He was harassed by Hong Kong police,
and sent “yakuza flowers”
as a warning because of his activism.
Now this hedge fund managers says
the extradition bill puts Hong Kong's economy at risk.
Welcome to China Uncensored, I'm Chris Chappell.
Today I'm here with Ed Chin, a Hong Kong activist,
hedge fund manager,
and founder of 2047 Hong Kong Monitor.
Thanks for joining me today, Ed.
It's good to see you again Chris.
So tell me a bit about 2047 Hong Kong Monitor.
Sure, after the Umbrella Movement, which ended in December 2014
because there's no more occupation,
there's no more Umbrella Movement,
the name is changed to 2047 Hong Kong Monitor.
It used to be called the Finance and Banking Group That Supports Occupy Central.
So we wanted to fight for Hong Kong's democracy
until the 50-year nonintervention policy comes to an end, hopefully.
Which is in 2047.
So you've been fairly outspoken.
Have you faced any backlash?
Yeah, especially in the last six months or so
in the so-called US-China trade war.
In the very beginning, our core values mean freedom of speech, freedom of press
and also the judiciary.
It's under challenge almost any time.
Well pro-democracy legislators have been kicked out of office.
But you said you faced backlash for this?
Because they visited my office, where we are filming now, inside my boardroom...
You say “they” visited you, what do you mean?
This is someone...
Usually when you see a police visit your office,
they have to have a warrant of sorts, right?
And they could make up an excuse saying,
This is interesting, January 1st, it's a public holiday, statutory holiday.
The police claimed that someone received a phonecall
saying someone comes into my office January 1st
for an interview, a job interview.
And after two hours, then come out.
So that makes me kind of suspicious.
Who would make such a claim and then they just come in with an excuse.
Just to intimidate you for no reason.
I never mentioned that publicly, so this is the first time.
And it's not just one time.
It's many times within a month.
How many times?
Usually eight times.
So Hong Kong police visited you eight times?
Not just here, but also residential.
That means sending an ambulance, sending a fire truck.
So that makes me wonder, am I very popular?
No.
But I wonder does it have anything to do with the sings that we raise up so
we did raise the concern to the right party, so to speak.
I don't want to be too vivid about who we visited.
But after about five to six minutes of investigation,
the police came back with a letter saying nothing could be found.
That's on record.
Nothing that could be found at your place when they came to visit?
They cannot find the person who made these prank calls.
But this is something that makes your neighbors
and even people around you think,
hey, what's going on, right?
Yeah, if ambulances and firetrucks are showing up outside,
what was it, your place of residence?
Yeah, that, too.
And residence,
and I'm not trying to have a barbecue inside a condominium, like a huge one.
But at 3:30am when you see this different things...
It was the middle of the night!
The middle of the night.
Wow.
And I understand you got a nice bouquet of flowers one time?
Yeah, that's the one time it made me really get concerned
because you think about the nerve gas, or as they call it, nerve agent
that I think, two years ago, there was a father and a daughter
who were Russian spies who lived in the UK.
They sniff into that and it cause permanent brain damage.
So of course when I receive roses,
you know, it is like the Yakuza, you know from Japan,
that's like a death ultimatum.
Kind of telling you not to say things they don't like.
Anyways, I think to say this publicly, I'm just saying that
I want to defend Hong Kong's values.
That's why I say this:
Hong Kong shouldn't be like any other place that is inside China.
Hong Kong is still Hong Kong, right?
So I want to say that I want to protect the core values.
That's why I'm outspoken today.
Well that seems perfectly reasonable.
Whoever sent you the bouquet of roses,
maybe they were just trying to thank you.
Oh, thank you for being outspoken.
I hope so!
It's better than some Yakuza sending you nerve gas-tainted flowers.
But that was in January
and now we're sitting in very uncertain times in Hong Kong now
because of this extradition treaty.
A lot of people went to the street just a few days ago.
Nd it turned into a bugger thing
we haven't seen five years after the Umbrella Movement.
Speaking of the extradition bill, you've been very outspoken about it.
And this bill would allow the Hong Kong government to send people
in Hong Kong to mainland China for trial.
How would the extradition bill affect the economy of Hong Kong?
It is showing a lot of side effects now, and actually,
Last few months, since April, things got escalated after
many, two or three rallies now.
