Lessons from HK

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is technically self-governing, but its parliament and chief executive are not exactly democratically elected

It has been a fairly crowded fortnight in terms of news, and so some might have missed what, for me, has been the most interesting and perhaps important story of the past fortnight. This is a story that comes neither from India nor from Europe or from America, but from tiny Hong Kong, which has once again taken to the streets to protest interference by Beijing in the self-administering city’s affairs.

When I say “interference by Beijing” and “self-administering”, I am not being strictly accurate, of course, but that is because normal language cannot quite manage the shades of truth and