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Over the past several weeks, Hong Kong has been the site of some of the largest protests we’ve seen in history – by some accounts, over two million people took to the streets to protest Hong Kong’s proposed new extradition statutes. Following the protests, the current Chief Executive of Hong Kong temporarily suspended the bills but has not yet withdrawn them from consideration.
In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & CEO Bryan Strawser, Senior Consultant Jennifer Otremba, and Consultant Bray Wheeler discuss the current situation in Hong Kong. What should companies do in response to the current situation? What might the future hold? How did we wind up in this situation, to begin with, anyway?
Topics discussed include crisis management, business continuity, alternate workspaces, geographical shifting of work, physical security, global intelligence, and preparedness measures organizations should continue that operate in Hong Kong.
Episode Transcript
| Bryan Strawser: | Hello and welcome back to the Managing Uncertainty Podcast. This is Bryan Strawser, principal and CEO at Bryghtpath, and joining me for today’s episode about Hong Kong and what’s going on in the special administrative region of Hong Kong is…
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| Jenn Otremba: | Hi, this is Jenn Otremba, senior consultant at Bryghtpath.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Hi, this is Bray Wheeler, consultant at Bryghtpath.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So this is our deep dive episode where we’re going to get into a topic and talk about kind of its impact on business, and some processes and things that you should be thinking about. And we’re going to focus on the current situation in Hong Kong where if you’ve been paying attention, there have been protests like they have not seen protest before going on in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | These protests are targeted against a proposed bill which has now been suspended, but not withdrawn. This bill would have allowed the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to countries that Hong Kong does not have an extradition treaty with. That’s a really fancy way of saying that China would be able to charge Hong Kong citizens with a crime under Chinese law, and then have Hong Kong export Hong Kong citizens to mainland China for trial. Why is that a problem?
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| Bray Wheeler: | Well I think the big thing for Hong Kong is the fact that they enjoy some pretty good autonomy from China in terms of their control. And Hong Kong citizens are pretty passionate about that fact and-
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| Bryan Strawser: | They like their independence.
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| Bray Wheeler: | They like their independence. They like being different. And I think for them it’s a little bit of a easy backdoor for China to be able to get in there and grab protest leaders, political opponents, folks who speak ill of China. Citizens of Hong Kong, that’s their fear, is that it’s not just as simple as it’s made out to be, that it really gives China a lot of opportunity to go in and nab people and bring them out.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So I think we should probably talk just a little bit about Hong Kong’s unique status in the the world of China. Hong Kong was a British colony, but under treaty signed many, many, many years ago, it was given up in 1997 to China. So the British flag was lowered, the last governor general left, and Hong Kong became the special administrative region of China along with Macau, which did this I believe two years later. It’s a former Portuguese colony, now also it’s own zone in China.
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| Bryan Strawser: | But as a part of the treaty, China promised to respect the Hong Kong Basic Law, the Constitution and statutes that control Hong Kong. And they didn’t really meddle too much in Hong Kong except for an attempt, I think it was 2003 or 2004, where they tried to extend through statute their national security apparatus. And the Hong Kong citizens were like, no. And they voted it down. Or maybe it was withdrawn. I don’t know the specifics. But this has really been their first direct attempt in quite a while to interfere with the internal operations of Hong Kong. Despite the fact the Chinese have a military base right on the harbor, but they don’t really do much other than fly flags and drive tanks around and stuff.
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| Jenn Otremba: | They don’t do much yet.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Yet. So the law. As the law’s proposed, and they head towards debate, these protests were quite significant. I mean Bray, hundreds of thousands and millions of people, right?
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| Bray Wheeler: | It is two million, were some of the estimates.
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| Bryan Strawser: | I think the last protest, yeah, north of two million. Which by the way, that’s a quarter, 20 or 25%, of the total population of Hong Kong. It’s just massive.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yeah, they were saying this was the biggest percentage of protesters to a population that has ever occurred, that they think on-
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| Bryan Strawser: | It’s nuts.
