Hong Kong's Example for the Rest of Us
A look at Hong Kong vs. China through the years, and what that could mean for Brexit and everyone else.
by Marian L. Tupy
July 24, 2017
Twenty years ago this month, Britain handed sovereignty of Hong Kong to China. Today, the territory that the British State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Viscount Palmerston once described as “a barren island with hardly a house upon it” is one of the world’s greatest cities, and its citizens enjoy one of the world’s highest standards of living.
To get a sense of Hong Kong’s success, consider the life of an elderly Hong Kong resident. Imagine an 84-year-old woman, who was born in 1932 and escaped, along with many thousands, from the mainland to Hong Kong shortly after the 1949 Revolution. In 1950, she would have been just short of her 18th birthday. What kind of a world would she have known?