Hong Kong aims to win back business with major finance summit
HONG KONG — After mass unrest in 2019, a pandemic that left it isolated from the world and the imposition of a national security law that has crushed dissent, Hong Kong is ready to turn the page. “Social disturbance is clearly in the past,” the city’s leader, John Lee, said Wednesday at the Four Seasons Hotel, where about 200 finance industry executives from around the world were gathered for a summit. “It has given way to stability, to growing business and community confidence in Hong Kong’s future. Law and order has returned; the worst is behind us.” But the summit — meant to signal that the Chinese territory long known as a regional financial powerhouse is again open for business — has been shadowed by some awkward realities. Hong Kong’s border with mainland China, its main economic driver, remains tightly closed because of pandemic restrictions. Participants in the summit, many of them American companies, have been criticized by rights groups and lawmakers who say they are compli...