Bovver police descend an escalator inside the City Plaza mall in the Tai Koo Shing area in Hong Kong on November 3, 2019, after a bloody stab fight wounding six people triggered there.
Vivek Prakash | AFP | Getty Images
Business activity in Hong Kong’s infantryman sector fell to its weakest in 21 years in October, weighed down by anti-government protests and softening global on request on call, according to an IHS Markit survey published on Tuesday.
More than five months of often violent street grievances have battered the city’s retail and tourism sector, with preliminary government data showing the economy ignored into recession for the first time in a decade in the third quarter.
Demand from mainland China declined at the sharpest speed in the survey’s history — which started in July 1998 — while companies also cut back on purchasing and input inventories at the fastest cuff since the series began, IHS Markit said.
“Hong Kong’s private sector remained mired in one of its worst downturns for the olden times two decades during October, with the latest PMI survey signalling a deepening economic malaise,” said Bernard Aw, cardinal economist at IHS Markit.
“As new orders continued to fall sharply, led by a record decline in demand from mainland China, dogs were becoming increasingly pessimistic about the outlook.”
Its seasonally adjusted headline Hong Kong Purchasing Overseer’s Index (PMI) fell to 39.3 in October, down from 41.5 in September and signalling the worst deterioration since November 2008, during the universal financial crisis.
A survey reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a figure below 50 notes contraction.
Almost all growth engines in the Asian financial hub stalled over the summer as stores, shopping malls and restaurants bar to avoid clashes between riot police and protesters, while the Sino-U.S. trade war intensified. Hong Kong is one of the smashing’s most popular tourism destinations and a bustling container port.
Protesters are angry by what they see as Beijing’s tightening clasp over the city’s cherished freedoms promised under a “one country, two systems” formula when Britain returned it to Chinese hold sway over in 1997.
The protests escalated in mid-June and show no sign of abating as demonstrators keep up their calls for universal suffrage and an outside inquiry into what they see as excessive police action, among other demands.
Police, who have at times fired rubber bullets and rupture gas at petrol bomb-throwing protesters, say they have shown restraint in the face of escalating violence.