For decades, Hong Kong thrived as the world’s freest economy without five-year plans, while mainland China rose to become the world’s second largest economy through them. Now Hong Kong has the rare advantage of both: market dynamism and strategic direction. Harnessed through the collective wisdom of the people, this combination can deliver more than what the market or planning alone can achieve.
Hong Kong is preparing its first five-year plan to dovetail with the national 15th five-year plan, covering key areas from land and industry to finance and innovation. The real task is not to mirror the national blueprint, but to define how Hong Kong can make unique contributions to national growth while strengthening its growth model and preserving the distinct way it operates.
Mainland China’s strength is scale; Hong Kong’s is distinction: the city does not need an all-encompassing plan. The mainland’s five-year plans are comprehensive by necessity, reflecting the scale and scope of the world’s second largest economy.
Hong Kong’s must be selective by design, focusing on targeted areas where we have a clear advantage and our contribution is nationally consequential, such as international finance, trade, legal and dispute resolution services, the Northern Metropolis, technology and innovation, and global talent. Precision, not breadth, will determine impact.
China’s five-year plans are a major national undertaking, involving hundreds of research projects, field visits, seminars and wide-ranging consultation. A particular effort is also made to gather views from minority and under-represented groups. A five-year plan is a full-scale effort to combine expert planning with social input, and strategic direction with broader legitimacy. Once it is formulated and national priorities set, resources can be mobilised at scale to deliver.
Hong Kong’s market economy operates differently. The direction may be set, but outcomes depend on the private sector’s response. Hong Kong straddles two systems. We can combine strategic direction with market forces, using land policy, infrastructure investment, a simplified regulatory regime, streamlined procedures and policy incentives to set the stage, while relying on private capital and enterprise to drive outcomes. This is not a compromise between systems, but a hybrid multiplier.
A plan of this kind cannot be written by the government alone. When Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office director Xia Baolong called for Hong Kong to “pool the wisdom of all” in formulating its five-year plan, he was prescribing not a consultation process but a governing principle. No one understands the city’s constraints and possibilities better than its population. Harnessing that knowledge is not about inclusion for its sake, but about how to form a better strategy and gain the public support needed for execution.
A genuine whole-of-community engagement is, therefore, essential. It is also an opportunity. By bringing forward Hong Kong people’s collective aspirations, the process can revive the “Lion Rock spirit” of collective striving, forge a new consensus on our shared future and transform planning from a technocratic exercise into a movement of civic pride. That would be a strategic achievement.
In this respect, Hong Kong is not starting from zero. We already possess a rich, if underused, ecosystem for collective problem-solving. Our universities, professional bodies, chambers of commerce and think tanks all have the capacity to contribute. The Legislative Council’s move to establish a formal collaboration mechanism with the government to conduct thematic research and gather views is a welcome step.
The challenge is not the absence of voices, but whether the government is prepared to convene them in an interactive and structured way that reunites people for a shared purpose.
Recent experience shows why this matters. Though well-intentioned, policies such as the scheme to charge for waste disposal and the bus seat belt legislation failed in the face of public resistance when implementation exposed gaps between policy objectives and conditions on the ground. These cases remind us that good governance requires public reasoning, practical calibration and genuine collaboration.
The five-year plan must be more inclusive than Hong Kong’s traditional mode of policy consultation. Beyond established business and professional elites, the government should hear from the youth, grass-roots workers, ethnic minorities, long-term foreign residents, new arrivals, carers, the elderly and people with disabilities.
These groups, often peripheral in strategic discussions, are part of the social fabric that any credible development blueprint must serve. A five-year plan that claims to speak for the whole city should not be drafted around a narrow slice of it.
Hong Kong’s first five-year plan is a golden opportunity presented by the convergence of two powerful forces: mainland China’s proven ability to deliver on long-term plans, and Hong Kong’s status as the world’s freest and most adaptive economy. When Asia’s most dynamic international city merges its strategic direction with that of the world’s second-largest economy, the result is not incremental progress. It is an exponential possibility. This is “one country, two systems” at its best.