The first rally I think was in March.
We only got 13,000 people to show up.
At the end of April, April 28th, we got 130,000.
And the last one that we had, just less than ten days ago,
we had over 1.03 million.
Over one million people came out.
That's unprecedented.
In a city that has 7 million people.
Yes, 1/7 of the population came out
just to say no to legalized kidnapping of Hong Kongers
and foreigners who live in Hong Kong,
anyone passing by, to China.
So as a hedge fund manager,
what do you think this is going to do for the economy of Hong Kong?
Now because after the 1.03 million rally,
three days afterward there was also police brutality
near the central, near the LegCo building.
And the police also, these are like riot police.
They beat up everyone and fire more than 150 tear gas canisters
with rubber bullets and also bean bag bullets,
and using batons to bash everyone.
And then facing the head, not the limbs, the head.
So some law-only managers were saying if things get worse, they will pull out.
And then one hedge-fund manager told me
he would dump all Hong Kong stocks if one person dies from this event.
So the wealthy are looking to move their money outside of Hong Kong.
That, too.
That's related to offshore banking.
There's a lot of inquiry,
that if you check the offshore banking units,
more than 30% new inquiries.
So every hour, the offshore banking unit of any global bank
would have a lot of businesses.
Which means they do not trust the Hong Kong jurisdiction.
If things get worse, if they park their money overseas,
let's say in an overseas offshore jurisdiction,
all they have to do is wire the money to the offshore banking site, that bank.
So I was telling people that in the worst case scenario,
you should have at least 60% of your liquid cash in the offshore banking site
of that bank that you use.
So you've seen, as sort of the rule of law has been changing,
as the rule of law has been eroding in Hong Kong,
wealthy people can't trust that their fortunes inside of Hong Kong are safe.
Just two hours ago I was reading the Apple Daily,
which is the highest circulation paper in Hong Kong
and also pro-democracy newspaper that's under attack.
They had a feature saying one wealthy person,
this is not like your affluent.
So it's like a tycoon in Hong Kong.
Move 100 million U.S., a lot of money, to Singapore.
So it's like a global bank.
US-based global bank with Singapore as a regional headquarters.
So it's like transferring money from Hong Kong jurisdiction to Singapore.
That means something.
So the reaction from the wealthy,
is this different than in 2014 with the Umbrella Movement?
2014, it was fighting for one person one vote without pre-screening.
With this one you see even the pro-Beijing business people come out
because they are also afraid that they don't know whether they would...
When they do travel, they don't know whether they'd pay a certain bribe,
let's say to open a factory.
There's many different levels of government.
You have to use not just guanxi, but also use money to get certain licenses,
to get electricity, hydro, whatever, right?
So they were afraid that by doing these,
they would fall into the trap of reaching this proposed extradition treaty or bill.
That they would fall into this landmine themselves.
So they were not too happy about it.
These are the normal pro-Beijing guys.
So universal suffrage,
that doesn't matter to a lot of these people.
But when it starts to threaten their fortunes,
that's what got people out onto the streets.
Yes because China could say you break certain rules
and then ask the Hong Kong court
and then ask the commercial crime unit of the Hong Kong police
to freeze your Hong Kong bank account.
Make it under investigation for a period of time.
Then you can't do anything.
Then you are stuck.
Which is why you want to get your money out of Hong Kong.
Yes, and also you could be tried inside China court,
and be like another Causeway Bay bookseller, who go missing.
So people are concerned.
So it's not just the normal activist in Hong Kong.
Which our activists like Joshua Wong,
and also professor Benny Tai is serving jail time right now
in Hong Kong as we are filming this.
Carrie Lam just announced that she's going to postpone the extradition bill.
Do you think that's going to take away people's fears?
I think yes, to a certain extent, but also no
because this means putting it to a pause.
What does a pause mean?
If you play your computer,
pause, you can play this evil thing again.
So I think a lot of Hong Kongers, after this extradition proposal
was put forward from a few months ago,
we lost trust in the government.
A lot of people, they might think that after the Umbrella Movement,
people don't care anymore because no matter what you do,
they will still find a chief executive that Beijing likes,
and then that's it, right?
Nothing you can do much about.
But this is about their lives, their well-being,
their security, both financial and also personal.
