HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — If governments’ were ranked simply on making profits, Hong Kong should be consistently getting top marks, as its financial secretary unveiled another bumper budget surplus of 64 billion Hong Kong dollars ($8.25 billion) last week. But behind this cash largesse, the economy limped through the final quarter of 2014 with just 0.4% growth during the three-month period.

This unusual combination of rich government and weak growth can be partly explained by the divisive role of the Hong Kong property market.

Property prices put in another year of double-digit gains, helping swell government coffers with tax receipts. One interpretation of this divergence between the economy and property market is that the government’s high land-price policy is now clearly crowding out wider economic activity.

Few expect this phenomenon will be enough to lead to a policy change because government finances are so reliant on the easy cash of taxing a property bubble. But analysts also warn that Hong Kong’s leaders might have no choice but to find new growth drivers, as some of the fortuitous external forces that supported the economy are set to reverse.

UBS writes that three longstanding external economic drivers — loose monetary policy, inflows of mainland Chinese tourists, and the territory’s position as a re-export hub for the rest of China — are about to turn negative in 2015.

The first of these factors is due to the expected rate-tightening from the U.S. Federal Reserve. Here, Hong Kong may be highly exposed because, as a direct importer of the Fed’s policies due to its currency’s peg to the U.S. dollar, it has been riding a six-year liquidity boom.

The risk is that without the support of negative real interest rates, Hong Kong’s 10-year property bull market could come to an end, taking with it a key pillar of the economy.

The second reversal is a weakening in the positive impact from mainland tourists. This may come as more of a surprise, given that government officials had not long ago predicted mainland Chinese tourist numbers could double from current levels to 100 million arrivals a year.

But as more countries offer simplified visa arrangements, regional hubs like Tokyo, Seoul and Taipei will take more from the mainland tourist wallet. Signs of such a change are already here, with the number of visiting mainland tourists declining during the Lunar New Year holiday for the first time in 20 years.

Hong Kong’s government can take some of the blame for the tourism turnaround. It has fallen well behind rivals in investment in hospitality and travel facilities. Hong Kong tourism receipts are equal to 8% of gross domestic product, yet it invests less than 2%. Singapore by contrast has receipts and investment in tourism at 5%-6% of GDP.

And while the territory’s Disneyland resort has been one of Hong Kong’s top attractions for mainland tourists, Shanghai has now built its own Disney theme park that is three times the size and opens next year. The conclusion of the UBS analysts is that Hong Kong’s overall attractiveness as a travel destination could strongly deteriorate.

Instead of building new tourist attractions, Hong Kong has simply focused on constructing more transport infrastructure. These include spending almost $10 billion on a bridge to Zhuhai and Macau, $9 billion on a high-speed rail link to Guangzhou, and possibly $18 billion on a third airport runway.

The final major headwind for Hong Kong’s economy is that its historic role as a transit hub for foreign trade with China is now under threat. As China signs more free-trade agreements, there is less need to transit the nation’s imports through Hong Kong. Both Australia and South Korea have recently signed free-trade agreements with China, for instance.

This might all sound rather bearish, yet equity investors should not head for the exits yet. UBS says it expects the Hang Seng Index HSI, +0.47% and Hong Kong’s economy to diverge, partly because locally driven stocks only have a 22% index weighting.

Another potential upside would be if the Shanghai-Hong Kong through train — allowing the direct trade of stock between the two cities’ markets — gets more traction, especially if the program is extended to include Shenzhen’s market.

Given that Hong Kong’s property market has long ago decoupled from local economic fundamentals, it might not be too much of a stretch for equities to do so as well.

Yet there must be a risk of spillover effects from any deterioration in the local economy and a consequent rise in unemployment.

Bank of America writes that unresolved political disputes suggest society will become more polarized, making protests and other disruptions more frequent. This could weigh on investor confidence and equity-market performance.

To many, the solution to these myriad challenges will seem obvious: Hong Kong needs political reform to be able to choose a better government.