As the city suffered an uptick in cases, this talk on the fate of Hong Kong tourism became the last real event, as opposed to online Zooms, the FCC would hold for the foreseeable future. I stayed away and watched on Facebook.

Against such doom and gloom, all three panellists rose above the crisis to give fascinating insights into their very different worlds. Asim Hussain, co-founder of Black Sheep Restaurants and owner of the only Punjabi restaurant in the world to have a Michelin star, described things as “tougher than tough”.

“We’ve been between a rock and a hard place since the unrest last year,” he said, referring to the months of protests in Hong Kong.

Douglas Young, founder of the Goods of Desire chain that draws on Hong Kong designs for its lifestyle brand, said: “Our workshops in Hong Kong have saved us. We haven’t been able to produce goods for our shops because there is no demand. But we can produce face masks, and 70 to 80 per cent of our business is now masks.”

Even financial advisor Alicia García Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at French investment bank Natixis, managed some good news.

“The fact the GDP hasn’t collapsed here is a positive. We’re entering a double recession, but we’re better than the US, Europe and some other Asian countries. The finance sector here is doing well. Yes, it is difficult for Hong Kong but the economy is still holding up.”

Then came the home truths. Of the 15,000 restaurants that were operating in Hong Kong last summer, Hussain reckoned a third will shut by autumn this year. Herrero said: “In my humble opinion, I believe Hong Kong government has been stingy given the resources it has.

Singapore and Australia have done more. The government should step up more than we’ve seen so far.” And retailer Young said: “I believe the world will not be the same again.”

Herrero, an adviser to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s research arm and the Asian Development Bank, reckoned Hong Kong is suffering from a triple whammy – the trade war, the pandemic, and what she called protests-plus, the lengthy protests last year and the ongoing unrest in the wake of the National Security Law recently imposed on the city by China. “Retail sales depend at least by half on arrivals from the mainland,” she said.

Why would mainland Chinese want to visit a city where protests and anti-mainland sentiment could flare any moment? Young saw this as a global issue. “A fourth thing affecting us is this anti-Asia, anti-Chinese feeling. I don’t see people around the world wearing modern Chinese clothing.

“There’s a huge correlation between tourists and retail. We have two shops at the airport we rely on, and we haven’t operated them for six months.”

Hussain, who owns 20 restaurants across the city, described the new normal as “a cat-and-mouse game”. He explained: “When a wave comes, we need to hunker down. We will never go back to normal; for the next year at least, we’ll be focusing on keeping our people safe and healthy.”

Not least in this cat-and-mouse future is the landlord-tenant dynamic. Hussain, who advises the government on his sector, said: “One recommendation we made [to the government] in March which was not accepted was to make restaurants bailiff-proof. Some landlords have given us breathing space, others immediately sent us legal notices. The behaviour is all over the place.”

A point proved by retailer Young’s experience: “The airport allowed us to close our stores and not pay any rent. During the protests, even if we weren’t paying rent we’d still have been making a loss.”

But economist Herrero had some common-sense advice on this thorny issue in a city with some of the highest rents in the world: “The vacancy ratio for retail [the amount of shops standing empty] in Hong Kong is about 12 per cent so landlords will have to offer cuts. We will see an adjustment in rents very soon.”

In other words, they’ll settle for some rent rather than no rent at all. And if Douglas Young’s dream comes true, many or most of those shops will be local businesses rather than the posh Euro-brands that currently dominate the city and reflect the mainlanders’ tastes.

TOP PHOTO: Hong Kong’s iconic Star Ferry – a favourite of visitors – in colours promoting the city as a tourism centre.

BYLINE PHOTO: Sue in a Goods of Desire mask.

July 2020