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Hong Kong — Most Americans do not know the name Carrie Lam, chief executive of the “Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China,” but her constituents here in this vivacious, sprawling city know the name of the American chief executive, and they pay close attention to his words — closer attention than he does, possibly.
Hong Kong boasts the freest economy in the world, with a Heritage Economic Freedom score of 90.2 and a first-place ranking for 24 years running. (The United States is foundering down in twelfth place with a score of 76.8.) Its 7.4 million residents conduct their daily affairs with a fascinating combination of Chinese prolificity and Swiss efficiency. In real (inflation-adjusted) dollars, its economy today is 16 times what it was 40 years ago, having grown at more than twice the U.S. rate in those years. It has low taxes and light regulation by global standards, but its freewheeling capitalism coincides with an urban public life that is remarkably orderly by comparison with American cities. (Chicago has one-third Hong Kong’s population and more than 30 times as many murders.) Hong Kong is, in short, a miracle of human ingenuity.
It is also, formally, a political subdivision of the so-called People’s Republic of China, a sprawling and dynamic nation under the thumb of a single-party police state that engages in repression that combines the worst of Orwell and Kafka with theatrical cruelty that would have left de Sade himself nauseated. Its people recently took to the streets to protest a measure supported by Lam — and very much desired by Beijing — that would have subjected Hong Kong residents to extradition to the Chinese mainland and trial under Communist law for a variety of possible offenses. The creaky caudillos in Beijing are masters at trumping up charges, and the law would have deepened the political shadow already darkening the atmosphere in Hong Kong.
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