Visiting a recolonized Hong Kong

Between 1998 and 2019, I visited Hong Kong more than a dozen times. The chief reason was that I was so fond of—as well as fascinated by—the place. Hong Kong satisfies just about all my urban aesthetic preferences. Above all, it’s very dense, with approximately 28,100 people per square kilometer (72,900 per square mile) of buildable land.¹ Hong Kong’s population density is, in other words, similar to that of Manhattan’s, but the built-up part of the city covers four and a half times as large an area. Hong Kong is actually in some respects a more high-rise place than Manhattan. According to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, it has more buildings taller than 150 m than any city in the world.² Furthermore, the proportion of Hong Kong’s population using public transit to get to work—approximately 78%—is probably higher than in any other urban area.  Privately owned automobiles, while rising in number, play only a modest role in ordinary commuting. In addition, while I can’t prove it with numbers, certain parts of the northern end of Hong Kong Island seem to have as high a concentration of activities as any place in the developed world.³




Despite the enormous concentration of people and activities, Hong Kong seems to be an extraordinarily efficient place. Train delays are rare. Even traffic generally moves without major backups. Hong Kong is also a pretty safe place. The rate of serious crime is low.

Curiously and somewhat amazingly, Hong Kong, much of which is quite mountainous, may, along with its other distinctions, have more of its territory in parkland than any other city of its size. Approximately three-quarters of its land area is so steep as to be considered unbuildable, and much of this zone is officially parkland. The views from Hong Kong’s hills and mountains never cease to astonish. There are no sharper contrasts between intense urbanism and unbuilt-on land anywhere in the world. I used a view from the slopes of Victoria Peak as a banner for this blog during the first eight years of its existence. Here’s a recent update.

There is no doubt that my positive feelings about Hong Kong have been based largely on its morphology, its physical structure. I’ve enjoyed being in Hong Kong without ever having sustained close personal contact with Hong Kongers. I have had numerous discussions with Hong Kongers over the years that have left me with the impression that citizens of Hong Kong who speak good English (a substantial part of the population) are unusually sophisticated and have traditionally been quite willing to discuss just about any subject openly. It’s significant that in many ways some of them appear to have had closer links with the Western world than with Mainland China, a place that many Hong Kongers have viewed with a certain wary disdain.

I’d last visited Hong Kong in December 2019, when the Umbrella Movement was still active. I stayed away from the protests of course—the presence of foreigners gave the People’s Republic evidence to support its specious claims that the Movement was the result of foreign interference. I did happen to be walking on the pedestrian bridges between the Star Ferry Pier and Central one evening when thousands of people were on their way home from a major demonstration. I’ve probably never been in the middle of a crowd of such, well, calmly happy and satisfied people.

In June 2020, the government took advantage of the Pandemic lockdowns to pass long-threatened security legislation despite enormous demonstrations by Hong Kong’s citizens opposing this step. Since then, the government has jailed numerous people for offenses ranging from wearing a “Free Hong Kong, revolution of our times” t-shirt to publishing newspaper articles urging Hong Kong’s independence. Hong Kongers have suddenly been subjected to the whims of some of the world’s most thin-skinned and ruthless autocrats. Any deviations from absolute conformity on certain subjects have often led to severe punishment.

It’s true that Hong Kong has never been a genuinely democratic place. It was, of course, a British colony between 1841 and 1997. In negotiating the terms of the handover to China, Britain apparently attempted to assure that the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region would be a democratic one, but China resisted, and only some of the members of the Legislative Council (LEGCO), Hong Kong’s legislature, have ever been elected. Still, during the last couple of decades of British rule, the government tried to be responsive to public opinion, and Hong Kong was a pretty free place. You could say or publish what you wanted without having to be worried that you’d be jailed for it. Similar conditions prevailed during the first 23 years after the handover. Hong Kong had a very free press. No subject was off the table. All this ended abruptly in June 2020.

It’s also the case that, for the moment, many aspects of the “one country, two systems” regime are still in place. Hong Kong has its own currency and its own legal system. It still generally uses traditional (rather than simplified) Chinese characters. Traffic moves on the left rather than (as it does in China proper) on the right. The commonest language of public conversation is Cantonese, not Mandarin. You need to pass through Immigration to cross the China/Hong Kong border. And, most important, China has not (yet) imposed the “Great Firewall.” There is still online access to, for example, The New York Times, The Guardian, Gmail, and Google in Hong Kong (all of these, and millions of other, sites are blocked in China). I tried a search on “Tiananmen Massacre” while I was in Hong Kong and ended up with a result very much like that I got with the same search in Chicago. But talking about the Tiananmen Massacre in public can now get you a long jail term. I find this extraordinarily depressing.

I thought for a while I might never visit Hong Kong again, but, lured in part by low air fares, I spent a few days there in late September and early October. I ended up with complicated feelings.

Short of war, the physical form of cities rarely changes abruptly. Hong Kong’s distinctive morphology remains more or less as it was. To someone who likes cities to be dense and a little overwhelming, Hong Kong remains an agreeable place. The most obvious change I noticed was the complete absence of graffiti (which have been banned; writers of graffiti can be jailed). Also, the whole city was plastered with posters and banners advertising the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic. (Why do authoritarian states think repeating the same message endlessly will convince anyone?)

In addition, I had a sense there were fewer foreign (or anyway Caucasian) faces on the streets of Central than there used to be. This is presumably in part the result of the fact that some foreign firms have left, and in part because tourism from the West has dried up (my United flights were two-thirds empty).

There have also been a few changes in areas of particular concern to this blog. For example, there have been two major additions to Hong Kong’s already deeply impressive rail system. The East Rail extension to Admiralty (which includes a new tunnel under the Harbour) has been completed, as has the extension of the (former) West Rail Line through a broad swath of Kowloon that was previously not served by trains at all; this segment has been joined to the Ma On Shan branch and is now known at the Tuen Ma Line.

Here’s a map.

Also, the Promenade along the Harbour that circles the Exposition Centre has (perhaps temporarily) been extended east for some distance, and the park between the Star Ferry Pier and the Exposition Centre has come closer to being completed.

Pedestrian walkways have also been extended somewhat east of the Exposition Centre. These allow traffic-free walking between the new subway station there and the adjoining parts of Wan Chai.

Furthermore, the West Kowloon Cultural District (the subject of an earlier post) has come closer to being completed. Some of the site is still under construction, but the M+ Museum is now open in its permanent quarters (although it’s no longer allowed to hold uncensored exhibitions). Furthermore, there is a great deal more parkland available (but most of it is fenced off and not accessible to people walking about).

Most of these changes in Hong Kong’s physical structure were planned long before the security law was passed, but, despite the Pandemic and Hong Kong’s new politics, they’ve moved forward pretty efficiently. Other long-planned changes remain underway although Hong Kong’s sluggish economy may slow their implementation.

There is no denying that authoritarian regimes do have some advantages when it comes to building infrastructure. It’s pretty clear, however, that many (and very likely most) people in Hong Kong would have preferred not to be living under such a regime. Of course, the people of Hong Kong have had absolutely no choice in this matter.