Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

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Rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.

Mainland China has no independent juridical system. Only reason to establish business there is if your business does something in China and you have to be there. You never use it as financial or business center for the operations in elsewhere.

The success of Hong Kong and Singapore is based on good legal framework. They are ranked among the best judicial systems in Asia. Businesses feels safe run business from there. Abu Dhabi financial center decided to emulate them. They created fully independent common law framework to adjudicate civil and commercial disputes.

It's possible that China decides to get rid of the law, but it will eventually bite them back financially.

I think it's a telling statistic that since the handover, Hong Kong has gone from 18% of China's GDP to 3%. Granted, some of that may be the mainland playing games with GDP numbers, but HK isn't quite the same indispensable a golden-goose anymore.

[0] https://www.vox.com/2014/9/28/6857567/hong-kong-used-to-be-1...

10% of Chinese exports are to HK.

HK is tiny. The importance of HK for China is in international trade and finance.

I think Beijing cares about how the people of Taiwan perceive Hong Kong’s autonomy within China. If Taiwan views Beijing as a repressive regime then the independence movement would gain popularity.

> If Taiwan views Beijing as a repressive regime then the independence movement would gain popularity.

Is this even a question anymore? It seems like a given that Taiwan views Beijing as repressive, and the political differences in Taiwan are over how to deal with that reality: fight it or don't rock the boat.

What I wonder is what happens when China realizes it has nothing to gain by feigning acceptance of one country with two systems.

I would guess that is just the untapped potential of China's large population starting to be realized as the country developed in recent decades. Hong Kong only has 8 million people.

But yeah, it seems reasonable that this change in relative economic strength would affect the political dynamics.

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