Chan backing for the security law figures

Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has written in support of the national security law at the end of the last month in his blog.

Chan is a political appointee and will, of course, be a mouthpiece.

Here we are only interested in the few figures he quotes in support of his "arguments," which are all given in paragraph five of his piece on May 29.

Interestingly, his blog has no English-language version.

The first figure he quoted was the HK$650 billion in funds raised through initial public offerings in the year to date, which is 30 percent up from the pre-national security law period, that is before its mid-2020 implementation.

I retrieved probably the same IPO data from Bloomberg and charted the year-on-year growth in a blue line in chart one.

The trend speaks for itself.

The second figure Chan quoted was the daily local stock market turnover average, which he put at HK$150 billion, 60 percent up from 12 months before the launch.

Chart one shows the monthly average of the daily market turnover year-on-year growth rate in red.

Again, the trend speaks for itself.

The third figure he quoted was the HK$34.9 trillion total value worth of assets and wealth management business at the end of 2020, which is said to be 20 percent higher than before launch.

I don't know exactly where Chan got his figures from.

Instead, I retrieved the foreign currency assets that measures how much outside money remains here.

The year-on-year growth trend in blue speaks for itself.

The last figure Chan quoted was total deposits of HK$15.3 trillion, 10 percent higher than before launch.

Again, the year-on-year growth trend in red speaks for itself.

Law Ka-chung has worked in the financial industry and the government for two decades. Reach him at mewe.com/join/lawkachung, facebook.com/kc.economist, lawkachung@gmail.com