In the early 1960s, Chicago economist Milton Friedman travelled to Hong Kong to meet Sir John Cowperthwaite, the colony’s Financial Secretary. The economic development of Hong Kong had aroused Friedman’s curiosity, but, to his surprise, he was unable to get hold of any detailed economic statistics. So he asked Sir John about the peculiar lack of data. Cowperthwaite, a classical liberal economist, explained that he deliberately refrained from having detailed economic data gathered. He argued the bureaucrats of the colonial administration should not even be tempted to intervene in the economy.