Has myopic Hong Kong lost sight of its unique purpose as a global centre?

Many in Hong Kong have a blind spot about our success, which may explain why some fear it is on the wane. This blind spot exists as many fail to understand why Hong Kong is unique. This may be because we have become myopic and too locally focused, limiting our field of vision to the mainland or to our position in Asia. People fail because they do not look beyond their region or time zone. If we step back and look at Hong Kong from a global perspective, we see that the city fulfils a much broader and more important role. Looking at our wider international role, we can immediately understand Hong Kong’s unique purpose.

If we ourselves do not see, promote, protect and capitalise on our unique international role, then our competitors certainly will not do it for us. Our principal competitors do their best to beat us, subtly discourage us, or confuse matters by feeding the market with false signals and even faint praise.

In order to truly excel, every person, family, sports team, school, company, social group, community or city must have a purpose. Groups that have a purpose are usually more successful and prosperous; those without one tend to end up as just another “also ran”.

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Although never articulated in this way, Hong Kong’s hidden purpose is to be one of three world cities working to keep a 24/7/365 globalised world of commerce, news, finance, information, logistics, services, money and people flows functioning, to enable uninterrupted intercontinental transactions.

The two others in this trio are New York and London. When New York quits working in the evening, Hong Kong starts. When Hong Kong quits, London begins. And so on, back to New York the following morning. New York coordinates the activities of companies and institutions across North and South America. Hong Kong does the same for Asia and Australasia; London for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Suppose Hong Kong is on the watch. If anything happens in the other two time zones to a company or institution, the Hong Kong representative is active and ready to receive a call from any of the 24/7 news media.

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This important global responsibility was never made clear as Hong Kong’s purpose, but it is a key part of what has made the city prosper and flourish. It has given senior-level corporate or institutional leaders the daily positive emotional feedback, engagement, meaning and sense of achievement needed to thrive in their roles. It has fed the engagement, fulfilment and can-do attitude that Hong Kong is globally known for, and that feeds across all levels of an organisation.