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| Jenn Otremba: | And so far nonviolent for the most part, right?
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| Bryan Strawser: | Yes.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yeah. There was-
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| Jenn Otremba: | Certainly disruptive, but-
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| Bray Wheeler: | … some skirmishes. I believe there reports of tear gas and some confrontation with Hong Kong police as kind of in the early stages of the protest. But the last few days or last kind of segments of the protest has been fairly peaceful considering you have millions of people out on the streets.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So one interesting aspect of all this was the business community plays a pretty significant role in the governance of Hong Kong. Their legislature in Hong Kong has a really unique relationship with the business community in two ways. The business community controls about a third of the legislature directly just through the way that representation is gained in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | But also there’s a couple large individuals and companies that control a significant portion of Hong Kong infrastructure like water, and sewer, and things that have been privatized that are just very different than how we think of them in the US. So they kind of have a very strong influence on the government that isn’t the way we think of business influence on government in the West.
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| Bray Wheeler: | I think one controls grocery stores, like all the grocery stores in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | I believe that’s correct. Yeah.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Really? I didn’t know that.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yeah, there’s kind of a titan of industry for each segment of Hong Kong, so to speak. And so they have some influence.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So there’s a pretty insightful article in the New York Times from June 20th, so about four days ago, that says that the Chinese Government’s headquarter in Hong Kong was the home of a meeting about six weeks ago where the Chinese government summoned the 200 most powerful business leaders and told them that if you have worries about this bill, keep them to yourself.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Which they would.
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| Jenn Otremba: | It would be in their best interest, I think.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So I think they’re a little scared, right? I mean they-
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| Jenn Otremba: | It’s a threat is what it is.
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| Bryan Strawser: | It seems like a not veiled threat.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Well, based on everything that China’s been doing over the last few years at least of corruption hunting within China among their business community and their political leaders. Yeah. That’s not such a subtle threat, that’s a, this is happening and keep quiet and you’ll enjoy your position of power in Hong Kong.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right.
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| Bryan Strawser: | The business community’s concern began back in March as this bill was initially being discussed when the US Chamber of Commerce said that it had serious concerns about the bill that would reduce the appeal of Hong Kong to international companies considering Hong Kong as a base for regional and international operations.
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| Bryan Strawser: | By May 17th, is when this 200 person-ish meeting was held at the Chinese government headquarters in Hong Kong. And then, two of the senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party, Han Zheng and Wang Yang spoke publicly in Hong Kong in support of the bill which was considered highly unusual for that kind of direct influence on internal Hong Kong legislation.
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| Bray Wheeler: | But I think that’s part of the Hong Kong protestors big worry here too is not only is this bill allows China to just come in and, they think, snatch folks right out of the country and extradite them, and then charge them, it’s also the influence that China is overtly having with this bill. And that’s always been part of their worry is that direct open advocacy by China in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | And we might use the term snatch, but really we’re talking here, this would all be done through the veil of-
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| Bray Wheeler: | Right.
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| Bryan Strawser: | … legitimacy through the courts, right? They would charge somebody. China has very broad police power inside of China in terms of what their criminal law code defines. I mean political corruption, for example, is a death penalty offense in China. Whereas, we don’t even arrest people for that here in the US, I think.
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| Jenn Otremba: | No.
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| Bryan Strawser: | But what this would allow, what the bill would allow the Chinese government to do is indict through their process, charge somebody with a crime in mainland China, and then using the Hong Kong courts, force Hong Kong to extradite them to China for trial. Because it would just be an extradition, right? So that’s where the fear comes from. If you’re not going to follow our direction, we’ll just charge you and bring you to China where you might wind up with a bullet in the back of your head.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Or however they’re executing people nowadays.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Which is certainly concerning for the citizens. But, what about the expats that are United States citizens working in Hong Kong?
