Letters to the Editor, April 28, 2013
Your comment columns and editorials frequently hail the concepts of freedom and free trade.

Your comment columns and editorials frequently hail the concepts of freedom and free trade.
Less frequently, fortunately, the very high rankings given to Hong Kong by various organisations for freedom, or similar, are reported with little or no analysis of the methodology used to produce their rankings.
It is surely time for your newspaper to open a public debate about what freedom means in Hong Kong.
I was moved to write this letter by your editorial ("Greed is killing best of old HK", April 23), in which you bemoan the loss of shops and restaurants which are being replaced by boutiques and luxury shops.
The question in my mind as I read the article was a simple one: if free trade is championed, how can we criticise its operation in the rental market?
The use of the word "free" is usually followed by a preposition, for example, free from, free to, free for. I suggest there is an urgent need to think deeply and clearly about what Hong Kong's free trade is for.
