(Bloomberg) — China must fix its economy and let Hong Kong run itself if it wants a better future for the financial hub, former Morgan Stanley Asia Ltd. chair Stephen Roach said, after a pessimistic column he wrote sparked an uproar.
“The most important thing Beijing can do is, number one, fix its own system,” Roach, a senior lecturer at Yale University, told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.
“Beijing also needs to be more aggressive and transparent underscoring its commitment to the ‘one country, two systems’ model,” he added.
Roach argued in a column for the Financial Times last week that Hong Kong’s embattled stock market symbolizes the end of its economic success over the past two decades. The economist cited factors including Beijing’s tightening grip over the former British colony and rising US-China tensions to make the case that it is fast declining.
“It pains me to admit it, but Hong Kong is now over,” he wrote. “A city I once called home and have cherished as a bastion of dynamism has had the world’s worst-performing major stock market over the past quarter of a century.”