Hong Kong may not be the largest financial center in Asia. Hell, it’s not even the largest financial center in China anymore. But it is still the regional hub for the hedge fund industry, boasting more funds that Singapore, Japan or Asia, and more assets under management therein than all of the others combined.
And most of those hedge fund managers probably expected it to stay that way for another couple of decades, as under the treaty that returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, Beijing was bound not to incorporate the city-state into its own, rather more repressive political regime for 50 years. But China’s a good deal more powerful now than it was 23 years ago, and Britain a great deal less influential, and so it decided to accelerate things a bit. So, uh, how much should those hedgies worry?