Hong Kong’s resurgence of protests is worrying – but a US-China financial war would be far worse for its economy

Hong Kong has been Beijing’s entry point into western finance. It has been extraordinarily successful. But if tensions escalate further, it will get caught in the crossfire

On Tuesday China celebrates the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. On Sunday, in Hong Kong, protests were building up into the most violent protests to date. The Hong Kong government has said that Carrie Lam, the city’s leader, will be out of town for the event, despite having issued the invitations for the official celebrations. It is not helpful to speculate from a distance as to how that decision was reached or how the Chinese authorities will respond to the protests. But the harsh truth is the protests in Hong Kong are becoming a factor in the reset of the entire relationship between the US and China.

That relationship took a turn for the worse over the weekend, with the suggestion that Donald Trump might force Chinese companies with quotations on the New York markets to delist. What would happen would be that any investor wanting to buy or sell shares in the 150 or so Chinese companies listed in the US would have to do so on one of the Chinese exchanges, typically Hong Kong or Shanghai, instead.