The British ran Hong Kong as a colony, not a democracy; the residents had relatively few political rights. That said, the people of Hong Kong had what are sometimes called bourgeois freedoms: free speech and access to information; the right of assembly and religion; a clean and apolitical civil service; and a fair and transparent criminal justice system. There was nothing arbitrary about government in Hong Kong. The city prospered as a result.
Most of the political battles in Hong Kong over the last decade have been over democracy. That war is now over; the remaining question is the extent to which liberalism will be extinguished, as well. Freedom of speech and assembly have been rolled back. The press has been muzzled. The last two frontiers are the independence and transparency of the judicial system and the availability of anti-government information on the internet. In all likelihood, those will be gone, too, and government in Hong Kong will be the same black box that it is on the mainland.
Then, the big question is whether we will meet the same fate under reactionary GOP rule. We know the Republican Party wants to rig the rules of the political game in its favor; the ultimate objective, as in Hong Kong (and Hungary), is to prevent the circulation of ideas reactionaries view as harmful.