Hong Kong has been removed from an annual index of the world’s freest economies because the think tank that compiles the league table said that the territory was now directly controlled by Beijing.
The announcement is a reputational blow for Hong Kong and comes as Beijing ramps up its bid to quash dissent after pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.
The Heritage Foundation, a US-based think tank, publishes an annual Index of Economic Freedom, ranking countries and territories for how business-friendly their regulations and laws are.
Photo: Anthony Wallace, AFP
Over the past 26 years, Hong Kong topped the table for all but one year — a source of pride to the territory’s government, which often used the accolade in its official news releases and investment brochures.
However, with this year’s ranking to be released after press time last night, Hong Kong is not on it because the report’s authors believe that it is no longer independent enough of Beijing to justify separate inclusion.
“The loss of political freedom and autonomy suffered by Hong Kong over the past two years has made that city almost indistinguishable in many respects from other major Chinese commercial centers like Shanghai and Beijing,” Heritage Foundation founder Edwin Feulner wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.
Hong Kong’s “ties to Beijing are increasingly forged in steel,” Feulner said, adding that its pre-handover “traditions of English common law, freedom of speech and democracy have weakened significantly.”
Feulner is a vocal critic of Beijing and chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
The Hong Kong government embraced the think tank’s index each year it came out.
In 2019 — when Hong Kong topped the table for the 25th consecutive year — the government said that it showed the territory’s “economic resilience, high-quality legal framework, low tolerance for corruption, high degree of government transparency, efficient regulatory framework and openness to global commerce.”
Last year it fell from the top spot for the first time, replaced by Singapore, after Beijing imposed a National Security Law on Hong Kong.
The territory’s top commerce official at the time brushed off concern and predicted that Hong Kong would soon return to the top of the table.
Instead it and Macau are to be counted as part of China, which languishes in 107th place in the index, between Uganda and Uzbekistan, in a section where economies are rated as “mostly unfree.”
Beijing says the security law was needed to restore stability to Hong Kong, but it has also dramatically altered the legislative and judicial relationship with mainland China.
Chinese leaders have announced that they want to ensure only “staunch patriots” run the territory, including within its judiciary.
That has created some jitters within the international business community, especially as Beijing falls out with a growing list of Western powers.
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