16 August 2019 - Hong Kong 1

Bringing a free people under your thumb is easy in principle. First you install controls over policy and the judiciary. Then you co-opt the elites by showing them which side their bread is buttered on, which doesn’t take much longer. Finally, and this is the slow part, you carefully squeeze the remaining power out of the middle class, game over. China likes to claim a long planning horizon, but it’s a lie. In Hong Kong, Beijing messed up the third step by impatience. If only they’d put me in charge, my reputation is accurate!