A political cancer

The International Institute for Management Development last week released the World Competitiveness Rankings (WCR) 2013, in which Hong Kong has fallen to third place from the top last year, causing a lot of concern and debate here. Apparently political wrestling within local society is a major cause of Hong Kong's flagging competitiveness. This fact is reflected in the latest WCR report, which points out problems in building social cohesiveness are among the main reasons for the Hong Kong SAR government's efficiency to drop over the past year. Therefore it is necessary for the SAR government to work harder on social and political issues and particularly on resolving domestic wrangling in addition to the economy in order to raise or maintain the city's competitiveness.

The root of Hong Kong society's internal strife is indiscriminate politicization - the tendency to make everything, big or small, a political matter with unbridled imagination has triggered endless squabbling. One of the particularly corrupting tendencies is to go for nativism blindly, and sow discord and even confrontation between local residents and mainlanders. Secretary for Finance John Tsang writes in his latest official blog that one cannot deny the fact that Hong Kong's economy has become highly integrated with the mainland's in recent years with both sides benefiting from the bond enormously. It would be self-crippling for Hong Kong to weaken its ties with the mainland and suicidal if it severs them.

Apart from blind nativism the politicization craze is also inflicting damages upon long-term development as well as current operations of the local economy in other ways. One of such abuses is wanton stalling of major construction projects, such as the Hong Kong section of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and the Express Rail Link, resulting in tremendous waste of time and resources. Another form of such meddling is to hamper economic development by disrupting government operations. The most glaring example of this can be found in filibusters by opposition lawmakers to block the government's funding requests.

This is an excerpted translation of Ta Kung Pao editorial published on June 3.

(HK Edition 06/04/2013 page1)