On the other hand, those critical genealogies of the free-market movement that have been proliferating in recent years, will often ascribe a central role to the Mont Pèlerin Society, formed by F. So too, in a quite different way, did a fateful meeting between Friedman and the colony’s Financial Secretary, (Sir) John Cowperthwaite, in the early 1960s, which would rise to folkloric status in the affirmative stories that free-market policy advocates like to share among themselves. The impact of Free to Choose played an important role here. Friedman himself would however remain largely impervious to (and incurious about) such facts on the ground, opting instead to recirculate an ideologically stylized narrative of “free-market” Hong Kong, in the service of pro-market policy advice. My paper in the second issue of JLPE explores how this prescriptive story of Hong Kong was assembled, stabilized, and recirculated. Now, the discrepancies between Friedman’s selective, stylized, and idealized reading of Hong Kong and the actually existing realities of the city-state, before and after the return of the former colony to China, have been thoroughly documented by political economists like Tak-Wing Ngo and Alvin So, as well as by well-placed insiders like the late Leo Goodstadt. Speaking directly to camera, with a panoramic view of Victoria Harbour in the background, Friedman declared, “if you want to see how the free market really works, this is the place to come.”

Hong Kong was Milton Friedman’s favorite economy. From a first encounter in the mid-1950s, all the way through to the end of his life, the economist regarded Hong Kong as a kind of free-market utopia. He loved the variety of freebooting capitalism that had been established there under British colonial rule, the entrepreneurial spirit of its residents, the official deference to free-market ideals and common-law principles, and the disciplined commitment to tight-fisted social policies. The Hong Kong style of laissez-faire governance, he understood, should not be mistaken for a do-nothing policy: what became known as “positive non-interventionism” entailed the rigorous defence of free-market rule. And so it was to Hong Kong that Friedman went to shoot the opening scenes for the widely watched TV series, Free to Choose, aired in 1980, which did so much to popularize his ascendant brand of monetarist economics and neoliberal policy advocacy.

All of our posts highlighting releases of JLPE issue releases are here.

This post is part of a symposium highlighting the second issue of the Journal of Law and Political Economy.

Free to choose 1980