You will rarely see me banging the drum of a regulator but calling the HK regulators incompetent is ludicrous....
100% agree with your views on SFC, speaking as someone who was licensed by them for ~ ten years. Policing as zealously as any in the developed world.
I don't share the concern of other posters of a perceived increased risk on HK assets, given the conservative margining levied by IB on HKEx derivatives. If IB is moving towards a type of country risk segregation, I wouldn't automatically conclude that's negative.
There's no shortage of well-established brokerages in HK, plus the new mainland players, for those concerned.