Do We Need to Be in Hong Kong?’ Global Companies Are Eyeing the Exits

Apprehensive about Hong Kong’s future as the best place to do business in China and beyond, multinational firms are pulling up stakes, adding to uncertainty about the outlook for one of the world’s premier commercial cities.

Buffeted by political upheaval, an authoritarian crackdown by mainland China and the pandemic, global companies and professionals are heading to rival business cities such as Singapore, and to Shanghai, the Chinese commercial hub some see as a better place to profit from the nation’s vast economy.

Ever since the U.K. returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, the city’s leaders have billed the semiautonomous territory as “Asia’s World City”—an open society with a British-style legal system where foreign professionals could feel at home. Today, Hong Kong is becoming less open and more fused to the mainland economy.

Some companies, including banks and other financial institutions, still view Hong Kong as crucial to their China-focused business models and are digging in for the future. Others are eyeing the exit, concluding the city no longer holds the prospects it once did.

“Being in Hong Kong always used to be a no-brainer,” said Frederik Gollob, chairman of the European Chamber of Commerce in the city. “Now, for the first time, businesses are having discussions around, do we need to be in Hong Kong?”

In a survey of members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong released last month, 42% of the 325 respondents said they were considering or planning to leave the city, citing uneasiness over China’s new security law and a pessimistic outlook of Hong Kong’s future.

Dozens of international companies have moved regional headquarters or offices from the city since 2019, government data show. That has contributed to the highest rate of commercial real estate vacancies in 15 years, with more than 80% of the vacant space surrendered by international companies, data compiled by Cushman & Wakefield show. All told, more people—expatriates and locals—departed the business hub in 2020 than any year since the global financial crisis.

In January, VF Corp., owner of Timberland, the North Face and other brands, said it was shutting its 900-person Hong Kong office after 25 years in the city. Japanese videogame maker Sony Interactive Entertainment has moved regional executives to Singapore. European luxury-goods company LVMH said it was relocating some Hong Kong-based employees from its Moët Hennessy liquor unit. French cosmetics giant L’Oréal also said it was relocating some staffers from its Hong Kong headquarters.

Hong Kong boosters predict that, once the pandemic lifts, the city will emerge stronger as its businesses profit from deeper integration with the mainland. Pessimists see it gradually atrophying around a few core industries useful to China, such as finance.

Hong Kong Commerce Secretary Edward Yau said the majority of foreign firms still believe that Hong Kong is the place for doing business, encouraged by growing opportunities with major Chinese cities. “We will continue to monitor the situation and provide the best help we can offer,” he said at a recent press conference, referring to the American Chamber of Commerce survey.

Under China’s long-term plan, Hong Kong will become part of a 70 million person “greater bay area” economic zone that includes the neighboring tech city of Shenzhen and the gambling mecca of Macau. Stephen Phillips, who runs Hong Kong’s investment promotion bureau, InvestHK, said that arrangement will become the economic engine for growth and a major business opportunity in the coming years.

He said the biggest issue for Hong Kong is getting through the Covid epidemic, and that China’s new security law for Hong Kong hasn’t had a major impact on business. “Each business will make its own decision,” he said. “But the vast majority don’t see it as a risk.”

Changed view

Hong Kong once pitched itself as a bridge between East and West. Now, for some businesses, Hong Kong is no longer global enough to serve as a regional headquarters. For others focused on doing business in China, the city isn’t as tapped in to the mainland economy as Shanghai.

Denver-based VF is moving the Hong Kong positions responsible for its China sales and marketing to Shanghai, where they will be nearer the stores and giant online retailers crucial to its business. Employees responsible for managing its regional network of manufacturers and suppliers will relocate to Singapore, a Chinese- and English-speaking country of 5.7 million people with a strong business infrastructure. Although Singapore’s laws also limit free speech, it has an established free-market approach to business.

VF said its move reflected changing economic trends and efforts to better serve consumers, not China’s intervention in the city.

L’Oreal said it is building up in Singapore and Shanghai as it reduces its presence in Hong Kong. The restructuring, it said, is designed to give greater coherence to its business by creating a Southeast Asia, Middle East and North Africa zone run from Singapore, and a North Asia zone run from Shanghai.

Sony Interactive and Moët said they have moved some employees to Singapore. Both declined to comment further on their moves.

Hong Kong’s transformation accelerated in 2019 with mass demonstrations against Beijing’s intervention in the island that was meant to largely govern itself under a concept known as “one country, two systems.” Months of clashes between police and students shook the city’s reputation as a safe and stable place to do business.

Beijing cracked down on the protests in June 2020 and pushed through a national security law that granted the Chinese government power to intervene in Hong Kong’s legal system, while authorizing its secret police to enforce vague statutes such as against foreign collusion. On Friday, thousands of people defied a huge police presence and threats of jail to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

After China announced its crackdown, South Korean internet search company Naver Corp. said it was deleting its Hong Kong-based backup servers and moving them to Singapore to protect user data.

