When I was the Financial Times correspondent in Hong Kong from 2015 to 2018, I was regularly asked to brief international investors about the city’s political outlook. Each time, I told them that Beijing’s squeeze on Hong Kong was intensifying and foreign businesses would not be spared.

My remarks were often greeted with a combination of eye-rolls and grimaces. Not infrequently, indignant executives would reject my view with retorts such as “I can still say whatever I like at the Hong Kong Club” – the rarefied drinking hole of choice for the business elite.