Hong Kong: Follow the money

So in front of the world, China is breaking the agreement to let Hong Kong have some separation from the mainland.

The big push: They want to stifle dissent/whistleblowers. And of course, they will enable "extradition" of those "wanted" in the mainland for (thought) crimes...

 Because if they don't, the protests will spread (and note that the western press rarely covers mainland Chinese protests, which are alas common but small so far).

but this is about more than stifling freedom.

It must of course, be seen as part of the full court press by China against all of their neighbors: Threatening Taiwan, extending "borders" around their (illegal) man made islands in the West Philippine sea, threatening Malaysia and Viet nam by insisting the entire WPS/South China sea belongs to them, bullying Australia by banning imports from them because they dared to question the origin of the Batflu, and of course, bullying the WHO  to tell the world the bat flu wasn't contagious, and then preventing outside scientists from doing an outside independent investigation of the origin of the batflu. I'm sure I left some stuff out, but you get the picture.

What is not being discussed: How a Chinese takeover will affect the banks and financial markets of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is Chinese, but it has a 100 year history of British rule of law, meaning that the law, not the dictator/boss, makes the decisions.

So a lot of people invest their money in Hong Kong banks (including a lot of Chinese millionaires). China would like to take over the Hong Kong financial market/banks and merge them with Shanghai banks, eventually making Shanghai the money capital of Asia.

the problem? corruption.

 One argument that many of us made against including Chinese companies for investing our federal TSP funds was that you couldn't trust them. 

Everyone here in the Philippines is aware of Chinese corruption and dirty practices in pushing shoddy, substandard, and counterfeit goods. 

True, much of the west's medicine and goods are made in China, but often under the supervision and using the standards of the western or Japanese company who licenses the factory.

But do you trust Chinese brands? Here in the Philippines, poorer folks can't afford to buy the stuff from the US/Japan/Korea, so they buy goods and medicines made in China and take their chances it won't break right away, or in the case of medicine, that it will actually work.

The same rules apply to the banks and the stock market.

the take over plan that has been in place for over a decade is about taking over the independent Hong Kong financial institutions by merging them with Chinese run institutions.


  LINK.
JIM CRAMER newsletter from 2014:

 China Revives Neglected Plan to Link the Hong Kong and Shanghai Stock Markets

Regulators say mutual stock market access is coming to China and Hong Kong. They said the same thing in 2007.

ERIC JOHNSONAPR 11, 2014 6:00 AM EDT BEIJING (TheStreet) -- If China makes good on its latest market liberalization plan, Hong Kong investors next fall will be trading Shanghai-listed stock and vice versa -- more than seven years after regulators introduced a similar plan and promptly shelved it.

That's right: seven years. 

here is the important part that you will find out if you bother to read the entire article: unlike Hong Kong, there is no following the rules:

Financial regulators at agencies such as CSRC, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the People's Bank of China are famous for moving slowly. Market reforms in areas such as interest rate liberalization and foreign exchange rate controls, for example, started years ago and are still evolving. But the Hong Kong/Shanghai market-access "through train" -- an expression coined in 2007 and still used today -- has been particularly slow in coming.

so yes, the revolution is about freedom, but for the Chinese government it is part of a long term plan to take over Asian financial markets.

Ah, but will investors now remove their money from Hong Kong based banks if the Chinese takeover is not stopped ?

not much about this in the press yet (which is why I had to use an article from 2014).

But Trumpie boy was a businessman who knows all the dirty tricks in the book, but as the saying goes: hire a thief to catch a thief. 

So I suspect he knows about these type of shenanigans and is ten steps ahead of the press coverage, which ignores the fall of the Hong Kong stock market due to investor's fears of a Chinese takeover, and instead blames the domino effect that is causing the fall of the Dow to Trumps' actions "to pressure China". That link was from Forbes, but they aren't alone.

Notice how this CNBC headline  (From Sept2019, discussing the gov't stopping the federal TSP funds from investing in China and then discussing this as if the US gov't was stopping ALL investments there, which is not what was done but never mind)

the headline frames the argument it's all the fault of the US, even though the article points out there are major problems?

Constricting investments into Chinese companies could hit the US as hard as it hits China

and lots of opinions, mostly pro China and many from Chinese university think tanks.... and you won't read about this problem until paragraph 24:

One of the reasons the White House may be considering the investment restriction is reportedly to protect U.S. investors from excessive risk due to lack of regulatory supervision of Chinese companies. “There’s a kernel of legitimacy in this,” said James Early, CEO of investment research firm Stansberry China. He pointed out that many Chinese companies that were able to access U.S. public markets around 2010 received no consequences for fraudulent behavior.

Italics mine.

So will the world notice the Chinese takeover of the financial market in Hong Kong and recognize it as part of a long term plan to replace the US dollar with their own currency?

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StrategyPage has a different take, and that analysis includes a lot of stuff about military...
hmm... will the fleeing rich Hong Kongers migrate to British Colombia, which is already a Chinese enclave?


And for us, way down in the article they mention the influenza that hits pigs, and now another danger: Foot and mouth disease which hits cattle and water buffalo is going around North Korea and into China.

Sigh.

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Update: