they went through that development trajectory for the past forty years. Even today, they are still going through that. You're arguing for them to be more empathetic. Are they doing that sufficiently now? Is there greater room for improvement?

Brian Wong 50:58

It remains a work in progress. And it's understandable. Because what you've got to understand about China is that it is a huge bureaucracy. You get all of these descriptions of China where some say it's a dictatorship, some say it's a ruthlessly authoritarian, but at the end of day, it is a sprawling, gigantic bureaucracy.

And there are three features of a bureaucratic system of governance we have to remember. The first is that promotions and demotions are very often based on far more mundane reasons and factors than just personal loyalty or which faction you belong to. 90% of promotions and demotions and appointments in China, and by that I'm referring to these decisions that are undertaken on a local level, very local and rural level, or then in the municipal level, the provincial level. I mean, these appointments are not usually undertaken with political ideology or factionalist considerations in mind. They're instead made on the basis of, are you doing your job? Are you getting your job done? Are you able to meet the KPIs as a bureaucrat?

And thus, the first rule when it comes to understanding China is that really it's more mundane and more idiosyncratic than all these spooky speculators like to have you think or believe, right? When they say it's a very opaque and loyalty-based, patronage-based system. It ain't that simple. And even when it comes to patronage, local factions or provincial factions and also national level factions, these are factions that often come from or share, they have very disparate and divergent interests. But one thing they would agree upon is that when it comes to the promotion up to a certain point within the hierarchy, the key priority and the overarching paradigm is one that is performance based. So that's the first point that we should note.

The second point about the Chinese bureaucracy though is that it is also very closed off. And that's because the CPC as a Marxist-Leninist party prioritizes and rewards hugely loyalty. It rewards the ability to be disciplined on a part of officials, especially under the current leader who has made it a point of his own personal platform to basically crack down on corruption, deviations from the party line in subordination within a party. And you can interpret these changes, can comment on these changes, both the positives and negatives, make it whatever you will.

But what's undeniable is that there's been more centralization amongst the upper elite and the sort of provincial level up cadres of the party, but also a heightened emphasis upon bureaucratic institutions and a parodist in decision making lower down in the hierarchy. And across the board, what we've seen here is a closure or tightening upon the interactions between bureaucrats and the private sector, which had been rampant up until the early 2010s, with this constantly spinning revolving door and also graft and corruption between officials and the private sector in a run up to the first few years of the 2010s, really.

And yet that has changed drastically over the past 10 to 12 years under the incumbent leader. So rightly or wrongly, we've seen essentially closing up of the bureaucracy, greater distance between them and the economic elite or financial elite, both inside and also outside China. And some would say that this has in fact increased or bolstered the party's popularity amongst the grassroots, especially in the first sort of in the latter half of the 2010s, so to speak, right? That has been instrumental in repairing the trust that had been frayed by several decades worth of reform and opening up associated side effects and counterproductive effects and unintended consequences as well.

So that's the second problem I want to highlight here, which is that there's a certain level of distance between the bureaucrats in the system and the people or rather the elite, the wealthier financially and internationally plugged in elite of the country, that there's a growing distance and also firewalling there. And by extension to this firewall also exists in relation to the CPC and the international community as a whole, including political and economic elite in other countries.

If we're not talking about diplomats in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the International Liaison Department of the CPC, or indeed those who are some parts of the Foreign Affairs Office and by extension, United Front organizations, unless you're a bureaucrat in any of these organs, you're unlikely to have much exposure to overseas guests and interlocutors and counterparts. And that's because such interactions are frowned upon and seen as potentially compromising to the intactness and also stability of the party. So that's the second point that we need to bear in mind.

Finally, then, on China as a bureaucracy and what this implies, the fact of the matter is when you have 96, 97 million party members and a huge bureaucracy comprising several millions of people, to say the least, and we're not even talking about the extension or the satellite organizations there. The fact of the matter is individual leadership will matter when it comes to the extent to which one is open to or not open to engagement with foreign capital and investments. And I'm talking about here what's going on on a local level.

