Our alternative thoughts on Hong Kong is that the city can remain a place which can play a role in the fulfilment of  many people’s visions and missions in lives and the aggregate of all these shall define what the city has achieved.

In a way, this is what Adam Smith’s idea of a Free Market Commercial Society is all about. Mr Smith has also more elegantly described as a system of Natural Liberty, essentially a system which can allow many free and autonomous individuals to come together and collaborate voluntarily to work for what they want to pursuit and that each of them can build on what others have done. 

In the past, the Hong Kong story was more about the  Chinese. We think Hong Kong is as much an international city as a city within China and that what drives Hong Kong  is really what we see as a virtuous cycle between these two dimensions of the city. Indeed, we would tend to think that the greater and stronger the international dimension of Hong Kong, the greater the contribution the city can offer to the development of the Chinese civilisation and the ongoing issue of how this old civilisation is going to adapt and integrate into the modern world.

We therefore envisage that Hong Kong could become both a world city within China and a city for the world,  like the London of the East or an experiment on what Adam Smith sees as achievable and attainable for human societies. Indeed, we envisage that Hong Kong can take pioneering and constructive roles in matters important to the Humanities and international community,  including the development of transformative innovations;  the formulation of a global standard on ESG, and many others.