John James Cowperthwaite, 90, passed away in his native Scotland on January 21. "We shall always remember Sir John for the pioneering and dominant role he played in the birth of the legend of Hong Kong as the freest market economy," Chief Executive Donald Tsang said.

In the United States, Cowperthwaite also had admirers. Writer PJ O'Rourke, in his brilliant book Eat the Rich, attributed Hong Kong's economic success to this "master of simplicities." Milton Friedman, the free market guru, has said: "It would be hard to overestimate the debt Hong Kong owes to Cowperthwaite."

Since 1997, Hong Kong has supposedly been living under the one country, two systems formula. Hong Kong was also, in a way, ruled under a one country, two systems arrangement by the British.

After World War II, Britain was moving to a socialist and welfare state. Hong Kong, on the other hand, had the fortune to have Cowperthwaite. He first arrived in Hong Kong in 1941, joining the colonial administration. He went to Sierra Leone when the Japanese occupied Hong Kong, returning in 1945 with the task of reviving the post-war economy. However, realizing the economy had already been recovering by itself, Cowperthwaite, a disciple of his fellow Scotsman Adam Smith, stuck to positive nonintervention. He recalled: "I did very little. All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it." Cowperthwaite said in addition to leaving the economy alone, he spent much of his time thwarting central planners in London.

In his 1961 maiden budget speech, Cowperthwaite outlined his belief that the private sector is better placed than the government in managing businesses: "In the long run, the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralized decisions of a government, and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster."

Cowperthwaite once said: "One trouble is that when government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else." He balanced the budget, kept taxation low, maintained open markets, opposed regulating the movement of capital, and refused to choose businesses to favor.

When Friedman visited Hong Kong and met Cowperthwaite in 1963, he asked about the paucity of statistics. The then financial secretary told his visitor: "If I let them compute those statistics, they'll want to use them for planning." Friedman later wrote "How wise!" Cowperthwaite also recalled Freidman's almost rubbing his hands with glee at finding a place run in accordance with his principles.

But not everyone was impressed with Cowperthwaite. For example, Cowperthwaite successfully defeated the idea of setting up a mandatory provident fund in the late 1960s.

Leo Goodstadt, former head of the central policy unit and now professor at Trinity College in Dublin, wrote in his book Uneasy Partners: The Conflict Between Public Interest and Private Profit in Hong Kong that "his victory was comprehensive enough to deter serious consideration of such measures for another two decades."

Goodstadt also blamed Cowperthwaite for "the delay of the introduction of free and compulsory education as long as possible."

In 1983, in conversations with Steve Tsang, a Hong Kong-born scholar at Oxford University, Cowperthwaite confessed to being a "Hong Kong chauvinist." Nevertheless he should be rightfully proud of his achievement. During his tenure, Hong Kong's economy grew at an average of 13.8 percent per year and its reserves quadrupled.

After Cowperthwaite passed the baton to Philip Haddon-Cave, the Far Eastern Economic Review said: "His success in creating budget surpluses and stacking away large and profitable reserves in London had apparently left his successor little room to maneuver."

Bill McGurn, George W Bush's chief speechwriter, praised Cowperthwaite highly when McGurn lived in Hong Kong as the Review's senior editor in the 1990s. "If there really was an East Asian `miracle,' this was arguably the leading miracle maker."

A few years before the handover, McGurn, in the mode of Cowperthwaite, had related to me his concern of the pro-democracy legislators wanting a bigger government. He thought it was a bad idea to give the future SAR government, directly under Beijing, more tools in running people's lives.

Should Cowperthwaite have had the chance to visit the HKSAR, I'm sure he would have found his successors deviating from the laissez-faire foundation he laid down.

Not that he would say. In the turbulent summer of 1998, after the government had intervened in the stock market and spent about HK$120 billion to become the largest shareholder of many major corporations in Hong Kong overnight, I wrote to Cowperthwaite inviting his comment.

He declined politely, following the honorable tradition of not breathing down the neck of one's successor.

Today, Hong Kong needs to rediscover the wisdom of Cowperthwaite. Marian Tupy of the Cato Institute said Hong Kong people "must stand firm against political busybodies in the legislature and always remember that an economy free from political interference is the reason why today they're prosperous."