11.  As is often pointed out, the United States itself is one of the world’s biggest tax havens. Ana Swanson, “How the U.S. Became One of the World’s Biggest Tax Havens,” Washington Post, April 5, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/05/how-the-u-s-became-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-tax-havens/.

    12.  In 2019, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) proposed referring to all zones as special economic zones. This does not include the zone-like tax havens. UNCTAD, World Investment Report: Special Economic Zones (Geneva: United Nations, 2019), xii.

    13.  The United States has almost three hundred such foreign-trade zones.

    14.  Tim Looser, “21st Century City Form in Asia: The Private City,” in The Routledge Handbook of Anthropology and the City, ed. Setha Low (New York: Routledge, 2018).

    15.  Kimberly Adams and Benjamin Payne, “Nevada Considers Bringing Back the ‘Company Town’ for the Tech Industry,” Marketplace, June 30, 2021, https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/nevada-considers-bringing-back-the-company-town-for-the-tech-industry/.

    16.  Quinn Slobodian, “Rishi Sunak’s Free Ports Plan Reinvents Thatcherism for the Johnson Era,” Guardian (UK edition), March 1, 2020, Global Newsstream.

    17.  Grégoire Chamayou, The Ungovernable Society (Cambridge: Polity, 2021), 231.

    18.  Bost, “Special Economic Zones,” 151.

    19.  Stuart M. Butler, “The Enterprise Zone as a Political Animal,” Cato Journal 2, no. 2 (Fall 1982): 374.

    20.  Lionel Shriver, The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2016), 48.

    21.  Jeff Deist, “The Prospects for Soft Secession in America,” Mises Wire, September 21, 2021, https://mises.org/wire/prospects-soft-secession-america.

    22.  Jeff Deist, “Secession Begins at Home,” LewRockwell.com, January 31, 2015, https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/01/jeff-deist/secession-begins-at-home/.

    23.  Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (London: Routledge, 2001), 272.

    24.  Ola Uduku, “Lagos: ‘Urban Gating’ as the Default Condition,” in Gated Communities: Social Sustainability in Contemporary and Historical Gated Developments, ed. Samer Bagaeen and Ola Uduku (London: Earthscan, 2010).

    25.  Sanjay Srivastava, Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community, and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

    26.  Michael P. Gibson, “The Nakamoto Consensus—How We End Bad Governance,” Medium, April 3, 2015, https://medium.com/@William_Blake/the-nakamoto-consensus-how-we-end-bad-governance-2d75b2fa1f65.

    27.  Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).

    28.  Bruce Sterling, Islands in the Net (New York: Arbor House, 1988), 17.

    29.  Stéphane Rosière and Reece Jones, “Teichopolitics: Re-considering Globalisation Through the Role of Walls and Fences,” Geopolitics 17, no. 1 (2012): 218.

    30.  For these two points and a powerful interpretation see Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (New York: Zone Books, 2010), 35.

    31.  For documentation see the International Organization on Migration’s Missing Migrants Project, https://missingmigrants.iom.int/region/mediterranean.

    32.  Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” National Interest, no. 16 (Summer 1989): 3–18.

    33.  Angus Cameron and Ronen Palan, The Imagined Economies of Globalization (London: Sage, 2003), 157; and Vanessa Ogle, “Archipelago Capitalism: Tax Havens, Offshore Money, and the State, 1950s–1970s,” American Historical Review 122, no. 5 (December 2017).

    34.  Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014); Zucman, Hidden Wealth of Nations.

    35.  Chuck Collins, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions (London: Polity, 2021).

    36.  Raymond Plant, “Restraint and Responsibility,” Times (London), October 16, 1990, The Times Digital Archive, Gale.

    37.  Andrew Kaczynski and Paul LeBlanc, “Trump’s Fed Pick Stephen Moore Is a Self-Described ‘Radical’ Who Said He’s Not a ‘Big Believer in Democracy,’” CNN.com, April 13, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/stephen-moore-kfile/index.html.

    38.  Deist, “Soft Secession in America.”

    39.  Hari Kunzru, Red Pill (New York: Knopf, 2020), 226.

  CHAPTER 1: TWO, THREE, MANY HONG KONGS

      1.  Patri Friedman, “TSI Strategy & Status: The Future” (speech), Seasteading Institute Conference, September 29, 2009, San Francisco, CA, video, 26:42, https://vimeo.com/8354001.

      2.  Patri Friedman, “Beyond Folk Activism,” Cato Unbound, April 6, 2009, https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/06/patri-friedman/beyond-folk-activism.

      3.  Patri Friedman and Brad Taylor, “Seasteading: Competitive Governments on the Ocean,” Kyklos 65 (May 2012): 225.

      4.  Friedman and Taylor, “Seasteading,” 230.

      5.  Friedman, “Beyond Folk Activism.”

      6.  Chris Ip, “Hong Kong Is Model for Ocean Utopias,” South China Morning Post, December 4, 2011, Global Newsstream.

      7.  Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), ix.

