Public Attitudes in Hong Kong Towards Laissez-Faire, 29th Nov., 2010.

Over at EconLog, Bryan Caplan published an article titled "Hong Kong: Statist at Heart?"  He wrote:

"Public Attitude toward Laissez Faire in Hong Kong," a fascinating but overlooked 1990 paper by Lau Siu-kai and Kuan Hsin-chi (Asian Survey 30(8): 766-81, available on Jstor with subscription) shows this is just wishful thinking. Admittedly, the public in Hong Kong strongly supports the label of laissez-faire (literally translated as "noninterventionist economic policy"). When asked how they felt about the laissez-faire policy of the Hong Kong government, 1.8% strongly disagreed, 22% disagreed, 54% agreed, and 3.5% strongly agreed. I doubt you'd see numbers like that in the U.S.

But it turns out that Hong Kong's support for laissez-faire is only skin-deep. As soon as you ask people their opinions about specific interventionist policies - all of which, note the authors, "have either not been performed by the government or performed only very light or rarely," they show their true statist colors.