Hong Kong is Canada’s 15th largest city.

Nearly 400,000 Canadians live here — only slightly smaller than Halifax — more than any other city in the world. It is more importantly, Asia’s only world metropolis. But it is enduring wrenching change as its forced integration with China gathers pace.

Increasing control has often been resisted by displeased locals, sometimes with explosive street demonstrations. Now a series of what are dubbed by the media as “show trials” of protesters are about to fuel anger again. This was not what was promised at the handover in 1997.

While the most damaging possible restrictions on Hong Kong freedoms are largely prospective, some watering down of “one country, two systems” has begun. Tough speeches about “loyalty” have become common, with the risk of what will happen to the disloyal only hinted. But it is a little like being invited to a dinner party where the host has “placed an anaconda in the chandelier,” as China sage Perry Link put it. The rhetorical snake does not have to strike to have a chilling effect.

The opening of the world’s longest and most expensive bridge of its type, across the Pearl River, has brought thousands of new day-trippers, to add to the millions who arrive yearly from the mainland. The pressure on prices they generate is unlikely to deepen “loyalty to the motherland.”

Hong Kong remains a hub for multinationals, as it sits one or two hours by air or high-speed rail from the centres of the world’s second largest economy. The quality of its hard and soft infrastructure is stunning: the finest transit system, an award-winning airport, nine post-secondary universities and colleges, and the best professional services in Asia.

Despite the pollution and the frictions of life in this manic ADHD city, it has two essential tensional outlets. Tough habitat protection has bequeathed hundreds of hectares of beautiful parks, wilderness, wetlands and beaches to the city. For a $20 cab ride you are magically transported from the most densely populated city in the world to an ocean beach campground.

In an hour, or four, you can be in Osaka, Bali, or Bangkok, and most of the most interesting places in Pacific Asia. Combine this with great international schools and a multi-cultural feast, and Hong Kong is hard to compete with for international business or investor dollars.

But …

If integration delivers a legal system with a political thumb on the scales, or greater restrictions on freedoms of expression, or more nervous leaden public servants — well, Hong Kong then quickly becomes merely the next Buenos Aires or Beirut. An amusing tourist destination that history has passed by.

To a Canadian, much about Hong Kong is familiar: a state built on a steady flow of immigrants and refugees. Like Canada, Hong Kong needs to protect what made it a perennially appealing destination. A trading entrepot built on a lump of rock, or a nation carved out of rock, each need a secure flow of foreign capital, investor confidence and friction-free business and job creation skills, as well.

We built our nation on wresting jobs and wealth from foreign investors’ confidence in tapping our natural resources. We cannot afford to be slow or unfair decision-makers about investment or new projects. Angry investors say imposing a decade of regulatory cost delays on every proposed power dam, mine, mill or oil and gas project will kill Canadian growth. They are not wrong.

Hong Kong and Canada each risk losing their magnetic appeal to the best and the brightest talent from around the world if there is a hint of racism or invasive government. We are each losing our luster as investment destinations.

One may hope that Canadian governments recover their ability to make big decisions at speed. That China comes to accept Hong Kong’s future means preserving their freedoms and similar capabilities.

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Else both the Hong Kong Canadians and the newly arrived immigrants to Canada will each look elsewhere for places to prosper.

The world is, as they say, watching us both.

Robin V. Sears is a principal at Earnscliffe Strategy Group. He helps lead Earnscliffe Strategy Group practice and visits China regularly. Sears was also an NDP strategist for 20 years. Follow him on Twitter: @robinvsears

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