Of privacy and opacity

摘要

"Hong Kong residents shall have freedom of speech, of the press and of publication." So begins Article 27 of Hong Kong's Basic Law. Those rights, ever delicate, are under attack. Just as troubling, so too is Hong Kong's reputation as Asia's most transparent financial market. As part of its effort to modernise the city's corporate rule book, the government proposed last year that full Hong Kong identity-card (HKID) numbers and home addresses no longer be required of directors. The idea attracted little attention at first. But in recent weeks several Chinese corruption scandals have been exposed by newspapers relying on analysis of such data (mainlanders with ill-gotten gains often stash them in Hong Kong). That has led to a row over the trade-off between directors' privacy and the public good.