The Escalator
What started as LinkedIn posts that kept getting longer, sharper, and harder to ignore, now lives here.
Why This Exists
I kept writing long-form commentary on LinkedIn, on Hong Kong, on corporate misconduct, on geopolitics, on immigration systems that don’t work, and it kept outgrowing the platform. Posts turned into essays. Essays got cited by Yale economists and picked up by editors. People started asking where they could read more.
The Escalator is the answer. It’s where the writing goes when it’s too long for a feed, too pointed for someone else’s editorial line, and too sourced to dismiss.
It also covers daily life in Hong Kong, the frictions of cross-cultural living and marriage, and whatever else I feel like writing about on a given morning. Not everything here is an investigation. Some of it is just a guy on a minibus with an opinion.
I’m a Hong Kong-based writer with a low tolerance for euphemism, a long memory for institutional nonsense, and a habit of following stories past the point where most people get bored.
Who
Adam Clermont. American attorney, Hong Kong- and US-qualified, 25+ years in criminal and regulatory litigation. Background in corporate finance, cross-border disputes, logistics, immigration, and human rights advocacy. Author of Hong Kong Belongs to Hongkongers (Amazon #1 New Release), Profit Before People, and The Wound That Never Closed: Taiwan, China and the End of Strategic Ambiguity. Contributor to The Loadstar Premium. Seen on NBC.
I married a Hongkonger. I chose this city. I write about it the way someone who lives here, not someone who parachutes in, actually sees it.