So what? Hong Kong’s COVID-19 success won’t be why it remembers 2020

Abstract

Hong Kong made it through the first half of 2020 relatively unscathed by Covid-19, largely due to a first-class public-health response strongly supported by the city’s population. The impact of the disease on its economy will be severe, but society, prepared psychologically and practically by its encounter with SARS in 2003, will survive the outbreak with little trauma. Politically, the outbreak has been turned to advantage by the government to dampen the city’s anti-government protests. As a result of its smart handling of Covid-19, the disease will not be Hong Kong’s big event of 2020; rather it will be relegated to very much second place, far behind the Chinese government’s imposition of a National Security Law.