Singapore, Dec. 10 -- When billionaire investor George Soros unleashed a speculative attack against the Hong Kong dollar and stock market in 1998, then Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji vowed to avert a financial crisis in the city "at all costs".
China was not that well off then, but dug into its war chest - foreign exchange reserves of about US$139 billion at the end of 1997 compared with about US$3 trillion (S$4.1 trillion) as of end-September this year - to bail out the former British colony, which had reverted to Chinese rule just a year earlier.
Fast forward two decades. Today, Hong Kong has plunged into recession and is mired in its worst political crisis after about six months of escalating protests against a now-withdrawn Bill that wo...