But when the 2021 ranking is released later on Thursday, Hong Kong will not appear because the report’s authors believe the city is no longer independent enough of Beijing to justify separate inclusion.
“[Hong Kong’s] ties to Beijing are increasingly forged in steel,” Feulner added, while its pre-handover “traditions of English common law, freedom of speech, and democracy have weakened significantly”. Feulner is also a vocal critic of Beijing and chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.In 2019 — when Hong Kong topped the table for the 25th consecutive year — the government said it showed the city’s “economic resilience, high-quality legal framework, low tolerance for corruption, high degree of government transparency, efficient regulatory framework and openness to global commerce”.
Instead it — and neighboring Macau — will be counted as part of China which currently languishes in 107th place in the ranking, between Uganda and Uzbekistan, in a section where economies are rated as “mostly unfree.”But it has also dramatically altered Hong Kong’s legislative and judicial relationship with the authoritarian mainland.
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