      8.  Friedman, “TSI Strategy & Status.”

      9.  Let a Thousand Nations Bloom home page, (capture March 2, 2013), https://athousandnations.com.

    10.  Michel J. Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 1975), 2.

    11.  Peter Brimelow, “Why Liberalism Is Now Obsolete: An Interview with Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman,” Forbes, December 12, 1988, 176.

    12.  “Hong-Kong,” Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, December 24, 1842, 500.

    13.  Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 42; and John M. Carroll, A Concise History of Hong Kong (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 68.

    14.  Maria Adele Carrai, Sovereignty in China: A Genealogy of a Concept Since 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 51.

    15.  Wellington Koo quoted in Maria Adele Carrai, “China’s Malleable Sovereignty Along the Belt and Road Initiative: The Case of the 99-Year Chinese Lease of Hambantota Port,” Journal of International Law & Politics (2019): 1078.

    16.  Eunice Seng, Resistant City: Histories, Maps and the Architecture of Development (Singapore: World Scientific, 2020), 94.

    17.  Lawrence Mills, Protecting Free Trade: The Hong Kong Paradox 1947–97 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2012), 33.

    18.  Naughton, The Chinese Economy, 35.

    19.  Yin-Ping Ho, Trade, Industrial Restructuring and Development in Hong Kong (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 173.

    20.  Mills, Protecting Free Trade, 8.

    21.  Y. C. Jao, “The Rise of Hong Kong as a Financial Center,” Asian Survey 19, no. 7 (July 1979): 686.

    22.  Alvin Y. So, “The Economic Success of Hong Kong: Insights from a World-System Perspective,” Sociological Perspectives 29, no. 2 (April 1986): 249.

    23.  Jao, “Rise of Hong Kong,” 677.

    24.  Jamie Peck, “Milton’s Paradise: Situating Hong Kong in Neoliberal Lore,” Journal of Law and Political Economy 1, no. 1 (2021): 192.

    25.  “Uncle Miltie,” Time, March 10, 1980, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,950360,00.html.

    26.  James C. Roberts, “Milton Friedman, Superstar,” Human Events, November 22, 1980, 40.

    27.  Mark Tier, “Hong Kong,” Reason, June 1977, 60.

    28.  Simon Hoggart, “Where Even the Poor Are Rich,” Observer, February 28, 1982.

    29.  “The Power of the Market,” Free to Choose, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dngqR9gcDDw.

    30.  See Melinda Cooper, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (New York: Zone, 2017).

    31.  Catherine Schenk, “Negotiating Positive Non-interventionism: Regulating Hong Kong’s Finance Companies, 1976–1986,” China Quarterly, no. 230 (June 2017): 350.

    32.  Jon Woronoff, Hong Kong: Capitalist Paradise (Hong Kong: Heinemann, 1980), 232.

    33.  Alvin Rabushka, The Changing Face of Hong Kong: New Departures in Public Policy (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1973), 2.

    34.  Alvin Rabushka, Hong Kong: A Study in Economic Freedom (Chicago: Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, 1979), 67.

    35.  Rabushka, Hong Kong, 33, 39.

    36.  Rabushka, 64.

    37.  The Liberty Fund, “Hong Kong: A Story of Human Freedom and Progress,” 1981, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RchkEruI1FA.

    38.  Rabushka, Changing Face, 1.

    39.  Carroll, Concise History, 171.

    40.  Steve Lohr, “Unabashedly, the Business of Hong Kong Is Money,” New York Times, September 27, 1982, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

    41.  See, for example, F. A. Hayek, “A Rebirth of Liberalism,” Freeman, July 28, 1952, 731.

    42.  For a thorough insider history of the libertarian movement, see Brian Doherty, Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (New York: PublicAffairs, 2007).

    43.  Stanford University, Hoover Institution Archives, F. A. Hayek Papers, Box 34, Folder 10, MPS Hong Kong, List of Guests.

    44.  Rosemary McClure, “Hong Kong: Mandarin Celebrates Its First 50 Years and Its Next 50,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 2013, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

    45.  “Film Designer Who Built the Replica of the Bridge on the River Kwai and Later Created Interiors for Luxury Hotels,” Daily Telegraph (UK), September 1, 2004, Westlaw; and William Rees-Mogg, “When Is a Bribe Just a Friendly Gesture?,” Times (London), November 7, 1994, The Times Digital Archive, Gale.

    46.  Henry Wai-chung Yeung, Transnational Corporations and Business Networks: Hong Kong Firms in the ASEAN Region (London: Routledge, 1998), 74.

    47.  Nancy Yanes Hoffman, “Clavell Can Tell Hong Kong Fortunes,” Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1981, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

    48.  Terry Teachout, “James Clavell, Storyteller,” National Review, November 12, 1982, 1422.

    49.  Jennifer Burns, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Marsha Familaro Enright, “James Clavell’s Asian Adventures,” Atlas Society, https://www.atlassociety.org/post/james-clavells-asian-adventures.

