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I never said that Kenya and HK were "exactly the same place"--merely that they had similar economic outlooks when they gained independence.

Mainland China develops very fast with Communist government in charge. The main difference between Kenya and HK is between tribal Africans who got contacts with civilization in XIX century and Chinese who have thousands years of high civilization.

In addition HK was the key center for British trade for more than hundred years (starting with being center of forced opium imports to mainland China).

BTW, British introduced democracy in HK at the last moment before transferring control to China. Somehow Brits did not like democracy in HK before.

Let's say for the sake of argument that you are correct, and that free-trade is bad and that government control of the economy is good. And let's ignore that prices would skyrocket, plummeting purchasing power into the toilet, causing massive reductions in the American standard of living. And let's ignore that the economy would stagnate, putting people out of work permanently becuase the economy would not be able to create new jobs to absorb them (unlike Schumpeterian creative destruction that occurs in a relatively unrestricted economy). Let's ignore logic and economics, in other words, but let's get down to the central point of your desire: a government-controlled economy. You'd also have to get rid of the stock market, because you've erased the market and thus any rational explanation for the stock market's existence. And then: How does the government maintain control of the economy? Controlling the means of production and the prices (which heretofore, as I explained, were set by the market which would now no longer exist). Then you'd have to determine your methods of distribution, because without market pricing, there is no mechanism to decide this except for a central planning committee--which is merely whittling the market down to a few people who cannot possibly have as much information to put into the calculus as the entire market would. Where have you ended up? On the Road to Serfdom.

And incidentally, what authority gives you the right to claim control over me and the fruits of MY labor: my right to sell my goods to whomever wants to buy them, and my right to use that profit to buy from whomever I want to buy from? How you claim this somehow in the name of God is what I find most offensive. Theocratic communism, therefore? Sucking at the teat of Marx while clutching a crucifix--just like the "liberation" theologists of South America. You and your ilk are merely cultural statists and collective economists; using Orwellian speak to claim that allowing the government to control the economy is "liberty".

And should you wish to quote on liberty, you might try quoting someone who actually believed in it:

“Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.” –Edmund Burke

and “The moment that government appears at market, the principles of the market will be subverted.” –Edmund Burke

“If goods can't cross borders armies will.” –Frederic Bastiat

"No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous." -- Benjamin Franklin, Principles of Trade, 1774

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread." -- Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821

AND especially:
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816