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| Bryan Strawser: | Right. And they’re obviously subject to Hong Kong law-
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right. Of course.
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| Bryan Strawser: | … that’s the way wait works, but could China charge them and extradite them because they were in Hong Kong?
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| Jenn Otremba: | I think according to this new law they could. Right?
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| Bray Wheeler: | Right, right.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So the business impact. So it looks like the first major protest was on June 9th. There were hundreds of thousands of people that filled the streets in Hong Kong, and that’s when the business impact started coming. The next day, June 10th, and again I’m referring to the New York Times article from June 20th, a pro-Beijing lawmaker, Abraham Shek, who also is a director of a company called Goldin Financial. They’re a major real estate developer in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | They convened a board meeting. And Goldin Financial was on the verge of completing and closing a property deal worth $1.4 billion where they were going to buy and develop a portion of the old airport in Hong Kong, which has been replaced by the new airport. And their board walked away from the deal. They broke the deal. They gave up a $3.2 million penalty. And their public statement was the social contradiction and economic instability in Hong Kong makes it impossible for us to move forward with this real estate deal.
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| Bray Wheeler: | That’s the real time implications of not only this deal, but the pressure that they’re starting to see in the manifestation of Hong Kong citizens kind of opposing us.
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| Jenn Otremba: | That’s a pretty significant financial impact for the community.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So that was kind of the first brick that came out of the wall in the business community. The bigger move happened a few days later when they had protesters that surrounded the Legislative Council buildings. So that’s the legislature for Hong Kong. And the protesters kept lawmakers from debating the bill. Because of their presence, there was tear gas and rubber bullets fired by law enforcement. That’s rare in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | And this is right in the business district. So the business folks were watching this happen through their skyscraper windows down below. And that’s when the squirming started in the business world. There was another billion dollar property deal that was canceled, or I guess I should say postponed. The company refused to comment on that. And, there there seemed to be money movement out of Hong Kong by panicked investors. Which Hong Kong being the finance center it is, that’s never what they want to see happen there. And then on June 15th is when the bill was postponed by the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Well, for the business community to delay an investment, they’re facing some competition in Asia Pacific, especially from Singapore, I think the article referenced that too. But Singapore is becoming a pretty significant hub for global business and global investing.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Correct.
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| Bray Wheeler: | And to watch that stuff walk out of Hong Kong and into Singapore, that’s super concerning for the business community.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right. I mean if it becomes both easier legally and financially better for corporations, that’s…
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| Bryan Strawser: | There was also some noise around the, I mean there’s a lot of noise about this in the United States, but one interesting move that the Democrats in the United States House considered… Speaker Pelosi commented that perhaps it’s time to revisit our statutory relationship with Hong Kong. Because if China is going to exert influence like this, perhaps we should treat Hong Kong not as a separate legal entity, international entity, but we should treat it as part of China if that’s the way that they’re going to approach…
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| Bryan Strawser: | And what that really means, just if you take in the context of the trade war, we have tariffs currently on Chinese manufactured goods that are shipped out of China. That tariff is 25%. So it’s pretty significant. There’s no tariff on Hong Kong goods coming in. If we were to treat Hong Kong like China, then we would require tariffs on Hong Kong shipments the way that we do on China shipments, and that would have a pretty significant impact on the Hong Kong economy, and our relationship with businesses.
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| Bryan Strawser: | And let’s face it, most American companies, when they enter Asia, they start with Hong Kong. That’s their base of operations. That’s what we did at our previous employer, right? We ran stuff out of Hong Kong for all of Asia, even though where our bodies were and where the work was being done was in mainland China.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So I think it for businesses this, depending upon the directions that this goes, and like most things China does, it will probably take decades for them to get to where they’re going. But when they get to where they’re going, it’s not going to look like what it does today.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah. I’m not going to be as surprised if we start seeing businesses finding a new home for their expats. Maybe Singapore is the answer, but certainly not for the headquarters like a lot of companies have.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Right. Singapore’s not that far away by air.
