I was never a proponent of Hong Kong independence. I think being part of China offers greater stability to Hong Kong.
However, with all of the recent political developments; with the abduction of Lee Bo the bookseller on Hong Kong soil and the abduction of the billionaire Xiao Jianhua at the Four Seasons Hotel I think we should reconsider whether the benefits outweight the drawbacks. The Communist Party stole the land from land owners in 1949 so their legitimacy to governing China is tenuous; the party is riddled with corruption and openly promotes inequality.
Hong Kong has declined with every passing year since the handover; socially mobility completely wiped out, wealth gap at an all time high, rule of law is getting eroded, the economic significance of the special administrative region ever declining. Freedom of speech is being eroded.
So, with independence, there are several issues to iron out before we tread down this path:-
1) Water supply – at the moment supplied by China at a commercially expensive rate; we should tender out this contract and re-visit whether we should buy water from other countries and have the water shipped? Desalination is another option. We should also continue to build reservoirs like the we had up until 1964.
2) Armed Forces – this could be outsourced like most things; tender out the requirements and engage the country/company that provides the best service with the lowest cost
3) Electricity – some of our power is being provided by China at the moment; we can increase production and not buy from China
The above form the problems, the below will be the fun part:-
1) Control immigration so that we do not allow 150 new immigrants from the mainland China to gain citizenship
2) Depeg from the US dollar and peg to a basket of currencies so that we can float the Hong Kong dollar freely
3) Change the political structure so that the chief executive is not being elected by an Election Committee of 1,400 cronies instead we implement universal suffrage and allow one man one vote
4) We can increase the powers of the Hong Kong Monetary Authorities to adjust interest rates based on how the economy is doing
Wouldn’t the above be great? No longer would we have to suffer the general bad manners of mainlanders; no longer would we be unable to protect our citizens; no longer would we have to waste vast sums of money building useless infrastructure projects to China that benefit only a few cadres.