You've interviewed Jinka you recently, she wrote of the mayor economy, and I've actually challenged her and said it should be called the party secretary economy or the city party secretary economy. And that's to say that despite everything I've said about a closure of the system and a KPI centered in a mundanity of the promotional and demotional metrics, what we ultimately should recognize is that in a sprawling bureaucracy, individual officials discretion, especially at the mid levels and also upper middle levels, have a huge amount of impact on how much bandwidth they have in courting and how capable they are in courting and engaging foreign investments and capital going into China.

Li Qiang, when he was serving as the party secretary of Shanghai, made it a point back then when he was heading Shanghai to actively reach out to Tesla and to ensure that Tesla could find a home in Shanghai with its factory.

Or, alternatively, the current party secretary of Guangdong, Huang Kunming, used to be the head of propaganda and publicity for the party, but he's now running this huge, sprawling, highly populous province in Guangdong. And he's used his position to receive many high-level delegations of prospective investors, manufacturers, and also visitors from Europe with the aim of courting them and encouraging them to be present on the ground to set up shop and to pour FDI into Guangdong.

Yin Li, again, the current party secretary of Beijing is someone who has extensive experience as with his Shanghai counterpart, Chen Jining, working overseas and studying overseas. Both Yin Li and Chen Jining have exposure, immense exposure to Western academia, and they understand very well how research and academic inquiry works in the UK and the US respectively. The UK for Chen Jining, because he was at Imperial, and Yin Li, of course, had been in America and spent a fair amount of time dealing with American counterparts and interlocutors.

So when you look at the upper middle echelons of the party, it is not the case that these individuals are clueless or parochial or that they are closed off or insulated from the rest of the world. But it's merely that, of course, they have to engage in a way that's strategic, in a way that maximizes their own KPIs in accordance with the first point, whilst complying with the general concerns over excessive engagement with international counterparts under the second-prong highlight to just say.

So you might think that one, two, three are tad contradictory. They are conflicting, but they're not contradictory, right? The fact that some officials are more open-minded and proactive doesn't mean that the system as a whole is not pro-insularity, especially over more recent years. And yet, at the same time, we need to bear in mind that when it comes to the most junior rank and file of the party all the way up until the mid levels of the party hierarchy and echelon. You know, it is neither political loyalty nor ruthlessness as is often declared by observers of China or indeed, these conspiratorial factionalist interpretations that accounts for how these decisions are made.

So all in all, I hope that explained your question concerning or answered your question rather concerning whether or not the Chinese system understands how the world sees it. There's no need on a part of a junior official to think about this question. There's a general pressure to not think about these questions at the mid-levels. And yet once you get to the more senior and also, of course, upper middle parts of the party hierarchy, international exposure and liaison under controlled conditions can in fact count favorably in favor of one's performance and also credentials in the eyes of very senior leaders, so to speak.

Keith 01:00:54

Hong Kong's Role in China's Geopolitical Strategy

So in this great game of geopolitics, where does Hong Kong fit in here?

Brian Wong 01:00:54

I think Hong Kong needs to recognize that the good old days of it being this passive beneficiary from Sino-American rapprochement after 1972 Nixon's visit to China and after the shadow communique of 1979, the good old days are gone. America or at the very least the American government and political establishment elite and also portions of the American economic elite would no longer see Hong Kong as different from the mainland. In the eyes of many in America, they would say Hong Kong is really just a part of one system within one country. That is a narrative that is believed and subscribed to and promulgated by many in America today. And I think it's high time that Hong Kong needs to wake up and realize that gone are the days when it could passively ride on China and the US getting along easily and comfortably and benefiting from both sides as such.

This does not, however, mean that Hong Kong is over. As I've again and again, time and time again, affirmed and repeatedly emphasised, Hong Kong needs to look towards the rest of the world beyond America. In the global north, Hong Kong enjoys much stronger ties, culturally, in terms of people to be with exchanges, even financially and economically, with Europe, with Japan and South Korea, and also with the non-American members of this Anglo-American axis of the UK, of course, and New Zealand, Australia, and so forth.