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| Bray Wheeler: | No.
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| Bryan Strawser: | It’s just not as convenient as Hong Kong.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right.
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| Bray Wheeler: | It’s not as close to China where stuff was getting produced. And adding, just from a global standpoint, even if the US was to walk away or reconsider how they view them, other countries are going to do the same. Especially those that are close kind of partners, United Kingdom, Australia, those other partners because it’s been that kind of easy entry point, that easy British entry point into Asia. We reevaluate and we find a different one. Or stuff gets shifted.
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| Bryan Strawser: | For a lot of companies, particularly US companies, their large presence manufacturing, or sourcing, inspection for [inaudible] goods and stuff is really managed out of Shenzhen because it’s a special economic zone. There’s some tax benefits to that. There’s a large and available labor supply that’s skilled and talented and speaks English in a lot of cases. The expats though, all live in Hong Kong, and they commute to Shenzhen which is a 30 to 45 minute drive depending upon where in Shenzhen that you’re going from Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | And if you go there and sit the border crossing and watch, there’s a ton of people going north in the morning and a ton of people coming back south at the end of the day. So yeah, I think this is, as you say, about expats, I think this would have an impact over time on what that starts to look like. So what should companies do now that we’ve talked a little bit about the context of what’s happened.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah, the proactive right now, right? We talked a little bit earlier before we started the podcast on business continuity plans, right Bray?
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| Bray Wheeler: | Really re-evaluating what you have in place right now for both BC, and even into that crisis management kind of communication piece. Just being able to know what’s going on, what is the business feeling, what are your employees feeling, your expats. All those pieces and understanding kind of where you’re at right now so that you can start reevaluating what might we need to shift, what do we need to update, are their contact lists? I mean, as granular as that. Do we need to shift our processes just enough that we can respond appropriately to help? Then shifting into that protection and that security for employees and expats and things like that, facilities.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah. That proactive approach to how do we prepare for if this happens, if it doesn’t happen, and all the time in between. I think you kind of nailed on it with communicating. This is everywhere, at least in the United States right now. All over the news. So how are we communicating to our employees here in the United States, and our expats that are working in countries throughout the world? And what that does that look like?
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| Bray Wheeler: | One, I think it gets back to the kind of mantra that we’ve used with some of our clients, and I certainly like, I probably say way too much, but it’s the overrespond, don’t overreact. So this isn’t an overreaction point because Hong Kong will likely continue to operate as Hong Kong for quite a while.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right. It’s going to be awhile I think.
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| Bray Wheeler: | But, it’s worth taking this as an opportunity to say, you know what, what are our business processes, what are our continuity plans, what are our security policies for Hong Kong. Or even internationally, just looking at it from a broad scale of if this were to happen somewhere else, or have we updated those in the last six months or a year?
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah. Well, and then response to some of the protests. We’ve certainly seen protests around the world that had a serious effect on how our businesses are able to operate, and what that looks like. So I think it’s a good time, like you said, to really evaluate the things like what do your protests protocols look like? What are you telling your employees to do if this happens? Not just in China, but anywhere.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Because you can’t assume it’s going to be as peaceful as it has been. You never know. It only takes, and we saw that play out, Arab Spring.
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| Jenn Otremba: | That’s what I was thinking.