Technology companies including Facebook and Alphabet Inc.’s Google dropped plans to connect Hong Kong and the U.S. with undersea data cables after U.S. security officials signaled opposition to the plans.

At Asian Tigers Hong Kong, a relocation firm serving international executives, moves into Hong Kong have declined 50% since 2019, while moves out increased by 30%, said Chief Executive Rob Chipman, an American who moved to Hong Kong in the 1980s.

“I saw a lot of longtime Hong Kong stayers who were leaving, people like me who came out for a usual three-year stint and 30-years later are still here, loving it, married with kids, owning businesses,” Mr. Chipman said. “So even some of those people are saying, ‘Wait a minute, something’s going on here. Maybe it’s time to leave.’ ”

Some 40,000 more Hong Kong residents departed the city in 2020 than those who entered intending to reside there, government figures show. All told, Hong Kong’s population of about 7.5 million shrank by 46,500 in 2020—the second contraction since it was returned to China.

Sandra Boch, an Austrian mother of one who moved to Hong Kong 15 years ago to set up a specialty fabrics and stationery business, left in November. While the 2019 unrest disrupted her business, the 2020 national security law, she said, was the last straw. She packed up her business and moved to Singapore.

The law, she said, “was a clear sign from China that they are taking control of Hong Kong now, and everything will get more controlled from that point out. We no longer felt safe.”

British authorities have opened the doors for local holders of pre-handover U.K. passports to immigrate permanently to the U.K., and they estimate more than 300,000 Hong Kongers—about 4% of Hong Kong’s total population—may come over five years.

New entrants

Hong Kong boosters predict companies that closed offices will be replaced by other firms moving in, including from mainland China. In the 12 months ending June 3, 2020, the latest information available, mainland Chinese companies opened 63 new regional headquarters and offices in Hong Kong, an increase of 12% from the year-earlier period. During the same period, U.S. companies—the biggest international presence in Hong Kong—closed 45 headquarters and offices, or 6% of their total, government figures show.

Falling rents in Hong Kong have attracted others to enter or expand, said Mr. Phillips of InvestHK. Japanese food retailer Don Don Donki and the French sporting-goods seller Decathlon both expanded in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong remains attractive to the financial-services industry. With its modern markets, freely convertible currency and connections to the mainland, Hong Kong is unrivalled when it comes to financing China. Mainland China’s newly minted superrich are an attractive target for Hong Kong-based wealth-management firms. A string of stock offerings by Chinese tech giants have put the Hong Kong exchange in the No. 3 spot globally for such listings.

U.K.-based banking giant HSBC Holdings PLC said in February it would invest $6 billion in its Hong Kong-based Asia business, of which Hong Kong is by far its most lucrative market.

Last year, HSBC’s Asia-Pacific head, Peter Wong, demonstrated support for Beijing’s national-security law after a Hong Kong politician said the bank could be punished unless it did. Later that year, it froze accounts of a prominent Hong Kong democracy activist who had fled the city.

Facing criticism from U.K. lawmakers who accused the bank of appeasing China, HSBC Chief Executive Noel Quinn told them that the bank didn’t drop customers or freeze accounts for political reasons, and reiterated the bank’s commitment to Hong Kong. HSBC declined to comment for this article.

Some large banks, although optimistic about continuing to do business in Hong Kong, are quietly running contingency scenarios to ascertain what they would do if they lost access to their Hong Kong infrastructure and had to operate out of another city, people familiar with such plans said.

“People ask, can I still do whatever I want and say whatever I want?” said Allan Zeman, a foreign-born real-estate developer who has advised Hong Kong’s current government and years ago gave up his Canadian passport for a China-issued one. “Yes. I still do whatever I want and say whatever I want, as long as I choose not to be an antagonist.”

Corrections & Amplifications
Hong Kong’s currency is freely convertible but is pegged to the U.S. dollar. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said the Hong Kong dollar was free-floating. And Sandra Boch, an Austrian mother of one who moved to Hong Kong 15 years ago to set up a specialty fabrics and stationery business, left in November. An earlier version of this article misidentified her nationality, the number of her children and the month she left Hong Kong. (Corrected on June 7)

It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.

On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.

The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.

Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.

“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.

“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”

Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

Photo: NASA’s Artemis II SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft being rolled out at night. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/Getty Images

What are the goals for Artemis II?

The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.

The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.

Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.

SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .

How is the mission expected to unfold?

Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.

The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.

After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.

Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.

Water photo: NASA’s Orion capsule after its splash-down in the Pacific Ocean in 2022 for the Artemis I mission. Mario Tama/Press Pool

Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?

Yes.

For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.

Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?

The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.

Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.

Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.

Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.

What will the astronauts do during the flight?

The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.

Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.

On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.

There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.

Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.

The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.

What happens after Artemis II?

Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.

NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.

Do We Need to Be in Hong Kong?’ Global Companies Are Eyeing the Exits

Changed view

New entrants

The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.