Hong Kong's costs have aggravated the effects of the global downturn. On Friday, Hong Kong said its economy contracted in the third quarter, putting the city on the verge of its second recession since the Asian financial crisis in 1997. As China booms, the contrast between a sickly Hong Kong and its robust motherland is hard to avoid.
While some marquee companies, like Boeing, have come to town recently, others are leaving. Wal-Mart Stores, which used to do its procurement here, recently moved to Shenzhen, a Chinese boom town on the Hong Kong border. HSBC, known locally as Hong Kong bank, moved its China headquarters to Shanghai last year.
In the battle for Hong Kong's franchise, Shanghai has replaced Singapore as the rival that people here fear most. It has thrusting skyscrapers, stylish restaurants and powerful patrons in Zhu and President Jiang Zemin.
But Rowse is unmoved by Shanghai's charms. Saying "I have to couch this point carefully," he noted that the towers in the city's vaunted Pudong business district were still half-empty. And he said Shanghai could not compete with Hong Kong's rule of law or free flow of information.
Subtlety is not Rowse's strong suit. Through a career that has included stints as a caption writer at a local newspaper and as an investigator for Hong Kong's anti-corruption agency, Rowse has developed a reputation as a blunt, hard-driving operator, unafraid to make enemies.
"He is a take-no-prisoners kind of guy," said Kerry McGlynn, a former spokesman for the last British governor, Chris Patten. "His direct manner doesn't endear him to our more cautious colleagues. But he gets things done."
Perhaps his signal achievement was negotiating the 1999 deal with the Walt Disney Co to build a theme park here. He had to contend with Disney's famously tough negotiators and with other Chinese cities, notably Shanghai, which were lobbying ardently for the project.
"I believe quite honestly, without him in that role, the project never would have been realized," said Steve Tight, the managing director of Hong Kong Disneyland. "I can't think of the number of times we reached a bottleneck, and he was the person to break through with a creative solution."
Critics here say those creative solutions mainly helped Disney. With Hong Kong bearing nine-tenths of the park's US$3.6 billion in costs, commentators sniped that Mickey Mouse had taken Rowse to the cleaners.
Nonsense, he responded. (Actually, he used a common British expletive that means the same thing.) "Disney bragged about the deal to their shareholders, and I think some people accepted that at face value," he said, adding that Disneyland would pay huge long-term dividends.
The theme park is not scheduled to open until late 2005 or early 2006, but Rowse said he would be here for it. He said his decision to take Chinese citizenship was prompted by his realization that he never planned to return to Britain. He has been married twice, both times to Hong Kong Chinese.
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