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| Bray Wheeler: | It only takes little moments. The shop cart vendor to get killed, whether purposely or accidentally, those little moments for this to kind of go boom. And Hong Kong’s not very big.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Well then what happens, I mean if your back is up against the wall, which I think a lot of folks in Hong Kong might be thinking that that’s what this is really going to be like, what’s there to lose in the escalating the conflict? And so what does that mean for businesses that are there? I mean in terms of, we’ve talked about security posture a little bit, and we’ve talked about the continuity planning of what if you can’t use your main facility, what if you can’t get to work because of the protests? What if your technology capabilities are severed and you lose network or internet connectivity? I think those are real risks that companies in Hong Kong should be thinking about. And then on top of that, I would throw just the, we’ve talked about expats, but I think just business travel.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Absolutely.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Folks who go to Hong Kong for a lot of reasons. Hong Kong is a intersection point for a lot of folks going to other places nearby on short haul flights because it’s easy to get in and out of the new airport. I say new, it’s been there almost 25 years. But, to the airport to get to China and elsewhere for your travel. So we got a lot of folks transiting the airport, and although the airport’s not downtown, I mean who knows where some of the risk goes with all of this. I think those are all challenges the companies should be thinking about.
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| Bryan Strawser: | And then where do you go to get info? I think we talked about this on our Facebook Live last week, we were talking about Iran, but where do you go to get information so that you understand what’s really happening? The good news about Hong Kong, I think there’s good mainstream media reporting, right? We’ve used a Wall Street Journal article and a New York Times article for this particular podcast episode in terms of prep. But Bray, where else could folks go to learn more?
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yeah. I think for Hong Kong, to your point, they enjoy some freedoms of the press that press in China don’t necessarily have. So there’s a lot of visibility there that you can’t find with other conflicts that Hong Kong, and because of its stature and its history, there’s a lot of connection there back to United Kingdom media, US media, other international kind of news outlets.
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| Bray Wheeler: | I think the other places, we certainly have used a lot of different vendors and things like that in the past. [IS WES 00:21:48] and their partnership with Control Risks. A lot of companies use them for different travel and security and things like that. They’re going to have a bead on stuff. There’s other companies. Who else? Worldcue also has some. So there’s a lot of different vendors out there that will give you some of that. You’re going to pay for the customization for some of that, but there’s a lot of open source.
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| Bray Wheeler: | I think the other piece to the advantage of Hong Kong is to be able to talk to your employees, and your expats, and your offices in Hong Kong and have those conversations with them. What are they hearing? What’s being talked about there? What are they seeing on the ground? Because that’s going to be more valuable to you as a business than potentially what a vendor or the news is going to say. Because they’re able to spell out, hey, this is impacting the street that our stuff goes down, or this is the main road that everybody takes to get to the office, and the protesters are camped out on it right now. And that arms you with some better decision making. So I think it’s not only looking at outside sources, but really having those internal conversations and using your folks on the ground.
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| Jenn Otremba: | That, and I think developing partnerships with other companies in the area. I think once things really start happening, if they do, that’s not the time to be figuring this out. Developing those partnerships now is really important. Joe up the street’s going to know something that you don’t know, and continuing having those conversations.
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| Bryan Strawser: | They’re the best sources of information-
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| Jenn Otremba: | Absolutely.
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| Bryan Strawser: | … from my perspective. And even if you’re competitors, I think you’re not talking about competitive information, you’re talking about protecting your people and protecting your assets. And I think you’re going to find that most companies are open to sharing information about what they know in exchange for what you know about what’s happening on the ground.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Particularly around safety, security.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yeah. Well, we saw that with, I know we keep referencing Arab Spring, and I don’t think we’re calling this the next Arab Spring, but the size of those protests, and then kind of the complexities of those protests in Hong Kong can very well get there if it continues. We saw that with trying to get folks out and joining with other companies to say, “Hey, we got a flight out. We got rum. Get your folks there.”
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| Bryan Strawser: | Bill me.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Well, I think-
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yep. Bill me later.
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| Jenn Otremba: | … hitting on it because that’s the situation when I think all three of us were working at the same organization at the time dealing with that specific situation. So that was scary for everyone involved. And like you said, it’s not that yet, but doesn’t mean that that couldn’t become that.
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| Bryan Strawser: | I think this protest is, at least the big two over the weekends, a few weeks back when the bill got pulled, and they protested the next day as well, the one that had two million, they estimated it as two million folks, I think that’s much larger than anything we saw during Arab Spring. I mean even the strongest days of protest at Tahrir square in Cairo, I think there was a few hundred thousand people, if that. I guess I don’t remember. It was 2011, right?
