HK's Economy, Not as Free as it Seems?

"The late economist saw what he wanted to see and ignored some fundamental accommodations in Hong Kong’s laisser-faire economy.

Milton Friedman was without doubt a great economist and, more important, one who, for good or ill, influenced politicians including Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. But his much quoted praise for Hong Kong was based on brief visits and a tendency, the norm among economists as most other humans, to see only what he wanted to see.

So Friedman saw low taxes, private ownership of most utilities, no tariffs, no foreign exchange controls, no government intervention in industry. The low ratio of government spending to GDP in Hong Kong contrasted with that of its then-sovereign power, Britain, and explained much about the divergent economic performances of “socialist” Britain and “free” Hong Kong...

What Friedman cared not to notice about the Hong Kong of the era of Cowperthwaite and later was that in three key areas of policy affecting the people the government was more socialist than its UK counterpart."

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