Absolutely agree. There's a lot of "yes, but.." in this for me, but the simple economics are pretty clear: post colonial asian states like this do fantastically well.

Cost of housing in HK is going to be an embuggerance if they don't fix that, it may bifurcate into a more strong over/underclass imbalance. Taiwan is amazing but has thinner underpinnings now the US has demanded chip manufacturing moves to continental USA and the water supply issue is huge.

But your central point I agree with strongly: fix education, health, housing and provide at least some representation and you can do so much better than being a colonial outpost of somewhere else sucking value out.