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah.
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| Bryan Strawser: | 2012.
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| Jenn Otremba: | But you remember we had to make some very, very quick decisions, and we had to hold our executives to the point where we needed them to help us make those decisions so that we could execute.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Yeah. I think that the characteristics of the Arab Spring protests necessitated quick decisive action on some things, and we had to make some fast choices, and we had to take what could be considered some extreme steps to protect the offices and the employees and things like that. I think with Hong Kong, we have the benefit of a little bit of the size and scale of it has been described unlike the protest size we’ve seen in the past. So there is certainly complexities there. I think the advantage is nobody’s trying to topple anything yet.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yet.
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| Bray Wheeler: | So that it’s a maintaining of the status quo, or maintaining of their sense of independence, and so they have something to be gained by not taking extreme steps in terms of kind of burning the place down.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Right. And I think from a business perspective, we had a lot of lessons learned out of previous incidents so we can take those lessons, and really, we have time here to talk through plans to develop radar screens so that we can monitor the situation-
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| Bryan Strawser: | And see what’s coming.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Absolutely.
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| Bryan Strawser: | I mean I think this is a little different from Arab Spring in terms of kind of Bray’s point. I don’t think the end game here is going to look like it did in Morocco, and Egypt, and Bahrain, and some of the places we were dealing with back during Arab Spring.
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| Jenn Otremba: | I hope not.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Yeah, I mean I don’t think it’s going to be the it’s going to get so violent that you got to get everybody out of there. I mean that would just be like civil war in Hong Kong-
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| Jenn Otremba: | It would.
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| Bryan Strawser: | … for you to get to that compared to what I think we’re going to see is just peaceful democratic protest. It’s just going to be disruptive, and we don’t know the end game of what this means. Does it topple the Chief Executive in Hong Kong?Does she resign over time? This was her bill. Does the head of the security bureau leave? Because he’s the one that wrote the bill and brought the bill to the Council. But I don’t think we’re going to see the collapse of government like we did in Egypt, for example, where the whole thing went down with Mubarak, and the military engaged in a coup in order to take control. I don’t think we’re going to see that in Hong Kong.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Because I mean one of the biggest lessons learned for me out of Arab Spring was just how fast it moved Cairo, or Egypt I should say, to where the US Embassy staff couldn’t even get back to the embassy. Right. They were managing their own crisis situation from a security perspective from their condos a few miles from the embassy. I mean it was [inaudible] from the State Department on this was just nuts. But nobody saw it moving that fast. And we encountered the same thing as we were dealing with our former employer and the things we needed to do there.
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| Jenn Otremba: | I think that one big lesson learned, I think that I kind of took away from that experience too is that because it happens so quickly, I think you couldn’t expect help from the United States Government in those situations. We had to act much quicker. And again, I don’t think that the protests are going to be as violent here. And I don’t think that the end game is going to be the same. But some similarities as far as the disruption could be that that we can no longer have offices in a certain area of the city or things like that. And we can’t expect help from external sources. We may have to do it ourselves. So what does that look like if it were to come to that?
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| Bray Wheeler: | Hopefully touch one last time on kind of the differences here, is that even law enforcement here, and those partnerships that companies and businesses kind of appreciate, I think in Hong Kong with police and law enforcement, they’re not defending an individual. As we were seeing in Arab Spring, we often see in some of these other kind of unrest situations, they’re really trying to control the state. It’s a police action similar to what we see in the United States with protests and things like that.
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| Bryan Strawser: | They’re following the rule of law.
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| Bray Wheeler: | They’re trying to enforce the law and that’s all. As opposed-
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| Bryan Strawser: | Yeah, it’s a great comparison because what we saw in Cairo was that the police were defending Mubarak until the coup.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Till the tide turned.
