In my latest review for The Objective Standard, I review the final book by my late friend, Bruce Herschensohn. A Profile of Hong Kong was a final plea on behalf of the freedom of a place he loved dearly. Excerpt:
He adored its beautiful skyline, its stubborn people, and its political liberty—“almost a relaxed form of anarchy,” as he called it in his 1999 book Hong Kong at the Handover. Indeed, he called Hong Kong “the epitome of free enterprise . . . the combination of the dreams of Adam Smith and Ayn Rand.”
Hong Kong is less than 450 square miles, smaller than the island of Kauai, Hawaii, but home to some 7.5 million people—among the highest population densities on the planet. It has no natural resources to speak of but has a GDP of $366 billion, a higher average per capita income than the United Kingdom, and the longest life expectancy in the world. The key to its prosperity, of course, is freedom. Governed for nearly a century by the British instead of by the communist People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong enjoyed relative liberty under a government that—although retaining certain illiberal features of British colonial law—was far freer than anything offered on the totalitarian mainland.
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