You do not meet RVSM requirements while hand flying therefore one would hope no one operates an aircraft in manual flight while in RVSM airspace except under an emergency situation.
The way it works in HKG you're descended out of RVSM airspace not long after the FIR boundary.
A hand flown, high speed descent, is of considerable training advantage, providing a muscle memory for aircraft handling which is considerably different to the 30 seconds of flight per sector, most pilots do at VAPP. It also helps with speed brake panache, understanding the inertia and pitch moments, hopefully relative to a little pax comfort. And of course, for A320 drivers, when you're left high and dry by ATC, the full application of speed brake is only available with AP off.
The culture of over-speeding in HKG was a shock to many new arrivals with Airbus experience. There were legendary, serial offenders and the eventual solution that ended up in the manuals was the approach to overspeed and overspeed. Basically and comically a "managed" overspeed whereas a few hand flown descents and looking at your AH if in a managed descent mode would avert an overspeed long before it was threatening. And no, HKG airlines do not fly the aircraft hard and fast, so having worked for airlines that did, and over speeding was unheard of, the culture and technique here was inappropriate.
So, to answer propaganda's question on HF descents and raw data flying, the system is not terribly supportive with unrealistic operational restrictions that present a negative training exposure. So the fear the system has for pilots hand flying on the line is manifesting itself into a wider reluctance to enable First Officers to practice their hand flying.
Some will say that's what the sim is for but they are not the same as aircraft handling in real time. Apart from small IRS track errors and convective turbulence which often trouble a cadet, the aviation exposure of an MPL is low and there is a genuine fear with hand flying a real aeroplane that needs to be overcome. Coupled with an aversion by many line captains to expose their operation to training 150 hour pilots in big jets and you have a crisis that is not well understood by leadership.
Anyways, not relevant here and I'll let it drift back to a CX thread.