revoke Hong Kong’s special privileges and a flood of articles about Beijing’s decision to enact new security legislation for the city defining anti-national behaviour, the $4 bn secondary listing of JD.com, China’s largest e-commerce company after Alibaba, was massively oversubscribed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange last week.Dating back to the months leading up to the handover of the colony in June 1997 from Britain to China—when a property bubble grew bigger and bigger just as the global press parachuted into the city to pronounce Hong Kong’s last rites—there has never been a city in the world less impressed by political punditry.