Shipowners, shipbrokers, shipmanagers and maritime lawyers located in the Sheung Wan, Central, Admiralty and Wan Chai districts of Hong Kong largely agree their staff has made it to work today despite barricades placed by both protesters and police.
News and social media over the weekend have been filled with still and moving images of standoffs with police, pepper-sprayings and teargassings, and motorways packed with tens of thousands of democracy protesters in the streets that are home to many shipping and related businesses.After pulling riot police from the streets today, Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung asked protest leaders to respond in kind but this has not happened.
One senior shipping figure who did not wish to be named, whose offices are not far from the site of last night's police tear gassing, says the scene outside is relatively calm now but he expects streets to fill up again once Hong Kong workers clock out for the evening. Successive official holidays on Wednesday and Thursday -- the Chinese National Day and the Chung Yeung Festival -- could also reinforce to the striking students that make up the core of the current protest. Most senior figures in the traditionally conservative shipping community seem to be taking a hands-off position on the political standoff between democracy protesters and the Beijing-appointed Hong Kong government, but point to the existence of the demonstrations as proof of Hong Kong's underlying strengths. Few will admit to serious worries about Beijing's possible reaction to the protests.
"Everybody I've talked to has about the same view as me," said Simon Doughty, chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based shipmanager Wallem. "The Hong Kong people are wanting to send a message to Beijing, they're doing that, and we hope they do it in a peaceful way."
Doughty is eager to connect the protesters' exercise of free speech to Hong Kong's free climate for doing business.
Hong Kong Shipowners Association president Arthur Bowring and Wah Kwong chief executive Tim Huxley both take the opportunity of the protests to boost Hong Kong as a place for doing business. "What Hong Kong is displaying is strength and resilience right now, not weakness," said Bowring, who brushes off a drop in the Hang Seng stock index this morning as just a good opportunity to buy shares. Huxley agrees: "We're not anticipating a long term negative impact on Hong Kong as the best place for shipping companies to do business."
Although the "Occupy Central" movement originally planned for this week has been brewing for months, it has picked up increased support following Beijing's rejection earlier this year of direct election of legislators in the upcoming balloting.
But it boiled over ahead of schedule late last week when a student strike led to mass occupations in the Admiralty district, next-door to Central along the crowded fringe of Hong Kong Island that contains the former colony's government and business nerve centre. Besides seeking directly nominated, one-man one-vote elections to the Legislative Council (Legco), protesters say they want to defend freedom of speech and the press and independence of Hong Kong's judicial system from attacks that they attribute to the Chinese Communist government in Beijing.
