This is a book about Sir John Cowperthwaite - the man Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman identified as being behind Hong Kong's remarkable post-war economic transformation. Despite there being some articles about him and effusive obituaries there have, until now, been no published biographies of Cowperthwaite.

"Around the world, governments were turning to industrial planning, Keynesian deficits and high inflation to stimulate their economies. How much did the civil servants in Hong Kong adopt from this emerging global consensus? Virtually nothing. They rejected the idea that government should play an active role in industrial planning, ionstead believing in the ability of entrepreneurs to find the best opportunities. They rejected the idea of spending more than the government raised in taxes, instead aiming to keep a year's spending as a reserve. And they rejected the idea of high taxes, instead keeping taxes low, believing that private investment would earn high returns, and expand the long-term tax base. This strategy was created and implemented by no more than a handful of men over a fifty-year period. Perhaps the most importrant of them all was John Cowperthwaite, who ran the trade and industry department after the war and then spent twenty years as deputy and then actual financial secretary before his retirement in 1971. "--Book jacket.