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| Is Hong Kong circa 2021 ideologically closer to Mao Zedong than Milton Friedman? |
Hong Kong used to be regarded as the world's shining example of the merits of free markets. No less than Milton Friedman--the most prominent libertarian thinker of his generation--lauded Hong Kong for its economic success due to following laissez-faire policies. Once upon a time, and for quite a long time, Hong Kong led the world in the ease of setting up and closing a business, allowing entrepreneurs manifold opportunities to come up with a formula to make it big. Government rarely made its presence felt back in the day.
Like all good things, however, this success story had to come to an end. It used to be that Hong Kong routinely topped or ranked near the top of the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation's annual Index of Economic Freedom. To be sure, Hong Kong remains a gateway to Asia due to its proximity to mainland China. But, with respect to economic freedom, recent encroachments by the PRC into its running have given us this strange result: Hong Kong isn't even being considered here anymore thanks to seemingly endless PRC meddling in its political economy. Hong Kong is now regarded as a PRC satellite instead of an independent entity worthy of separate consideration:
Hong Kong has been removed from an annual index of the world's freest economies because the think-tank that compiles the league table said the city was now directly controlled by Beijing. The announcement is a reputational blow for Hong Kong and comes as Beijing ramps up its bid to quash dissent after huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative US think-tank, publishes an annual Index of Economic Freedom ranking countries and territories for how business-friendly their regulations and laws are. Over the last 26 years Hong Kong topped the table for all but one year - a source of pride to the city's government which often used the accolade in its official press releases and investment brochures.
But when the 2021 ranking is released later on Thursday, Hong Kong will not appear because the report's authors believe the city is no longer independent enough of Beijing to justify separate inclusion. "The loss of political freedom and autonomy suffered by Hong Kong over the past two years has made that city almost indistinguishable in many respects from other major Chinese commercial centres like Shanghai and Beijing," Edwin J Feulner, the founder of the Heritage Foundation, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
And that's all she wrote.