City in Focus: Hong Kong
Prayer Briefing
Hong Kong is a global city. A Special Administrative Region (SAR), Hong Kong functions as an economic city-state that, in some ways, is independent of China though it is under Chinese governance. Established initially beneath British rule, Hong Kong is a capitalist enclave in the midst of the socialist Peoples Republic of China (PRC), a stirring global giant of industry and commerce. More than 7 million people live in this densely populated mega-city.
But it takes more than numbers to earn the status of “global city.” What the title indicates is that Hong Kong is a hub of information and financial exchange for the rapidly expanding markets that network around the globe. As these globalized markets spread with gordian overlap, certain cities are emerging with global influence that knows no borders or boundaries. These cities, such as New York, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, are known as centers of prosperity and innovation and, as a result, draw a steady stream of investors, developers, tourists ,and, of course, slaves.
Rapid expansion and economic growth comes at a high cost in human collateral. Amid the frenetic erection of high-rises, international corporate offices, technology sectors, and luxury hotels and accommodations in a city like Hong Kong, is an unmonitored margin that gives way to thousands of labor related jobs; and cloaked under everything from construction to escort services, modern day slaves are easily hidden. To neighboring countries that struggle in poverty and squalor, a global city just next door is the opportunity of a lifetime.
Manila, the Philippines is less than a two hour flight from Hong Kong; and to Manila’s impoverished masses, Hong Kong might as well be the city of gold. Scores of would-be workers obtain short-term visas to Hong Kong in hopes of making money to send back to their families. This sort of poverty osmosis, however, is precisely the sort of circumstance that favors an enterprising trafficker. For example, through debt bondage, a scheme where traffickers pay for travel for a worker then force them to pay the money back with exorbitant interest by means of the trafficker’s choosing, many Filipino women sign up for a house cleaning job only to end up being forced to prostitute themselves. The Triads, an infamous Chinese organized crime syndicate, is thought to play a major role in the recruitment and sale of trafficking victims in Hong Kong. Although Hong Kong denies that even minor trafficking exists, the teeming masses of Filipino women who fill the seedy clubs in the Wan Chai prostitution district betrays otherwise.
What’s worse is that the money sent home by these workers amounts to billions of dollars in the Philippines economy. The funds these women earn from prostitution are playing a key role in rescuing the Philippines from financial collapse. To Hong Kong, Filipino women are a willing work force; to human rights organizations, they are victims of the highest order; but to the Philippine government, they are heroes.
The brutal lifestyle inflicted upon the poorest people in the world in order to support the expansion of the global economy is an injustice that is beyond the scope of anyone’s understanding. The Filipino workers, many of them in prostitution, may return to Hong Kong again and again, even after they’ve escape trafficking, because they have no other job opportunities. As we pray for the victims of human trafficking, we must acknowledge, as well, that we are witnessing the stirrings of a global movement that will culminate in Babylon: the greatest global city the world has ever seen or will ever see.
Prayer Points:
Pray for revival in the Chinese organized crime syndicate: the Triads.
Ask for revival in Hong Kong, that the Gospel would break forth in power.
Pray that righteous laws would be enacted that guarantee honest wages and a lifestyle of dignity for all immigrant workers.
