April 1, 2021 11:26AM # Why We’re Keeping Hong Kong in Our Freedom Index By [Ian Vásquez](https://www.cato.org/people/ian-vasquez) --- SHARE Now that Beijing has crushed Hong Kong’s autonomy, some are asking whether it makes sense to still rank Hong Kong in international indexes such as our [Human Freedom Index](https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index/2020). We will continue to do so, as I explained last month in this statement I released in response to press inquiries: “The Cato Institute and Fraser Institute intend to continue including Hong Kong in the Human Freedom Index, which we co-publish. We believe that the territory’s trajectory, from a former British colony to a special administrative region of China, is a unique case study worthy of continued attention and documentation within our index, especially as the Chinese Communist Party sustains its attacks on a broad array of Hong Kong’s freedoms. As long as sufficient data on Hong Kong is available, we think that providing a measure of its freedoms—and what we expect will be their ongoing decline—will be a useful exercise.” Our Fraser colleagues, Fred McMahon and Mike Walker, expand on the justification in this [Wall Street Journal op-ed](https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-freedoms-sake-rate-hong-kong-11617213826). We hope other international indexes also continue to track Hong Kong as they have long been doing. ##### Related Tags [International](https://www.cato.org/international), [Global Freedom](https://www.cato.org/global-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).