Why We’re Keeping Hong Kong in Our Freedom Index

Now that Beijing has crushed Hong Kong’s autonomy, some are asking whether it makes sense to still rank Hong Kong in international indexes such as our Human Freedom Index. We will continue to do so, as I explained last month in this statement I released in response to press inquiries: “The Cato Institute and Fraser Institute intend to continue including Hong Kong in the Human Freedom Index, which we co‐​publish. We believe that the territory’s trajectory, from a former British colony to a special administrative region of China, is a unique case study worthy of continued attention and documentation within our index, especially as the Chinese Communist Party sustains its attacks on a broad array of Hong Kong’s freedoms. As long as sufficient data on Hong Kong is available, we think that providing a measure of its freedoms—and what we expect will be their ongoing decline—will be a useful exercise.” Our Fraser colleagues, Fred McMahon and Mike Walker, expand on the justification in this Wall Street Journal op‐​ed. We hope other international indexes also continue to track Hong Kong as they have long been doing.