ABSTRACT
Path dependence theory provides a useful framework for understanding the way in which modern Hong Kong has developed in its own particular and remarkable way since 1842. In Hong Kong, Diceyan Constitutionalism and Chinese Familialism have jointly and acutely shaped its development since 1842. Around 95% of the population of Hong Kong is Chinese. Hong Kong experience, by then, had shown how fundamental concepts, arising from Diceyan Constitutionalism, such as the free and lawful citizen, had remarkable potential to mesh productively with the entrenched, collective, self-organizing aspects of Chinese Familialism in Hong Kong. One noted Sinologist, Simon Leys, put it this way: From a western point of view, China is simply the other pole of the human mind. All the other great cultures are either dead, or too exclusively absorbed by the problem of surviving in extreme conditions, or too close to us to present a contrast as total an “otherness” as challenging, an originality as illuminating as China.
