Let me say a few words about Hong Kong which are lost to outsiders.
The era of small government is effectively over now in HK, as Donald Tsang famously said a couple of years back that “Positive non-interventionism is over”. The buzz words are government assistance in alleviate poverty through government acts. Education wise HK is producing generations of idiots that those with good results and the children of senior-ranking officials and rich are sent abroad.
The government is talking about putting money on the film industry to help its plight, and there are talks of buying back private BOT infrastructures (such as WHC and EHC) raised. And socially the government’s hand is starting to stretch into every facets of citizens’ lives with things like Signs, Idiotic Government PR Clips, and Police prosecutions of public smokers etc.
The businessmen in power are not truly pro-free market. They are like barons in a rationed economy and wanting government to enact laws favourable to them. An engineer with 8 years of experience may work for a 60-hour week for, what, US$4,000 a month - even less than a lot of senior sales consultants with only Form 5 education. Those are the top grow fat out of a quasi-market structure.
This is against a backdrop that most people who campaign for liberal democracy for Hong Kong have social democratic leanings as well, caused by the territory’s businessmen unwilling to lend support to push “one-man, one-vote” to elect the CE and directly electing all members of the Legislative Council. My guess is that HK will become more social democratic as it democratizes which is not good news.
The nanny state is coming to Hong Kong, and I doubt it will bode well for the territory. And even the current state of Hong Kong is no paradise either.
All of what you wrote is very interesting.
Thank you for the insights.
In most countries, HK is known to be very pro-capitalist and small government friendly, but maybe big changes are underway.