The Tail that Wags the Dog part 1 of 2

After 150 years of holding it as a colony, Great Britain handed Hong Kong back to the Chinese with great fanfare on July 1, 1997. Hong Kong’s laissez fair capitalism and China’s command-and-control economy could not have been more different. As part of the handover agreement Beijing promised that they would leave Hong Kong the way it was for the next 50 years. “One country, two systems.” Hong Kong was to be a Special Administrative Region and would retain a large degree of autonomy.

The skeptics were dubious, at best. But happily –and somewhat surprisingly- that is exactly what has happened. For the last fourteen years, things have been merrily chugging along.

Which for Hong Kong means they have been busying doing what they do best: living their lives and growing prosperous.

For the Chinese, it means that they have been steadily trying to implement Capitalism with Chinese characteristics. It’s an interesting experiment.

It has always been my contention that economic freedom and individual freedom go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. At least, that's my belief. China -of course- is doing its darnedest to prove me wrong. For the last twenty years, Beijing has been liberalizing markets while simultaneously maintaining an iron grip on the hearts and minds of its people.

This Spring, a handful of would-be Chinese dissidents tried to bring the Middle Eastern/North African Jasmine Revolution to China. It lasted all of about seven minutes. This past weekend, a Beijing minister and members of his congregation were once again arrested when they tried to worship in a park. They are without a church building because the Communist government put extreme pressure on the landlord to not renew their lease. While China may be liberalizing markets, the rest of Chinese society remains quite illiberal.

But personal freedoms will find their way to China. It’s inevitable. As goods and people move back and forth across borders, they have a pesky little habit of bringing ideas along with them. And ideas have power. As a trip over the border to Shenzhen on any random Tuesday morning will confirm, the border between Hong Kong and China is incredibly fluid and porous. Goods, people –and yes, ideas- move back and forth freely between Hong Kong and China.

The quest for individual freedom is too universal and too powerful. The desire to speak and read and publish as you see fit, the human instinct to assemble with other like-minded people, the thirst to worship –or not worship- as one sees fit are all too fundamentally human to be repressed indefinitely.a