I sometimes wonder just what it is we Hongkongers have done to cause so many senior American officials to hate us.

We watch your films in the cinema, your shows on TV, we listen to your music and sing your songs, we send our children to your colleges, we buy your goods, we visit your country as tourists. We take the family to Hong Kong Disneyland in the holidays. We like American products and services so much that on a per capita basis, we are probably the biggest consumers in Asia. Yet somehow, we seem to have rubbed you the wrong way.

This is partly, of course, a spillover from the economic war the US is waging on China; we are simply collateral damage. Because the blows have landed so frequently, we have become numb to just how many shots have been fired in this struggle.