INTRODUCTION- AREAS WHERE HONG KONG MAY MATTER
Occupying an area of just about 1,000 sq. km, Hong Kong is not large enough to occupy even a tiny little spot in the map of the world. Hence, in terms of geographical size, Hong Kong is far from having any importance at all in the world. Nor does Hong Kong matter in terms of population – with a population of just about 7.3m, the city accounts for less than 0.1% of the world’s population.
That said, there are some reasons which should enable Hong Kong to command probably greater importance than its size and population would warrant.
One is that it could be seen as an experiment on how the civilisations of the East and the West may mix and be blended together in peaceful and natural ways, despite their fundamental differences. In any case, it would probably be lesser of a cultural gap and challenges for the western world to manage and settle issues with Hong Kong than China, and vice versa.
Moreover, Hong Kong is like a small bird, in that while it is small, its body contains similar major organs as human beings. Indeed, Hong Kong resembles a city state or even a country in some respects. Most importantly, in the course of the city’s strive for survival under rather challenging environment and constrained by very limited resources, the city seems to have developed some novel and differentiated ways of handling various things which could be of reference value to the rest of the Humanities. It seems to have , so to speak, Created some Virtues out of Necessity.
Indeed, in retrospect, it is arguable that Sir Copperwaite has implemented a great political economy experiment in Hong Kong since the 1960s through borrowing on the ideas of Adam Smith, and as such, Hong Kong may matter as arguably the first Adam Smith city in the world.
In this light, it appears that Hong Kong could qualify as an illustration on the merits and demerits of the Free Market which few would deny that it constitutes an important economic and social institution developed by the western civilisation. And for that matter, it is arguable that Hong Kong could also be seen as an experiment to put into test what has been seen as conceivable and attainable by Mr Adam Smith, not least is the importance and potential power that can be unleased by human sympathy and charity capital, in our view.
In any case, by virtue of the fact that Hong Kong is one of the most important international financial centres in the Pan-Asia time zone, and that it has mutil-decades experiences in connecting with China and the rest of the world, the city should have certain credentials to try to be at the forefront of many important issues related to the Humanities such as the environment, a possible global standard on ESG, transformative technologies in life science and many other areas. These constitute some of the areas where Hong Kong may matter and the Hong Kong Heritage will endeavour to look at which is consisted of at least five areas: UKCEPTI, OxsightHumanities, ESG, Adam Smith and Charity.