We've been watching the decline of Hong Kong with a mixture of horror, fascination and sadness. Some links after the jump.
From The Loadstar via gCaptain, April 17:
Hong Kong fell out of the world’s top 10 container ports last year, for the first time in the history of container shipping, according to new data from Alphaliner on the world’s busiest 30 box ports.
HK saw traffic last year drop 14.1%, to 14.3m teu, establishing the long-term decline of what was always a leading container port – 20 years ago it regularly vied with Singapore and Shanghai for the title of the world’s busiest – deposed from 2023’s tenth ranking by Dubai.
“Dubai overtook two of its nearest competitors in 2023 to make the top 10, a position it previously occupied in 2018. As earlier predicted by Alphaliner, it moved ahead of Hong Kong, which posted its seventh year of consecutive volume declines and has now lost a third of its container traffic over the past decade,” Alphaliner wrote today.
The only other major port to have suffered a greater fall in volumes than Hong Kong was New York & New Jersey, which saw its throughput decline 17.7%, to 7.8m teu, for the year.
“It was not alone in the US: Los Angeles, Long Beach and east coast port Savannah, a surprise feature in the top 30 during the pandemic, saw throughput drop year on year by 13%, 12% and 16%, respectively.
“Nonetheless, the pandemic has so far been net positive for Long Beach and New York/New Jersey, with volumes still up on 2019 numbers,” Alphaliner said.
Last year saw two new entrants to the top 30 – China’s Qinzhou grew 13.1%, to reach 6.1m teu, in position 26, while Vietnam’s Cai Mep was ranked 30th with a throughput of 5.6m teu, flat in terms of growth, but allowing it to overtake Savannah and Manila, which both posted declining volumes....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see:
The Fall of Hong Kong: How China-US Rivalry Ended a Geopolitical Neutral Zone
"Once High-Flying Bankers in Hong Kong Become a Lost Generation"
Hong Kong: "How China strangled its golden goose – and paid a terrible price"
It's deliberate. Beijing has planned on bringing Hong Kong to heel since 2012 and possibly since 1997....
Hong Kong’s Demise
It appears that one of Beijing's options is to let Hong Kong die on the vine and wither away as a business center, with Shenzhen, Shanghai and even Hainan island assuming some of the various roles that Hong Kong has played over the years.
And if HK is no longer an entrepôt and the gateway to China it faces the possibility of becoming a colonial backwater but one that is so overbuilt it ends up as an urban hellscape. Imagine this:
From China Law Blog:
Hong Kong’s Demise
This blog has not minced words when it comes to describing the grim situation in Hong Kong, which, as one of my former colleagues at the State Department puts it, “will get worse before it doesn’t get better.”....
Hong Kong: "Where Have the Traders Gone? A $4 Trillion Market Is Stuck in a Rut"
