Former Vice President Dan Quayle told me as far back as October 2018, after a trip to Hong Kong, that China had become increasingly aggressive, kidnapping from Hong Kong businessmen who had somehow crossed Beijing, many of whom were simply never heard from again. The business community was too scared to say much or get it reported in the international press. Quayle believed one reason China was prepared to behave so cavalierly was that Hong Kong’s economy now amounted to only 2 percent of China’s total, whereas at the time of the handover from Great Britain in 1997, it amounted to 20 percent.
