No my issue is with foreign controlled exclaves which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control. This is colonialism, and the world has broadly agreed its a bad idea - even if a handful of colonies worked out fine, and we slap it with a fun new brand. If you disagree that colonialism is a bad idea, we can talk about that, but we should first call it what it is.

> An egalitarian charter city inside of a brutal autocracy might be great (relatively).

As a peer reply stated, its success threatens the brutal autocracy and will be crushed. Like HK.

The incentives are all wrong in this model.

> which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control.

Yes you're taking issue with a form of government inside the charter city that you would disagree with, not charter city itself. Government structures of course may take locals into account, and they may not.

> success threatens the brutal autocracy and will be crushed. Like HK.

HK wasn't crushed until it was no longer a charter city. You're actually proving the point that at least there was some window of time when there was a charter city that things were better.

HK is as much a Chinese charter city today as it was a British charter city before. PRC nationals need an entry permit to visit HK.

[edit] They also have their own passports (HKSAR passports), speak their own language (Cantonese vs. Mandarin) and have their own script (Traditional vs. Simplified). [1] ... and their governance did not change. Basic Law has been the law of the land in HK since 1997 at the point of the handover. Sovereignty and nationality and so on are complicated things. At some point 20 years in, the guarantor decided they didn't like how things were going.

HK folks weren't 'Chinese' nationals for over 150 years until 1997.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Special_Administrati...

The point is that HK became much less of a charter city in 1997 (today it's not so much a "Chinese charter city" as a "Chinese regular city") and this is closely correlated with it becoming a lot worse for its residents.

HK is definitely not a Chinese charter city, that doesn't even make sense. China is not 'foreign' to China.

>HK folks weren't 'Chinese' nationals for over 150 years until 1997.

Yes until they were no longer inside of a charter city.

>They also have their own passports (HKSAR passports), speak their own language (Cantonese vs. Mandarin)

Does that make American Samoa a charter city?

> and their governance did not change

Lol

> This is colonialism, and the world has broadly agreed its a bad idea - even if a handful of colonies worked out fine, and we slap it with a fun new brand. If you disagree that colonialism is a bad idea, we can talk about that, but we should first call it what it is.

There are clearly major differences between this and colonialism. Most or all of the agreed downsides of colonialism are not about the existence of exclaves containing foreign people, they're about e.g. people being governed from afar without any local representation.

    A charter city is a type of city in which a guarantor from a developed country would create a city within a developing host country. The guarantor would administer the region, with the power to create their own laws, judiciary, and immigration policy outside of the control of the host country.

> Most or all of the agreed downsides of colonialism are not about the existence of exclaves containing foreign people, they're about e.g. people being governed from afar without any local representation.

That's exactly what Romer is proposing. The foreign guarantor would administer the region and control its laws, judiciary and immigration policy.

These aren't intended to be comprised solely of foreigners. I suspect like past exclaves, they would bring in foreign overseers to enforce their vision.

Again your beef is that there isn't local representation. There isn't some law of the universe that a charter city can't allow the locals to influence policy of the guarantor. You have an issue that government doesn't always work the way you want it, and it's a valid concern that governments often (if not always) are bad for the locals.

You can't point at North Korea and say "Look, when you have a nation-state everyone ends up with essentially zero influence by common locals." But this is essentially what you're doing with charter cities.

>foreign guarantor

Better terminology would be 'formerly foreign guarantor.' They are domestic to the charter city.

My beef is with a system that allows foreign guarantors.

> Better terminology would be 'formerly foreign guarantor.' They are domestic to the charter city.

Do they surrender their home country nationality? If not...

Understood

>No my issue is with foreign controlled exclaves which can exert disproportionate influence on the locals without being accountable to the locals whose lives they control.

It's interesting that I could swap "foreign controlled exclaves' with 'federal government' here and suddenly many would be outraged. Your argument fits in pretty neatly with anti-federalism and anti- other structures that serve to dilute the power of locals.

It's a valid point to be concerned about loss of local power. I'm skeptical that there is any practical difference here for exploitations of locals (charter-city vs non-charter-city) other than an OPPORTUNITY for competing governments models to prove themselves in a way that lets those in a constrained geographic area compare many governance models to see which works. I can see using charter cities to INCREASE local power, by creating a 'foreign guarantor' that is actually a representation of the locals, ousting much federal power.