Worsening Sino-US ties, strict Covid rules and the crackdown on dissent have dented the territory’s fabled allure as a business hub, say expats.

In July 2018, Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, wrote an article in the best-known local English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, stressing to Americans the territory’s unique position as an Asian business hub.

“The US is forgetting the differences between Hong Kong and China. Let’s remind them,” she wrote. “Hong Kong continues to have a robust and hearty infrastructure of values, practices and institutions that could not contrast more starkly with those of the mainland system.”

Now, packing up and leaving the city after more than 20 years there, Joseph listed “dizzying changes” since that op-ed. In 2019, the “anti-extradition bill protests kicked things off … then we had worsening US-China relations … now there’s Covid.”