'Yellow'-only economy divorced from reality: China Daily editorial

That the anti-government forces in Hong Kong have classified businesses, mainly restaurants and clothes shops, as being yellow, blue or green, and marked them on maps on an app they have launched shows that they are willing to sacrifice other people's livelihoods for their own aggrandizement.

Under the noble excuse of "fighting for the future of Hong Kong", by calling on Hong Kong residents to endorse the businesses identified as yellow, which are those they believe support them, to be careful of the green they consider neutral, and boycott the blue that they regard as foes, they are willing to make the future extremely bleak for some.

Their trick is intended to coerce business owners to take their side by raising the possibility of customers being driven away or even violent retribution should they choose not to display their support .

It does not take too much knowledge in economics to discern the childish absurdity of the economic circle they tout in a city where 80 percent of fresh water, 100 percent of natural gas, 25 percent of electricity and most foods are from the Chinese mainland.

Not to mention that among the "yellow" shops, most are foreign-funded, and they are fed up with the chaos that has plunged the city into the first economic recession in a decade — it is estimated that the city's economy contracted 1.3 percent last year.

In fact, no businesses are immune from the rioters' violence, which has led to a dramatic decline in the number of visitors to the SAR.

However, despite their violent trashing of the city because they have taken umbrage at those who have not given them the deference they think they deserve for their hypocritical megaphoning of values they so eagerly deny others, the city has continued to demonstrate its appeal as there has been no major outflow of capital. Global businesses are obviously confident that the SAR government will be able to restore order and stability.

That is likely to be sooner forthcoming now that the central government has extended greater support to the SAR government with the appointment on Sunday of former Shanxi Party chief Luo Huining as the head of the liaison office in Hong Kong. Luo is the first provincial Party chief to assume the post, highlighting that the liaison office has greater importance in the central government's work and more efforts are to be made to promote Hong Kong's role in national development plan for the Pearl River Delta.

It is the extent to which Hong Kong will be integrated into the economic globalization through the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area development strategy customized for the region that will determine the city's future, not the "economic circle" hawked by Hong Kong's "yellow" memed me-me generation.