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Michael Jinghan Zeng

Hong Kong’s first five-year plan gives its universities an opportunity to show what their research can do for the city. Its ambitions for technology, regional development and international cooperation depend on decisions about institutions and people’s lives. Social scientists should help shape those decisions from the outset.
The blueprint explicitly addresses public governance, including civil service performance, departmental coordination and digital administration. It also provides for monitoring and assessment. Universities can contribute the evidence needed to turn these commitments into better decisions.
Artificial intelligence offers an immediate opportunity. The policy address has announced a HK$300 million (US$38.24 million) AI for Welfare Lab and proposes requirements for bidders on public-facing government AI projects to submit safety and ethics declarations.
The benefits will depend on how these tools are used. An AI system might help staff respond to inquiries faster, while increasing the time they spend checking for unreliable answers. Automating one stage of a service may move a bottleneck elsewhere. Citizens with limited digital skills could find a service harder to access.
These possibilities should inform project design. Public administration researchers can examine how responsibilities and workloads change. Scholars of ethics and law can help establish appropriate safeguards, while researchers working with service users can assess whether people understand and trust the arrangements. Their findings can help officials decide whether a pilot should be expanded, redesigned or stopped.
The government and universities should evaluate complete services, including the time people spend resolving problems and obtaining human help.




The Northern Metropolis presents a related challenge. The plan connects university towns with technological development, industry and surrounding communities. Achieving that integration will require decisions about housing, transport and public services that reflect how people live and work.
A researcher considering a job in a new university town will also consider where their family can live and whether schools and healthcare are accessible. Existing residents will want to know how redevelopment affects their livelihoods and neighbourhoods. Housing and urban policy research can bring these expectations into planning and identify problems while there is still time to change course.
Greater Bay Area cooperation adds another institutional dimension. The plan envisages a closer alignment of professional qualifications and healthcare arrangements, alongside wider sharing of medical records. Implementing these ambitions requires a detailed understanding of how different organisations operate and responsibilities are allocated.
Universities can help identify the administrative obstacles that residents encounter when using services across jurisdictions. Long-term studies could then establish whether new arrangements improve access and who remains underserved. This would give officials a stronger basis for adjusting policies as regional integration progresses.
Hong Kong’s international ambitions also create opportunities for social science. The policy address says the UN Industrial Development Organization expects to establish a centre in the city next year, alongside preparations for a regional bureau of the UN’s GlobE anti-corruption network.


Universities could support these organisations through research collaborations, professional education and student placements. Expertise in international affairs and comparative governance can help organisations understand how policies travel between countries and why arrangements that work in one setting may encounter difficulties elsewhere.
The same expertise matters for Chinese enterprises expanding overseas through Hong Kong. Their prospects depend partly on understanding local institutions, community expectations and political conditions. Academic partnerships that connect Hong Kong with researchers abroad can improve that understanding and support more durable cooperation.
For those of us leading university departments, the challenge is to organise our expertise around questions that external partners need answered. A practical start would be a small number of sustained projects, each with an academic lead, an external partner and a clear plan for gathering and using evidence.
The government should build evaluation into major initiatives at the design stage, with resources and appropriate data access agreed early. Researchers should be able to publish findings, including disappointing results, and recommend changes. That freedom makes evaluation useful to policymakers and credible to the public.

Universities, in turn, need to recognise the time required to build these partnerships and produce research that practitioners can use. Career assessments should value rigorous contributions to policy alongside academic publications. Teaching and administrative arrangements must also give colleagues the capacity to sustain the work.
Students should participate through supervised policy projects and placements. Working on an actual service problem can teach them how to analyse evidence, negotiate competing interests and communicate recommendations. Public officials and professionals could benefit from short courses developed around the same projects.
By 2030, Hong Kong should be able to show how evidence gathered during implementation changed decisions and improved services. Its universities can help produce that evidence and train the people who will act on it. The next step is to bring social science into the major initiatives now being designed.


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Universities and academics can contribute the evidence needed to turn these commitments into better decisions


Universities and academics can contribute the evidence needed to turn these commitments into better decisions.


Hong Kong economy

John Lee policy address 2026

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Hong Kong politics

Hong Kong’s first 5-year plan

Northern Metropolis

Urban planning

AI: Policy

Universities in Hong Kong

China

Greater Bay Area

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


Hong Kong needs social science to help deliver on its 5-year plan

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Universities and academics can contribute the evidence needed to turn these commitments into better decisions

Universities and academics can contribute the evidence needed to turn these commitments into better decisions