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Letters

Hong Kong’s first five-year plan contains welcome targets for energy, carbon emissions, air pollution and water quality. Yet when it turns to the Northern Metropolis – the city’s main platform for innovation and new industrialisation – green development largely disappears as an organising principle.
That separation could prove costly. The Northern Metropolis is a rare chance to design a new urban and industrial system from the ground up. Decisions now about its buildings, power supply, transport and landscape will shape Hong Kong’s economy for decades. The city should not build a 20th century industrial estate and market it as 21st century innovation.
The national 15th five-year plan calls for about 100 national-level zero-carbon industrial parks. Shenzhen is also developing near-zero-carbon pilot zones. Hong Kong should not merely play catch-up.
The government should designate the Northern Metropolis as its first zero-carbon, climate-resilient industrial and innovation district – and use the city’s financial and international strengths to improve on the mainland model.
A credible zero-carbon district must count more than the electricity consumed within its gates. Much of its footprint will be created before its laboratories and data centres open, through construction materials, equipment and supply chains. Public contracts should reward low-carbon materials and whole-life performance. Energy, buildings, transport and data infrastructure should be planned as one system, rather than as separate projects with green labels attached.
Resilience must also be designed in. Parts of the Northern Metropolis adjoin low-lying rivers, fish ponds, wetlands and Deep Bay. These natural systems store floodwater, moderate heat and sustain biodiversity. Treating them merely as land awaiting development would destroy protective infrastructure that taxpayers may later have to rebuild.
Done properly, the Northern Metropolis could become more than a cleaner business park. Mainland companies could demonstrate green technologies there, while Hong Kong’s universities, engineers, lawyers and financiers help test, finance and adapt them for Asian markets. Regional experience could, in turn, feed back into Chinese innovation.
This would make Hong Kong a two-way platform between China and Asia, not merely a showroom. The government should give the Northern Metropolis a zero-carbon mandate now, before yesterday’s infrastructure is poured into concrete.
Lo Sze-ping, former CEO of WWF China, and special policy adviser to the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development
Chinese move and stay overseas for complex reasons
I read with interest the op-ed, “The unspoken reason my Chinese friends choose America” (September 19).
The op-ed reduces modern socio-economic and familial pressures – intense career competition, urban pace and status anxiety – to a Confucian caricature. High expectations around success and personal choices are not unique to China or Confucian heritage societies.
Romanticising the United States as a judgment-free zone overlooks its own realities: the widespread social isolation, economic precarity and hyper-individualistic pressure that shape urban American life.
Presenting overseas movement purely as flight from cultural oppression also contradicts demographic evidence. Between 1978 and 2025, 9.46 million Chinese students went abroad; of the 8.01 million who completed their studies, 6.98 million returned – an impressive rate exceeding 87 per cent. Many of these returnees enter dynamic domestic tech and research sectors.
Conflating discomfort with certain local social norms with a broad endorsement of American society misreads the calculus of global migrants. People move for career synergy, economic opportunity, research infrastructure and lifestyle preferences – not a simple binary between traditional expectations and American individualism. Youthful frustration with societal pressures often reflects personal navigation challenges rather than a systemic civilisational flaw; many choose to return, managing these environments successfully.
Finally, framing personal space as a unique American gift ignores reality. Mainland Chinese migrants and students choose diverse destinations – Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Canada, Europe and beyond. The United States does not have a monopoly on freedom, liberty or a good life.
A more accurate account would recognise both the real pressures some experience and the data showing that the large majority of Chinese students ultimately build their futures at home.
Nick Wang, North Point


Make the Northern Metropolis Hong Kong’s zero-carbon test bed

How Hong Kong is remapping the future of higher education

Universities must rise to the Northern Metropolis challenge

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

Northern Metropolis

An aerial view of the Sandy Ridge Data Facility Cluster site in the New Territories on September 23. The Northern Metropolis is a rare chance to design a new urban and industrial system from the ground up. Hong Kong should not build a 20th century industrial estate and market it as 21st century innovation. Photo: Elson Li

Workers remove belongings from a demolition site in Kwu Tung on June 17 to make way for developments under the the Northern Metropolis plan. Urban policy research can bring future and existing residents’ expectations into planning and identify problems while there is still time to change course. Photo: AFP

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu gathers feedback for Hong Kong’s first five-year plan and his policy address on August 9. Photo: RTHK

Like Shenzhen, the Northern Metropolis is animated by the spirit of experimentation

Illustration: Mario Cameira

Hong Kong lacks a climate narrative to unify its efforts

People enjoy the waterfront at the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, on September 7. Photo: Sam Tsang

Opinion

Readers discuss a zero-carbon mandate for the Northern Metropolis, and the complex reasons Chinese students move and stay overseas


Readers discuss a zero-carbon mandate for the Northern Metropolis, and the complex reasons Chinese students move and stay overseas.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Readers discuss a zero-carbon mandate for the Northern Metropolis, and the complex reasons Chinese students move and stay overseas

Readers discuss a zero-carbon mandate for the Northern Metropolis, and the complex reasons Chinese students move and stay overseas