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Carolyn Yim

Hong Kong is navigating a period of significant economic transition. The city is seeing a surge in family offices. It is an offshore renminbi hub and has one of the world’s most meaningful capital markets.
However, it needs systemic change to attract and retain top talent, bring the Hong Kong diaspora back home and lure high-spending tourists. While our capital infrastructure is strong, our cultural infrastructure demands urgent attention.
As outlined in China’s 15th five-year plan, the central government sees high-quality cultural activity as a potential driver of prosperity. Living up to that potential will require Hong Kong transforming from a city that hosts cultural events into one that consistently produces culture.
This means nurturing the city’s creators in subcultural fringes. In his book Status and Culture, W. David Marx argues that authentic culture is created in subcultural fringes before being co-opted by capital as mass culture.
Patrick Kho, author of subculture newsletter The Chow, describes attending a recent surge of young, grass-roots cultural life: daytime discos in Prince Edward warehouses, indie zine fairs in the basement of Chungking Mansions, underground techno under a bridge in Kwun Tong and cybernetic art in Tai Ping Shan.
Subcultures are not a niche – they are a global indicator in the attention economy. Digital media channel Radii, which covers Hong Kong and Chinese youth subcultures, has seen large amounts of international engagement with its posts, such as those on the “Chinamaxxing” trend on Instagram.












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Meanwhile, Hong Kong should also deploy patient capital to grow its own creative ecosystems. Rather than one-off annual events such as Art Basel or the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the city should build the infrastructure for long-term cultural production. The British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN scheme provides a successful blueprint; by offering up to three years of financial support and professional mentoring, it prioritises resilient futures over one-off visibility.
Private capital is also incentivised to provide a platform for creative subcultures as it keeps their assets relevant. From Great Eagle Group’s live music bar Terrible Baby in the Eaton Hotel, to Hongkong Land’s Belowground showcasing underground DJs and visual artists, the evidence is clear: cultural authenticity attracts a dynamic demographic. This model must be applied in the plans for coming developments in the Northern Metropolis and central business district.
The traditional retail experience is no longer a guaranteed anchor for real estate footfall. Hong Kong now has to compete with more affordable and larger retail and lifestyle avenues in Shenzhen and elsewhere in the Greater Bay Area. Because land is Hong Kong’s most scarce resource, community placemaking must be a strategic priority in activating cultural dynamism. Community and authentic experiences are central to this.
Moreover, placemaking must move towards more human-scale built environments that encourage people to stay longer and develop a greater sense of community. For instance, the West Kowloon Art Park offers significant space and has successfully hosted events. However, it lacks functional infrastructure such as tree canopies and shade for sun or rain protection, essential in Hong Kong’s subtropical climate.

Effective placemaking must create what civic activist Jane Jacobs described in The Life and Death of Great American Cities as the “sidewalk ballet” – the unscripted, spontaneous interactions that build social trust. Jacobs describes a good city pavement as “an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have separate parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole”.
Finally, we must recognise taste as a driving force. When it comes to Hong Kong culture, our unique taste that sets us apart from the rest of the world is the conviction to lead with a cohesive vision of our identity – a meeting place between east and west, one with roots in both the traditional and the modern.
The aesthetic appeal of storytellers such as Wong Kar-wai and Eileen Chang is founded on a tasteful east-meets-west visual culture. This lineage continues today through a new generation of rising, internationally recognised Hong Kong diaspora tastemakers such as architects Andre Fu and Joyce Wang, design studios Samuel Gui Yang and Maison Ming, and art non-profits M+ and Arthur de Villepin’s Foundation of Art and Culture.
By valuing taste and the creative class as a core economic asset, Hong Kong can remain a premium international brand and travel destination. This approach provides the necessary institutional counterweight to the subcultural fringe, creating a dynamic and defensible cultural ecosystem.


Last month, I hosted a 150-person “tea rave” as a litmus test for placemaking and in-person community. The energy was electric. C-suite executives mingled with Lamma Island bohemians; conversation between tourists and locals flowed with the tea; people aged six to 76 helped with cleaning up. The incredible turnout suggested the yearning for community is more than a niche sentiment – it is a deeper demand going unmet by our existing infrastructure.
Hong Kong’s emblem, the Bauhinia blakeana, is a hybrid flower that must be intentionally cultivated to survive. We must now apply that same logic to our economy and intentionally cultivate the hybrid of robust financial rails and rich cultural infrastructure.
By nurturing ecosystems that allow creators to thrive, Hong Kong can transform itself from a city that simply hosts culture into one that consistently leads it. Let’s build our new era of Hong Kong dynamism.


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Opinion

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One-off events are not enough for a city in dire need of a cultural revival that nurtures its subcultures and lets future creators thrive


One-off events are not enough for a city in dire need of a cultural revival that nurtures its subcultures and lets future creators thrive.


Urban planning

Hong Kong economy

China

Wong Kar-wai

Eileen Chang

Art Basel

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


Why securing Hong Kong’s economic future is a cultural question

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}One-off events are not enough for a city in dire need of a cultural revival that nurtures its subcultures and lets future creators thrive

One-off events are not enough for a city in dire need of a cultural revival that nurtures its subcultures and lets future creators thrive