"On a personal level, I must confess that my heretofore latent cynicism has now become - much against my will - an ingrained feature of my character. Maybe this is the price one pays as a China watcher in pursuit of the ever-elusive goal of finding and understanding a real China." (5)
In Red Flag Over Hong Kong, Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce; Newman, David; Rabushka, Alvin; Chatham House Publishers Inc., New Jersey, 1996, the authors use forecasting models to predict Hong Kong's future. Results of predictions on past questions are included.
Alvin Rabushka, Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, is known widely for his writings on financial innovation (see The Flat Tax co-authored with Robert Hall) as well as on the economic development of Hong Kong.
In their book Red Flag Over Hong Kong, Rabushka and fellow authors Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Newman use forecasting models, essentially formulas for predicting the future of Hong Kong in different areas of activity.
Their results of past usage of the forecasting model are given and their work on Hong Kong is interesting in that they turned in the manuscript to the publisher in November 1995, well ahead of the July 1997 handover and aftermath.
The outcome of their forecasts also shows that Western academic assessments are at least as good as those of Hong Kong fortune tellers.
In the area of freedom of the press, they accurately foresee a steady erosion through self-censorship.
Then they make the interesting point that pressure to maintain press freedom may have the opposite effect:
"If there were no international focus on an independent press, Hong Kong residents would enjoy more freedom than they will likely retain under world scrutiny. Maintenance of a free media is an important indicator of future developments. Therefore the United States, the Europeans, and, of course, the Tunis will keenly watch what China does in Hong Kong. Their attentiveness will precipitate a backlash that would not occur if they ignored this issue."
In other words they say that the more we talk about freedom of the press, the more Chinese authorities will give up pressure for self-censorship and move directly to tough controls.