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| Bryan Strawser: | Until the tide turned.
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| Jenn Otremba: | Yeah.
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| Bray Wheeler: | And I think that’s Hong Kong citizens’ greatest fear eventually is that that independence that the police-
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| Bryan Strawser: | That’s a great point.
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| Bray Wheeler: | … present will shift at some point.
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| Bryan Strawser: | And they’ve already expressed this fear because I think a lot of the protesters were unhappy with the police response to the protests over the prior weekend. They thought there were challenges in how the police responded.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Well they’re even starting to get nervous, the citizens are, of those elected officials and people that are in charge of the government, and how much influence and connection they have back to China. And I think that’s just Hong Kong citizens are used to that degree of autonomy, and they’re kind of begrudging acceptance of China’s influence, or connection to China, that there they’re really trying to hold the line. They’re trying to hold the line against Chinese influence, and they’re starting to see some of that deteriorate with the business community not speaking up early, or the heads of state and the political officials not kind of going to bat for them, that they’re really taking it upon themselves.
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| Bray Wheeler: | And I think that’s, the long game here for them is to try to hold off China. And so that’s where the uncertainty and that’s where the complexity really kind of manifests. Is it going to turn tomorrow? Probably not. But eventually, it’s going to get there. And so I think the business community and their employees and their expats have to start thinking about what does this look like? What does this look like 10 years from now? Does this change? But what can we do today to make sure that our operations continue? But what does this business look like going forward?
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| Bryan Strawser: | Let’s wrap this up by just talking about some particular triggers that might happen that would cause alarm. And I think one is that this bill comes back to life. Right now, it’s suspended. It hasn’t been withdrawn. Protesters asked that it be withdrawn. That didn’t happen. Carrie Lam, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong suspended, meaning it’s not going to be heard. But, she can just bring it back, it’s my understanding, anytime she wants. And a future Chief Executive can do the same thing because the bill has not been withdrawn. So, in my mind, that’s definitely a trigger that’s going to mean more protest, more disruption, more unrest. What are some others that can happen?
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| Bray Wheeler: | I think one of the things, kind of positive triggers perhaps, is the business community becoming a little bit more overt in their disagreement with the bill, and talking about it as such. And being a little bit, I say courageous, but more willing to speak out against it, or to detail out what the implications are, more so than they’ve already done. And especially in the future, if they do it kind of in advance of any protests, I think their voice carries a lot of weight as we’ve discussed.
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| Jenn Otremba: | I think furthermore the citizens I really speaking up as well. So they’re not going to sit back and just wait and see what happens. They’re going to speak up and voice their concerns as well. And I think that’s a very positive thing that’s coming out of this.
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| Bryan Strawser: | I think another trigger to watch forward to, it’ll be a negative trigger, but it would be more direct action by China to interfere in the internal operations of Hong Kong. And I actually think that’s going to happen. I think that’s probably the longterm plan of some of this. But I think the more that you see more direct interaction by authorities in mainland China inside of Hong Kong. And the more challenging the security situation, the disruption on the ground is going to be.
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| Bray Wheeler: | Well I think if they end up charging any of these kind of big business players from Hong Kong in China with corruption similar to what they’ve been doing with Chinese business leaders, if they somehow get to the point where we’re going to charge somebody in Hong Kong for this to help justify, that’s going to be a little bit of a bellwether and a trigger point.
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| Bray Wheeler: | I also think just watching the protests, I don’t think, to your point Jenn, I don’t think the protests are going to go away. But how the protesters are protesting. If there’s a change from kind of the peaceful kind of just mass collection of folks to make their point, because that seems to be enough for them right now, is to just show up in mass. If they start changing their tactics, this could take several different routes.
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| Bryan Strawser: | So that’s it for this edition of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast. Join us next week for two editions, our news and current events edition at the beginning of the week, and a deep dive into an interesting topic later in the week. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.
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