Conservatism in Hong Kong

Conservatism has deep roots in Hong Kong politics and society. As a political trend, it is often reflected in but not limited to the current pro-Beijing camp, one of the two major political forces in Hong Kong, as opposed to liberalism, a dominant feature of the pro-democracy camp.

As the British free port of Hong Kong and taking advantage as the gateway to the vast Chinese market, Hong Kong merchants, the local Chinese elites so-called compradors, had taken the leading role in investment and trading opportunities by serving as middlemen between European and indigenous population in China and Hong Kong, in the principles of laissez-faire classical liberalism, which has since dominated the discourse of the economic philosophy of Hong Kong. For that reason, Hong Kong has been rated the world's freest economy for the past 18 years, a title bestowed on it by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington think tank, and was greatly admired by libertarian economist Milton Friedman.

Hong Kong as a predominant Chinese society has its own cultural conservatism which could be found in the Confucian teachings. The conservatism of the Chinese elites was further protected under the British colonial rule in the early collaborative colonial regime between the Chinese elites and British colonialists. To facilitate its governance of the colonised, the colonial government helped consolidating the gentry's power to perverse conservative cultural values in the wake of the progressive movements of the Chinese nationalism, represented by the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and the subsequent New Culture Movement in the 1920s in China.

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