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Opinion
Cheng Xianyue

Hong Kong’s 5-year plan will shore up market with governance and vision

The government’s role is to reduce uncertainty through strategic direction, institutional coordination and infrastructure investment

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Hongkongers collect copies of the consultation document for Hong Kong’s first five-year blueprint at the Wan Chai District Office on June 15. Photo: Karma Lo
Cheng Xianyue is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies.
Hong Kong’s decision to introduce its first five-year plan has prompted familiar questions. Does this signal greater government intervention at the expense of the free market? Will it make Hong Kong’s development model more similar to that of the mainland? Could it overlap with the annual policy address and budget? And without detailed key performance indicators, might it become little more than a symbolic document?

These concerns deserve a serious response.

For Hong Kong, the purpose of a five-year plan is not to remake an open international city in the image of another development model. Rather, within the framework of “one country, two systems”, it is to place Hong Kong’s strengths, national strategic opportunities and local challenges within a coherent road map.

Hong Kong’s past success rested on an open and flexible market, its free-port status and extensive links to global capital. Yet these advantages have been expressed mainly through its capacity to connect and allocate resources, rather than to create new economic structures. When land remains scarce, the industrial base is narrow and research outcomes struggle to reach the market, flexibility alone does not produce a new growth curve.

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