So everyone is fighting very hard about it.
But I think a lot of people, after the so-called “horror movie,”
the horror show,
a lot of people have decided to leave Hong Kong this summer.
If they have kids,
why not go back to places they immigrated from before?
A lot of people relocated after 1997, too, to be honest.
Over 300,000 Canadians come back,
and they see things are okay.
Things were okay for the first ten years, I would say.
But things are not okay now.
When you have a president with an unlimited term,
that concerns people, too.
And Carrie Lam being looked at as a puppet,
but she has been quite ruthless in the way she handles Hong Kong people.
Not just the kids, but across all segments of the society.
We have been very discontent about what she did.
Yes I've been hearing in Hong Kong people, in Cantonese,
calling the extradition bill an evil law.
Yes, yes, it is evil because it is a horror show, put it this way.
People can't sleep in.
And there's also, put it in finance terms,
we call it an option the Hong Kong government put out.
It's a “put” option, as in putting you down
with a short-term expiry date.
Time value is depleting very fast.
We thought it would be end of June
before Donald Trump and president Xi
meet for the G20.
So they're setting up a very evil platform to scare everyone
including Americans like yourself.
It's good that we do this in Hong Kong, but next time, who knows, right?
Yeah, I'm happy I got in.
Yeah, if the extradition bill is passed,
then a lot of people might not want to come.
So I understand that, in response to the extradition bill,
the U.S. Has considered changing some of its policies toward Hong Kong.
How do you think that would affect the economy of Hong Kong?
If the so-called Hong Kong Policy Act,
if the U.S. kills it,
I still think it's not likely yet
unless the Hong Kong government does something very stupid,
which is close to the edge of doing something stupid.
Because an exco member, meaning the executive board so-to-speak of Hong Kong,
one guy's name is Bernard Chen.
He was hinting that he did not want to see people to use, well,
he didn't use the word “military action.”
But enforcement, he didn't want to see any enforcement people
other than the Hong Kong police
to clean up the mess, so to speak.
Sort of implying China's People's Liberation Army.
Which is just a one-minute walk away from Carrie Lam's office.
That's true, the garrison is very close to the chief executive's office.
Her office is just next to LegCo.
You cross the street and it's the PLA barrack.
That was some very interesting city planning.
Yes, it's very interesting.
So it's scaring quite a few people.
Do you think the extradition bill is the end of Hong Kong's autonomy?
If the extradition bill is passed, and I mentioned it quite publicly, too,
that means putting the One Country Two Systems experiment,
not to a halt, but it's finished.
It's finished.
But think about it:
It was Deng Xiaoping,
the former former paramount leader after Tiananmen.
That was a big mistake.
And then because of this, you think about this very good idea,
using economic reform to make people take a second look at China.
And now of course Hong Kong people do benefit
from the so-called economic miracle
that we benefit in the last 30 or so years.
Like even before 1997.
The joint declaration was signed in 1984.
And of course, afterwards, there was Tiananmen.
And Deng Xiaoping gave us reassurance that things would be okay.
Some people took a leap of faith and came back to Hong Kong,
I being one.
I came back in the year 2000.
This is almost 20 years for myself being in Asia and also Hong Kong.
So if somebody watching wanted to learn more about you
or some of the causes you're standing up for,
where should they go?
What should they do?
I know you are also a book writer.
Occasionally I write one book every year.
Usually the first three chapters on finance.
The next two chapters is more on activism and democracy stuff.
And then I'll put your picture in the book, too.
That'd be great!
Yeah, yeah.
Usually we have the Hong Kong book fair in the mid of July.
So if the evil bill is not passed, definitely to book can be printed,
and they can see the new book – the trilogy.
This will be part three of this.
How to edge your risks in uncertain times: part three.
Be careful, you're becoming a Hong Kong bookseller.
Yeah, wow, thanks for reminding me.
But for people watching,
is there a website or a Twitter handle?
Where can they learn more about you?
They can look into my personal public Facebook page, Edward Ching,
it's very easy to find.
Our activist group is 2047 HK Monitor.
You'll see a lot of things in English
and also traditional Chinese.
Great.
Well thank you for joining me today, Ed.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you Chris, and I will see you in Hong Kong soon, I hope.
I hope I'll be in Hong Kong soon, yeah.
Thank you.