    50.  Linda Ashland, “Hong Kong’s New Taipans,” Town & Country, May 1980, 133.

    51.  Carroll, Concise History, 160–62; and Ho-Fung Hung, City on the Edge: Hong Kong Under Chinese Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022), 154.

    52.  Seng, Resistant City, 91.

    53.  John Chamberlain, “There’ll Always Be a Hong Kong,” Human Events, October 14, 1978, 13.

    54.  Michael Ng-Quinn, “Living on Borrowed Time in a Borrowed Place,” San Francisco Examiner, September 14, 1981, Newspapers.com.

    55.  Tim Summers, China’s Hong Kong, 2nd ed. (London: Agenda, 2021), 17.

    56.  Lorenz Langer, “Out of Joint?—Hong Kong’s International Status from the Sino-British Joint Declaration to the Present,” Archiv des Völkerrechts 46, no. 3 (September 2008).

    57.  Chamberlain, “There’ll Always Be,” 13.

    58.  Robert Poole Jr., “The China Decision,” Reason, March 1979, 6.

    59.  “Hong-Kong,” 501.

    60.  Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (New York: St. Martin’s, 1994), 318.

    61.  Margaret Thatcher, “Interview for Wall Street Journal,” January 24, 1990, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107876.

    62.  Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 259.

    63.  Confidential Annex to Minutes of Full Cabinet, September 30, 1982, https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/123921.

    64.  Thatcher, “Wall Street Journal.”

    65.  This had also been proposed for the Falklands. Michael Frenchman, “Britain Puts Forward Four Options on Falklands,” Times (London), November 28, 1980, The Times Digital Archive, Gale. See also Peter J. Beck, “The Future of the Falkland Islands: A Solution Made in Hong Kong?,” International Affairs 61, no. 4 (Autumn 1985): 643–60; and Louisa Lim, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong (New York: Riverhead, 2022), 103.

    66.  Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 477.

    67.  Barry Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 54.

    68.  Don Graff, “Hong Kong Principle,” Indiana Gazette, October 5, 1982, Newspapers.com.

    69.  Vogel, Transformation of China, 494.

    70.  Quoted in Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), 214.

    71.  Brian Eads, “Murdoch, Made for Hong Kong,” Spectator, November 15, 1986, Periodicals Archive Online.

    72.  Edward W. Cheng, “United Front Work and Mechanisms of Countermobilization in Hong Kong,” China Journal, no. 83 (2019): 5–7; and Leo F. Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners: The Conflict Between Public Interest and Private Profit in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 132.

    73.  Vogel, Transformation of China, 506.

    74.  Quoted in Chi Kuen Lau, Hong Kong’s Colonial Legacy (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1997), 84.

    75.  Francis Yuan-hao Tien quoted in Leo F. Goodstadt, “Business Friendly and Politically Convenient—the Historical Role of Functional Constituencies,” in Functional Constituencies: A Unique Feature of the Hong Kong Legislative Council, ed. Christine Loh and Civic Exchange (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2006), 53.

    76.  Lim, Indelible City, 138.

    77.  Bart Wissink, Sin Yee Koh, and Ray Forrest, “Tycoon City: Political Economy, Real Estate and the Super-Rich in Hong Kong,” in Cities and the Super-Rich: Real Estate, Elite Practices, and Urban Political Economies, ed. Ray Forrest, Sin Yee Koh, and Bart Wissink (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 230.

    78.  Denis Chang, “The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region: Economics and Norms of Credibility,” Journal of Chinese Law 2, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 31.

    79.  Shu-hung Tang, “Fiscal Constitution, Income Distribution and the Basic Law of Hong Kong,” Economy and Society 20, no. 3 (1991): 284–85; see also Tang Shu-hung, “The Hong Kong Fiscal Policy: Continuity or Redirection?,” in Political Order and Power Transition in Hong Kong, ed. Li Pang-kwong (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1997), 224; on the clauses, see also Gonzalo Villalta Puig, “Fiscal Constitutionalism and Fiscal Culture: A Comparative Study of the Balanced-Budget Rule in the Spanish Constitution and the Hong Kong Basic Law,” Hong Kong Law Journal (2013); Miron Mushkat and Roda Mushkat, “The Economic Dimension of Hong Kong’s Basic Law: An Analytical Overview,” New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law 7, no. 2 (December 2008); and Hong Kong Legislative Council, Official Report of Proceedings, Wednesday, July 13, 1988, p. 1848.

    80.  Alvin Rabushka, “A Free-Market Constitution for Hong Kong: A Blueprint for China,” Cato Journal 8, no. 3 (Winter 1989): 647.

    81.  “Record of a discussion between the Prime Minister and Premier Hua Guofeng, 1 November 1979,” https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/138424.

    82.  Langer, “Out of Joint?,” 328.