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Thinking About Hong Kong’s Future

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Posted: October 8th, 2015

By Rodney Faraon

Rodney Faraon is a former senior CIA China analyst, including two years on the President’s Daily Briefing Staff for two administrations. He was also the founding director of Global Intelligence and Risk Analysis for The Walt Disney Company.

To ask about the state of democracy in Hong Kong is asking the wrong question. The irony is that Hong Kong residents arguably have more voting rights today than for most of the time that Hong Kong was a Crown Colony, which the British ruled with an iron fist, and where universal suffrage of any sort did not exist from 1842 until 1995.

The real question to ask is whether Hong Kong can retain the most important legacy that Her Majesty left behind: freedom and effective liberal institutions. Most important would be the maintenance of rule of law as evinced by a fair and objective judicial system; freedom of expression; freedom of the press; and an effective, impartial, apolitical civil service. It is critically important and a top priority to protect the things that Hong Kong has almost always had.

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