Hong Kong should avoid the 'democracy' trap

Every political system grows out of a historical process, except in rare cases when change is imposed from the top, which happened in Japan after it surrendered at the end of World War II or in Hong Kong during the decade before it reunited with the motherland in 1997. Once it became clear that Deng Xiaoping would not relent on reuniting Hong Kong with the motherland, Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, began his experiments with "democracy". Of course, Patten kept the local tycoons in good humor so that they continued to contribute to the United Kingdom's economy. One of Patten's final acts was to gift the contracts to build Hong Kong's new airport (Chek Lap Kok) to a clutch of UK-based companies.

To this day, British companies have an inside track in much of Hong Kong's commerce, as do British nationals in expatriate jobs. Hong Kong presents an example of the trend which some people in the mainland (like the Japanese) are following to become like their Western peers, including buying absurdly expensive "designer" labels. Also, some Hong Kong residents have replaced Westerners, for they consider themselves to be several cuts above people from the Chinese mainland.

The suitability of a system should be judged by results. After the end of World War II in 1945, Western countries crafted a system that worked efficiently to ensure an enviable quality of life for their people. But a system that produced results for more than half a century began to run seriously aground in 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq and assigned the role of "global policeman" to NATO.