Hong Kong has enjoyed much deeper and firmer ties with these economies that date back far longer than the ties between the contemporary PRC and these economies. What does that mean? That means Hong Kong needs to proactively shore up the ties between itself and these economies, and also by extension, China and these countries' connections and relations, so to speak. But this behoves Hong Kong to do one very important thing. Distinguish and differentiate itself from the mainland. Embrace the two systems. Don't run away. Embrace and harness the differences that render Hong Kong legally unique, financially special, and institutionally disparate and distinguishable from the mainland. Because if these distinctions are eroded, if we lose these distinctions, then what would give all of these longstanding friends of Hong Kong any confidence and willingness to do particular business with Hong Kong and Hong Kong businessmen, enterprises and investors?

So what we need to do going forward is to extol the virtues of the two systems and to emphasize the fact that Hong Kong is not the mainland in relation to the global north. Secondly, for countries that are rapidly growing at what I call the ascendant global north, for developing countries are rapidly growing, whether it be Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam in Southeast Asia, alternatively Saudi Arabia and UAE in the Middle East, although it's disputable as to where not they are actually even members of the global South. But anyway, the point is to be taken that these are very promising emerging markets.

And then you look at Latin America, Brazil, Argentina. These are all economies where I think Hong Kong has traditionally, I wouldn't say neglected, but certainly sort of downplayed the importance of, because Hong Kong would say, well, yes, Southeast Asia, we like Singapore because we think Singapore is very similar. We like Thailand because we go to Thailand for holidays. But beyond that, who cares? That's the mindset that plagued or inflicted and captured many amongst Hong Kong's elite in the past.

That is a dream. That is a delusion from which I posit we need to wake up from urgently. Southeast Asia is a region of 670 million people with a median age of 30.2, packed and rich with natural resources, critical raw materials, occupying a very strategically important position in the grand geopolitical game that we see today. Southeast Asia is not a region that should be neglected. It is a region to be studied, respected, and engaged with. Hong Kong needs to do that way more proactively. We need to emphasize and highlight fundamentally the value that we can add and contribute towards our Southeast Asian counterparts and also partners.

Concurrently, in relation to the Gulf, Latin America, Central Asia and Africa by select economies within Africa, Hong Kong needs to build up its expertise because I don't think we've got the right people with the right mindset, skill sets, connections and even language skills to navigate with ease these sprawling and disparate economies. And this is where Hong Kong really needs to learn from Singapore.

You know, whenever I rock up to international conferences, or indeed many of my friends would tell me at international conferences of all sorts, maritime law, climate change, COP29, blockchain and digital technologies, geopolitics and international relations, would always see Singapore represented there by eloquent, well-spoken and at the least confident speakers who can articulate the Singaporean position, but also play a role in talking about the issues from a general perspective, not so much just from a Singapore only or Singapore centric perspective, so to speak.

We rarely see Hong Kong representatives at the same conferences and summits. We just don't see folks from Hong Kong who are willing to comfortably talk about geopolitics, discuss climate financing and the importance of promulgating a more equitable global green finance framework. Or indeed, folks who can talk about the politics of blockchain. We don't have the depth and the intellectual ambition and the willingness and determination of our Singaporean counterparts, like you guys, to talk about these issues confidently and eloquently.

And what is the net implication of this? Hong Kong does get sidelined internationally. Forgotten, erased, swept aside, shoved aside. And that's why we're told we're no longer that special, because we don't even try. How can we be special and respected if we don't even try? And so my view, and that is in relation to the sort of ascendant global south at large, is that Hong Kong needs to be humble, needs to learn and listen to and hear from these countries what they want from Hong Kong and also how Hong Kong could give and Hong Kong could offer more to them. And yet concurrently also transfer some of their best practices back to Hong Kong. We need to act like a sponge to absorb new knowledge, to break new grounds, so that eventually we can truly live autonomously, not just as a city in China, but also as a core nodule in an Asian century to quote Ambassador Kishore Mabani.

Singapore is clearly a chief beneficiary from and also core part of the Asian century, but there's no reason why Hong Kong with its access to the second largest economy in the world and also its unique positioning within that set economy, there's no reason why we shouldn't seek to punch above our weight and to be a part of that core, the core driving forward the Asian century.

So that to me is really the key upshots and suggestions I have for Hong Kong. And that is a city, this is a city, right? Hong Kong is a city in which I would remain firmly committed to teaching, researching and speaking for the foreseeable future because it's my home. I was born and raised there. I'm a through and through Hong Konger and I don't see any reason whatsoever as to why I should leave the city until the day comes.