Is Hong Kong a free place?

Depends on how you define it, really. Freedom is a very nebulous term, even if you ignore the no-cost ('free beer') meaning and focus on the liberty ('free speech') meaning. It certainly isn't a binary thing - 100% free or 100% non-free - but it's also not a simple scale - UK is 97% free, France is 95% free and so on. It is, instead, a combination of many factors, so any attempt to rank countries in order of freeness is doomed from the start.

This is prompted by a couple of articles on the Free-Market News Network site, which popped up on my regular Google News search for Hong Kong. I would never normally read this publication (although I do read another publication dedicated to the free market) so I have neither an axe to grind with them nor a larger feeling towards them.

The two articles clearly consider Hong Kong (and Macau, which I can't really comment on) to be one of the free-est places on earth - if not the most free. For the record, I consider myself a European liberal, and some of the things in the articles really smack of right-wing American Christian politics, an ideology I find repulsive, but in some ways they are correct - in others they are laughably wrong.

Hong Kong has a very free economy, except in a couple of specific senses. As the articles correctly point out, land distribution and control is very unfree, with most of the land owned by the government, which then leases it to development companies - of which there are a dangerously small number for true competition - who then build and lease properties. The majority of the land in Hong Kong is protected park/reserve land, which is a good thing, but it does mean that residential and commercial areas tend to be very dense, and property prices (to rent or buy) tend to be very high. The articles are also correct about taxes and fees for cars - although most of the costs only apply to new cars - but I don't think that's so much of a problem, since Hong Kong has very good and affordable public transport (busses, ferries, trams, taxis and trains) and simply does not have the space for any significant expansion of road traffic - so yes, it's a restriction on freedom, but not a particularly significant one. It's quite possible that this is an American bias - while the UK isn't exactly a car-free paradise, it doesn't suffer from the American love affair with petrol (gas), and I have quite enjoyed being car-free while living in Hong Kong.

The strangest thing in the articles, while also the thing most connected with the real world, is their mentions of guns. After stating, correctly, that private gun ownership in Hong Kong is prohibited, they point out that, therefore, "the people have no "ultimate check" against their government" - again, correctly, but missing the point by such a huge mark that it's almost comical. Hong Kong is indeed a very free place: free travel, freedom of the press (at least as much as most 'Western' presses), freedom of association, religion, occupation, a very free market - but it is missing one very very essential freedom: freedom to choose and remove the government. Hong Kong is not a democracy - it has almost all the freedoms which tend to be taken for granted in the West, except for universal suffrage.

There is a separate government and parliament - the Executive Council (ExCo), headed by the Chief Executive, the de facto Head of Government of Hong Kon, and Legislative Council (LegCo), respectively. In the last election, in 2004, 50% of the 60-seat LegCo was elected by universal suffrage by geographical constituencies, and 50% was elected by functional constituencies - essentially, special-interest groups, mainly industrial/commercial. ExCo is appointed by the Chief Exec, who in turn is elected by an Election Committee (EC) - most recently, in 2005, by an 800-member committee, again mainly consisting of representatives of industrial/commercial groups. In fact, the 2005 election was uncontested - 100 members of the EC most nominate any candidate, so once 701 members had registered their support for Sir Donald Tsang, the rest of the process became a formality.

There is a famous American quotation, for which I unfortunately cannot find a reliable source, which states that, paraphrasing, people may use four boxes, in ascending order of seriousness, to defend their liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box and the ammo (or cartridge) box. In Hong Kong, the people are seemingly welcome to use the soap box - with, on occasion, devastating results - largely welcome to use the jury box - with possibly weaker results - may use the ballot box - with little effect - and are forbidden from using the ammo box. In terms of political liberty, no, Hong Kong is therefore not particularly free. How much that matters is a question for another time...