My Take | Why worry about America’s arrogant conservatives?
- As long as there is money to be made, serious investors will answer the siren’s call even if the Heritage Foundation declares Hong Kong a Stalinist-Bolshevik economy
Sometimes, even when they think they are defending Hong Kong and Beijing, the city’s old-fashioned leaders are merely embarrassing themselves – and all of us. The latest letter by Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po to The Wall Street Journal is a case in point.
By whining about the decision of the Heritage Foundation, an arch-conservative group, to drop Hong Kong from its annual Index of Economic Freedom after being No 1 for a quarter of a century, he inadvertently attaches importance to a ranking index that is utterly irrelevant.
Hong Kong’s civil servants have always taken an unwarranted pride in its ranking, to pat themselves on the back while ignoring all the systemic flaws in the economy and society. Now that our ranking has been cancelled, they complain loudly to make sure everyone takes notice.
The Journal duly published a rebuttal, “Hong Kong’s Illusionist – Financial Secretary Paul Chan invokes a system that no longer exists”. Its ultraconservative editorial board is rabidly anti-China. By writing to the paper, Chan just paints a big target on his back.
I was amused, though, by the headline’s double entendre. No doubt it was claiming that Chan was fooling himself and fooling others. Rather he was making a fool of himself.
Perhaps Chan was bored after the past few frantic months of preparing for the annual government budget. Now that it has been published without provoking too much criticism – the opposition has quit the legislature or been disqualified – he needed to find a worthy cause to defend the city’s free-enterprise honour.