Ivan Ko, founding chairman of the China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce’s Hong Kong and International Chapter, left Hong Kong following China’s imposition of the national security law, which massively curtailed freedom in the territory. Moving to the United Kingdom, he founded and later became the CEO of Victoria Harbor Group, an organization working to create a new city on former industrial land in northern England with the goal of preserving and developing Hong Kong’s freedom-loving culture away from the influence of the Chinese Communist Party. I recently spoke to him about the values that made Hong Kong successful, how it has changed since the security law, and his vision for the new city he’s developing.
Thomas Walker-Werth: Thanks for joining me, Ivan. Could you tell me why you left Hong Kong, came to Britain, and started planning a new city?
Ivan Ko: I was a real estate management executive in Hong Kong and mainland China for almost thirty years, but I left Hong Kong following the crackdown of the protests over the 2019 extradition bill. Even though the Hong Kong government withdrew the bill, the Chinese government imposed it on us through the draconian national security law. We lost our freedom to do many things, including to express ourselves, so I decided to leave Hong Kong. Fortunately, the day after the imposition of the national security law, the UK government announced that all Hong Kong citizens born before 1997 (the year of handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China) could get a visa to emigrate to the UK.
It was clear at the time that there would be tens of thousands of Hong Kongers coming to the UK. So, my partners and I started Victoria Harbor Group to develop a new city or new communities to cater to the needs of these immigrants while also attracting people from around the world, including local British people. That’s our dream, and that’s what we have been working on over the past three years.
Walker-Werth: What is it about Hong Kong that you’re trying to re-create?
Ko: We are not trying to replicate Hong Kong in the UK. Rather, we are trying to bring together Hong Kongers in the same city or community where we can synergize, help each other settle down to develop our careers or our businesses, and further develop our culture. If we don’t settle down well, or we can’t integrate or find jobs, or we always work menial minimum-wage jobs, then we can’t contribute to the UK economy and culture or achieve our potential. Hong Kong immigrants to the UK generally have a high level of education. Most of us are skilled workers or industry professionals, and we bring some capital with us. So, we would like to start our businesses and integrate well with local people, communities, and businesses to try to rebuild a strong community together.
To be clear, we are not trying to create some kind of ghetto or segregated city for only Hong Kong people. The first time I came to the UK, I lived in Shoreditch, which has a lot of Bangladeshi immigrants, and they are very friendly—we always say hello to each other. They maintain their culture, enjoy Bangladeshi food and merchandise, and so on. Since then, I have lived in some predominantly Jewish areas, and it’s a joy to see the Jews embrace their culture. They go to the synagogue, chat with each other on the street, go to parties or gatherings, teach Hebrew in their schools, and still integrate with British culture. That is the kind of thing that we are looking forward to: having a place where Hong Kong expats can live together with local people and people from around the world. We would like to have schools that teach Cantonese, lessons about Hong Kong’s history, the relationship between Hong Kong and the UK, and that kind of thing, to carry on and further develop our culture and help local people to understand it. And hopefully our culture will become part of UK culture.
Walker-Werth: Do you think there’s something about Hong Kong’s culture, as opposed to the cultures of China, Britain, or anywhere else, that made it such a good place for people to live and create businesses?
Ko: Well, Hong Kong culture is a blend between the East and the West. Hong Kong was a British colony for 156 years, so our culture leans toward the Western world. We like freedom, and we like democracy—not the “whole-process democracy” China claims to have but a system in which the people can choose and remove politicians democratically. And we also like the rule of law. Hong Kongers typically like to obey the law and observe the rules—whenever they see a queue, they will automatically line up, and they hate people who jump ahead—whereas the mainland Chinese are different because they went through the Cultural Revolution, which destroyed all kinds of ethical standards and rules. So, mainland Chinese people tend not to be as law-abiding as Hong Kong people, and when they are, it is less genuine.
Also, we treasure certain universal values, such as human rights and the idea that people are born equal and we should respect each other. The Chinese government, especially since Xi Jinping became president of the Chinese Communist Party, has openly declared that it disdains these values.
Another difference is corruption. In Hong Kong, the local British government set up the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in the 1970s, which alerted people to how much corruption there was. The ICAC helped create a clean, substantially corruption-free society that people came to value, so most Hong Kongers now despise corruption and are sensitive to things like conflict of interest. They don’t bribe government officials or the like, whereas China ranks very poorly globally for corruption. For them, it’s almost part of daily life.
Walker-Werth: Since China imposed the security law and exerted more influence in Hong Kong, is it still a place where people can pursue their dreams and create businesses? Or has it lost the qualities that made it such a good place to live?
