Secretary for the Civil Service Patrick Nip Tak-kuen, who headed the Universal Community Testing Programme, announced after its conclusion that more than 1.78 million people participated in the 14-day operation and that the program had achieved the policy goal. He added that the total number of local residents who took nucleic acid tests for the COVID-19 pathogen or antibody reached 3 million after adding those conducted at government and private hospitals and certified clinics/labs.
However, Hong Kong has been reporting confirmed COVID-19 cases of unknown source since the Universal Community Testing Programme ended, even with all the testing that was done and with contact-tracing measures still in force. And there is no decision on when the SAR government will launch the phone-app-based Health Code program. In other words, Hong Kong has yet to establish an effective COVID-19 prevention mechanism of its own, which is why it cannot further relax local social-distancing rules or visitor entry restrictions at this moment. As a free port and open economy highly dependent on the service trade, Hong Kong won’t be able to revive its economy as long as the anti-pandemic restrictions remain. It could be headed for a deeper recession, or even an economic depression.
The top priority for Hong Kong right now is definitely getting COVID-19 under control as soon as possible because everything else depends on it going forward
The third wave of COVID-19 infections hit Hong Kong in July and forced the SAR government to tighten visitor screening, testing and mandatory quarantine, but the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in the June-August period held steady from the previous statistical period of May through July. Some observers thus suggest the government’s emergency efforts to preserve jobs under the pandemic have worked somehow, and the impact from the resurging pandemic on the economy is still manageable.
With a closer analysis of the situation, however, one should find behind the June-August unemployment rate of 6.1 percent, unchanged from the May-July period, 3,400 more people found jobs, about 5,800 more lost their jobs and around 13,000 were underemployed in June-August, compared with the May-July period. The underemployment rate rose to 3.8 percent in June-August period, a new high since the SARS epidemic in 2003. Even more alarming is that, in addition to worsening unemployment in consumer services and tourism-related industries, the unemployment rate in the 20-24 age group also rose from 16.2 percent in the May-July period to 18.5 percent in June through August. The 15-19-year-olds fared the worst job-wise, with 23.6 percent unemployed in the June-August period, up from 22.1 percent in May through July.
The “black revolution” has no doubt brought Hong Kong’s youth-related problems to the forefront of sociopolitical challenges, which have not subsided since the National Security Law drove the “black revolution” underground. Although economic recovery alone cannot fix all of Hong Kong’s youth-related issues, there is no doubt that things will get worse if the economic slump continues.
Hong Kong has long believed in a free-market mechanism, which allows far more small- and medium-size enterprises to flourish alongside the big ones; while the government typically keeps tabs on the economy through fiscal policy adjustments. Hong Kong may have a whopping financial reserve of over HK$1 trillion (US$129 billion), but nearly HK$300 billion of it has been drawn from the Anti-epidemic Fund to battle the first two waves of COVID-19, as well as for financial aid for local residents in the 2020-21 fiscal year. That is why the SAR government has earmarked only HK$24 billion for the Anti-epidemic Fund in the wake of the much worse third wave of infections, much less than in the first two waves. Of the HK$24 billion, HK$13 billion will be spent on preventing future resurgences of COVID-19, while just HK$4.5 billion will go to economic recovery efforts, mostly as consolation packages for the worst-hit sectors. For the same reason, financial assistance for underprivileged groups will be just HK$4.5 billion. And Finance Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has ruled out further plans to help employers keep workers.
The government made it clear, even though the financial reserve has been reduced from over HK$1 trillion to about HK$800 billion but remains healthy, it is definitely not up to further bleeding of the reserves at previous scales. From now on, Hong Kong must do its best in containing the spread of COVID-19 no matter how many more waves will come in the future so as to allow socioeconomic activities to return to basically normal, which requires an effective pandemic prevention mechanism in place as soon as possible.
The reality facing Hong Kong, call it gloom and doom if you will, is quite straightforward: The government and local society as a whole must do everything they can to stop the spread of COVID-19 in order to resume normal socioeconomic activities as soon as possible. Otherwise, Hong Kong may soon find itself struggling in a recession worse than any crisis in recent history. That will give rise to serious social unrest and political strife for sure. But the government cannot keep drawing from public coffers as it did to battle the first two waves of the pandemic, leaving Hong Kong society no choice but to commit to all effective measures necessary to arrest the pandemic.
The SAR government and the public to some extent must maintain an open mind to any successful story out there, such as Singapore’s experience in contact tracing and quarantine. This is not the time for self-indulgence in anything but particularly individual freedom by risking public health amid a deadly pandemic, not that it ever is, in a matter of speaking. The top priority for Hong Kong right now is definitely getting COVID-19 under control as soon as possible because everything else depends on it going forward.
The author is a senior research fellow of China Everbright Holdings.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
