David Webb Photo: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg
A “China bubble” allowing free travel cross-border and to Macau is predicted to open on 1 October, National Day, by David Webb. On Webb-Site, David, whose fans are worrying about his cancer, says we will then be in a one-country “China bubble”, isolated from the rest of the world until mainland authorities are ready to open up. He expects China (with Hong Kong and Macau) will grant free travel to international visitors from 1 July 2022. The Winter Olympics in Beijing in February next year will either be postponed or teams only, he predicts.
David Webb’s fans will be interested to see how the value of his disclosed share portfolio has risen. A mathematician educated at Oxford, he’s so smart he fought his way onto the board of the HK Stock Exchange despite vested interests who did their best to keep it a closed shop. If you look up Webb-chips: current disclosed holdings, you will see that as of yesterday his share portfolio of 23 listed companies where he holds more than 5 per cent, which must be disclosed, has a market value of $1,375 million. And that’s just David’s disclosed holdings.
David Webb’s shareholdings Source: https://webb-site.com/dbpub/webbchips.asp
In an article marking 30 years in Hong Kong, David gives an update on his battle with prostrate cancer, which has spread through much of his body. “. . .13 months in I’ve bought myself some time with life-extending drugs, managing the cancer to maintain a decent quality of life, punctuated every four weeks by a drug ‘depot’ injection (jelly in my belly) and a couple of days of discomfort, watching more Netflix than I should. And pills, lots of expensive pills . . . This combined androgen deprivation therapy, also known as chemical castration, deprives hormone sensitive prostatic cancer cells of testosterone until they mutate to become ‘castration-resistant’, hopefully not for another few years. The therapy strains to convert men into boys, reversing puberty with interesting but minor side effects. I am ever more youthful . . .”
Listeners to RTHK’s Backchat may have noticed that David’s voice has changed. It’s no longer the raspy bass it used to be.
David laments the changes that have taken place in Hong Kong recently. “. . .Increasing government economic intervention, a rollback of political rights, and the red iron fist of authoritarianism are sucking the dynamism from the city and making it a less welcoming place, not just for international immigrants to HK, but for our brightest local minds planning their future and deciding whether it lies in Hong Kong.”
He writes, “there is nothing we can do about the politics and authoritarianism until China itself is ready for change, but within the new framework, HK can move back towards free-market policies and central planning, if its policymakers so choose. There is no reason why an authoritarian Government can’t overcome entrenched monopolies and remove legislative barriers to competition, for example. Indeed with a compliant legislature it should be easier in some respects. Trying to nudge them in that direction is where I will focus my remaining quota of ‘public interest time’, health permitting.”
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