Ko: It depends on what your dream is. If your dream is to attain political power and engage in corruption, Hong Kong may now be a good fit for you. But if your dream is to develop your thoughts—if you want to engage in free thinking, express yourself freely, or oppose Chinese government or policy—you can no longer do that. Since the national security law was imposed, more than ten thousand legislators, councillors, lawyers, even housewives and students have been arrested. Some of them have been detained for more than three years without trial—which shows how the common law has already been greatly disfigured in Hong Kong.
Now, the Hong Kong Legislative Council is in a rush to pass another piece of legislation—Article 23 of the Basic Law—which is even more draconian than the national security law. They want to increase the penalties for suspicion of “treason,” “sedition,” and all kinds of “threats to national security” by several times compared to the national security law. The scope of Article 23 is much wider. That’s why the European Union and Canada have objected to it.
Hong Kong is no longer free. People there no longer have freedom of speech or the press. There is no freedom to assemble or protest. The risk of conducting business and living in Hong Kong is increasing drastically; because I was fairly prominent in promoting my idea of building International Charter City, I was accused of being a separatist. All of this is badly affecting Hong Kong’s economy. Foreign investment has been declining over the past year and a half. And now, with the imminent passing of Article 23, the risk of doing business in Hong Kong is becoming too high for many foreigners. Businessmen who speak out against the government could lose access to the Hong Kong or Chinese markets, be fined, or even be extradited.
Walker-Werth: It’s an oft-repeated historic lesson: If you cut down on liberty, you start to lose the economic benefits as well. How do you plan to make your city in the UK a thriving place for entrepreneurship? What will be different about it compared to elsewhere in Britain or the world?
Ko: The UK already is a free and democratic country; it has good rule of law, and the legal system is reliable. We don’t want to reinvent anything in that regard. But we’d like the city to be inclusive and international, and we’d like to encourage and attract new businesses and young people. We want the city to be their home for several generations, so we would like to always keep it up to date.
If the area is big enough, we would like to enable innovative businesses to come and more freely experiment with the latest technologies, such as hydrogen power. We want to create a place where everyone can get involved in developing enterprises and new technologies. To that end, if possible, we’d like to obtain free port status. In England, we have about ten free port cities where goods can come in without being taxed, if they are not being consumed locally and are meant to be exported again. That would foster trade and generate wealth. People in the port could receive goods, reassemble or enhance them in some way, then re-export them. This kind of distribution center or e-commerce logistics operation can be a major part of a free port’s economy. If we have free port status, then we may have some manufacturing and industries related to new technologies, so that status would be a major benefit for us. Hong Kong was very strong in international trade, and that definitely was because Hong Kong was a free port and an entreport—it didn’t have any tax on imports.
Walker-Werth: I know that in mainland China, there are a number of “free cities” such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou that are somewhat independent for business purposes. Do you think there’s any prospect of such arrangements helping move China more toward freedom in the future?
Ko: No. Those are Special Economic Zones, whereas Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Zone, which means that, on paper at least, Hong Kong has a different political system. On the other hand, Shenzhen and other Special Economic Zones in mainland China merely have special economic policies so that they can be more innovative and lean more toward capitalism. China has been doing this since the Open Door Policy of the late 1970s. Since then, the West has been doing more trade with them, allowing China to join the World Trade Organization and trying to invite them to join the Western world. But these free-market elements haven’t changed China; the government and culture are still communist. In recent years it has become clear that Western engagement with China was a failure. The Chinese didn’t change their political system. They have become even more aggressive politically, not just toward the local citizens in China but also to those who have left China or are studying or working overseas. The Chinese government is trying to control them. At the same time, it is becoming very aggressive toward neighboring countries such as Taiwan. So, the Special Economic Zones didn’t change the political or social systems. They merely tried to bring some economic benefits to China.
Walker-Werth: What can people in Britain, America, and the West in general learn from the experience of Hong Kong and China to ensure that we have a brighter future and don’t go down the same path?
Ko: Hong Kong people have learned a lesson. Since 2019, many Hong Kongers have suddenly gotten involved in politics. Previously, we simply tried to make money—we like making money! But in 2019, when one or two million Hong Kong people took to the streets to protest, the government didn’t listen. They insisted on passing the extradition bill. But after several months of protests, unfortunately, we still got the national security law. Now, practically everyone in Hong Kong has become political. We think over and over again about our society, our freedom, our political structure, and the relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China.
I think what we learned from this is that freedom has to be protected all the time. When you are not protecting it, you will lose it. Hong Kong is a typical case where we enjoyed several decades of freedom from the 1960s up to maybe 2019. Now, we no longer have this freedom. Freedom needs to be protected—you cannot take it for granted. You can’t assume that because you had it yesterday, you will still have it tomorrow.
Walker-Werth: That’s a vital truth. Thank you so much.
Ko: Thank you.
Click To Tweet
You might also like
