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Cheng Xianyue

On December 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping, on receiving a work report from Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, said the city should proactively align with the country’s 15th five-year plan and better integrate into, and serve, the national development agenda.
In recent days, discussion of the coming plan across the Hong Kong government and wider society has underscored a growing consensus behind deeper integration with the mainland.
While the 14th five-year plan spoke of “maintaining” Hong Kong’s strengths, the draft proposal for the 15th plan upgrades the formulation to “promoting” the city’s long-term prosperity and stability. The subtle but consequential shift signals that Beijing expects the focus of Hong Kong governance to accelerate from restoring order towards driving development and prosperity.
That adjustment is also a calibrated response to a rapidly changing international environment. With global technology and industrial supply chains being reshaped and the strategic competition between China and the United States deepening, Hong Kong’s “superconnector” role faces greater external uncertainty.
The proposal emphasises support for Hong Kong to build an international innovation and technology centre and become a global hub for top-tier talent, positioning these ambitions within national strategies such as technological self-reliance, high-level opening up and yuan internationalisation.
This implies that Hong Kong is expected not only to act as a bridge but also to play a more proactive, even frontier, role in areas Beijing deems strategically critical.

The logic is one of mutual reinforcement: only by integrating more deeply into the national agenda can Hong Kong secure greater strategic certainty in an increasingly uncertain environment.
And certainty may be Hong Kong’s scarcest – and most valuable – asset today. Singapore has shored up its position as an Asian innovation hub through state-led programmes such as the National AI Strategy 2.0 and long-running biomedical initiatives. Israel, in an earlier era, used the government-backed Yozma fund as a lever to “crowd in” private venture capital, laying the foundations for its “start-up nation” ecosystem.
The lesson is straightforward: in hi-tech, high-risk emerging sectors, governments often need to absorb early uncertainty and build the first mile of institutions and capital before markets follow at scale.
In Hong Kong, the government’s push to accelerate the Northern Metropolis project – speeding up development targets, refining land-allocation mechanisms and planning an international innovation and technology district – reflects a more interventionist policy posture. That direction is broadly consistent with Beijing’s proposal.
If the Northern Metropolis can be tightly aligned with the mainland’s major technology priorities, it could evolve from a conventional land development project into a strategic platform for nurturing “new quality productive forces” and reshaping Hong Kong’s economic geography.




Equally notable is the five-year plan proposal’s layered approach to language. For Hong Kong’s traditional strengths – its international financial, shipping and trade centres, and its role as an aviation hub – the emphasis is on “consolidating and enhancing”. For newer positioning – as an international innovation and technology centre and a global high-end talent hub – the phrasing stresses the “supporting” of the building of these capabilities.
The distinction is deliberate: safeguarding Hong Kong’s core competitiveness as an international financial centre is the baseline; opening new lanes in innovation and talent is where the future contest will be decided. The 14th five-year plan contained elements of this thinking; the proposal for the 15th further elevates the strategic weight of innovation and talent.
The slogan “backed by the motherland, connected to the world” is also taking on new meaning. On the one hand, Hong Kong is being urged to turn China’s vast market, complete industrial system and strong innovation momentum into fertile ground for its own innovation ambitions. On the other, with the rise of the Global South and as Western technological alliances reconfigure, Hong Kong’s “internationalisation” is expected to evolve.


Beyond maintaining ties with traditional Western partners, the city could position itself as a key bridge linking emerging innovation ecosystems – in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Latin America – with China’s market.
This is where the notion of Hong Kong as a co-architect of rules comes in. Rather than serving only as an intermediary aligning with existing international standards, Hong Kong is being urged to leverage the “one country, two systems” framework to participate in and co-develop rules in newer domains such as the digital economy, green finance and artificial intelligence governance, contributing to a more inclusive and equitable international order.
Hong Kong stands at a pivotal moment. The test is not simply how the city interprets the 15th five-year plan proposal, but whether society can translate it into action: breaking with path dependence, building a more capable state apparatus and acting with greater initiative. The challenge is to preserve the city’s irreplaceable superconnector function while expanding a new role as a co-architect of rules – unifying continuity with an upgrade in purpose.


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Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu (right), at the opening ceremony for the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park in the Northern Metropolis, with (from left) Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po and Executive Deputy Director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office Xu Qifang on December 22. Photo: Eugene Lee

President Xi Jinping meets Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu in Beijing, China, on December 16. Photo: Xinhua

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President Xi Jinping (right) meets Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee in Beijing on December 16. Photo: Xinhua

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Illustration: Craig Stephens

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Hong Kong’s Hung Shui Kiu industrial park will leverage its location to focus on advanced manufacturing. Photo: Eugene Lee

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City can go beyond ‘superconnector’ role to be a ‘co-architect of rules’ and become more proactive in areas Beijing deems strategically critical


City can go beyond ‘superconnector’ role to be a ‘co-architect of rules’ and become more proactive in areas Beijing deems strategically critical.


China

Xi Jinping

John Lee

Banking & finance

China economy

Technology

Northern Metropolis

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Green finance

Hong Kong innovators

Expresses the views, ideas and conclusions of the author. (Eg. Enough of Crazy Rich Asians, think of crazy poor Hongkongers.)


How Hong Kong can take on a more frontier role in China’s development

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}City can go beyond ‘superconnector’ role to be a ‘co-architect of rules’ and become more proactive in areas Beijing deems strategically critical

City can go beyond ‘superconnector’ role to be a ‘co-architect of rules’ and become more proactive in areas Beijing deems strategically critical