Local officials have learnt it the hard way that tooting one’s own trumpet is a delicate art. It will blow up in your face if you overdo it.

Ten weeks after she had taken over the helm, Chief Executive Carrie Lam officiated at the “Think Asia, Think Hong Kong” symposium in London on September 21, 2017. At a dinner hosted by the Trade Development Council, she took pride in her keynote speech to point out that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region had been honored as the world’s freest economy for 23 years in a row by the Heritage Foundation.

Under her watch, the territory was dethroned by Singapore last year. In response, Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development Edward Yau remained upbeat, saying he expected Hong Kong’s ranking to recover.

This year the Heritage Foundation has dropped Hong Kong from the list altogether as “Beijing has shown that it is not reluctant to impose its will, and specific changes in law, on the people of Hong Kong.” It now deems the HKSAR as no different from other cities in China, which takes the 107th place in the chart just ahead of Uzbekistan.

Hong Kong will have a hard time if others are to follow the lead of the Foundation to consider the HKSAR as no more than an integral part of her motherland. In the eyes of the Economist, China is the 15th least democratic on earth. On a scale of ten, China scores a meagre 2.26. Denmark eclipses all other countries at 9.87.

Brand Hong Kong, launched in 2001 to sell Hong Kong as Asia’s World City, has been trapped in an awkward position. Its website still features an old photo in which Lam was jubilant in receiving a copy of the 2019 Index of Economic Freedom report from the founder of the Heritage Foundation, Dr Edwin Feulner, at Government House. An official press release quoted Financial Secretary Paul Chan as asserting, “This achievement reaffirms the Government’s steadfast commitment in upholding the free market principles over the years.” After Hong Kong was dumped, he took a one-eighty. Chan accused the Foundation of political bias.

The authorities now rely on another Western think tank to lay claim to the label as the world’s freest economy. The Canada-based Fraser Institute has named Hong Kong as the freest economy since 1996.

The Fraser Economic Freedom Index measures five areas — size of government, legal structure and property rights, access to sound money, freedom to trade internationally, as well as regulation of credit, labor and business. Published last December, the latest 2020 report is based on the realities in 2019. It compares 162 countries and territories. Hong Kong has again emerged on top.

However, experts have already warned that Hong Kong is doomed to be dethroned in the next assessment. By the time the 2020 data are complied for the 2021 report, the aftershocks of Beijing’s decisions to impose a national security law on the territory would be taken into account. There are even more rainy days ahead. The adverse impact of the Beijing-dictated electoral reform to be unveiled by the National People’s Congress for Hong Kong will be reflected in the report the year after that.

The Fraser project was led by the late renowned economist Milton Friedman and 60 top scholars, including three Nobel laureates. Economic freedom refers to individuals’ ability to make their own economic decisions free of government or crony control. Research has indicated that it helps boost living standards and life satisfaction. When the democratic institution diminishes, so does economic freedom.

Without Fraser, Brand Hong Kong will have to fall back on the lesser-known Legatum Institute’s 2019 Global Index of Economic Openness, in which the HKSAR has claimed the top position.

The British index is subdivided into four headings: market access and infrastructure, investment environment, enterprise conditions, and governance. Hong Kong is ranked only 21st under governance, which gauges the extent of checks and restraints on power and government efficiency. Singapore again is poised to exceed Hong Kong in subsequent overall evaluations.

Late last year, the Legatum Institute also came up with a report on Prosperity Index 2020. Hong Kong has dropped four slots from the previous year to finish two places behind Singapore at 17th. It is Hong Kong’s worst performance since 2010.

Now that the Chief Executive has been sanctioned by the US Treasury, Lam is unlikely to embark on any business mission to promote Hong Kong in the major markets in the west. Even if she wanted to, she would find quite a few key notes missing from her song sheet.

(Andy Ho is a public affairs consultant. A former political editor of the South China Morning Post, he served as Information Coordinator at the Chief Executive’s Office of the HKSAR Government from 2006 to 2012.)

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