Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural resources raised its standard of living above that of the UK, its colonial parent.

There's an old story that once, in a meeting, Milton Friedman was chastising Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary, for not collecting the economic statistics that Milton and other economists wanted. Cowperthwaite replied that the omission was intentional; he knew that if he collected the data, the bureaucrats back in the UK would see the numbers and expect him to do something about them.

Taiwan and Hong Kong (and the other two "Asian Tigers", South Korea and Singapore) were favored trading partners with the US during their economic rise, in the hopes that China would notice their booming economies and abandon strict communism. The US helped Taiwan out with billions of dollars of loans and financial aid for exactly this reason.