How technology and innovation can help Hong Kong remain a star player on China’s team

It was not until the trade-war cries that I was hit by how far China has come since my university days. It’s phenomenal that, in less than 20 years, the nation has gone from getting admitted into the World Trade Organisation to screaming “Bring it!” in response to trade war taunts. 

Hong Kong’s growing confidence crisis since the handover – not so much because of the handover itself as over China’s growth – has now reached a critical point: either we resign ourselves to a complete loser mentality or we redefine ourselves vis-à-vis the nation and the world.  

There’s no harm in reminiscing about the past, when Hong Kong played an indispensable and incredible role to China in the 1990s as the bridge between the Chinese mainland and the outside world. Since the 1990s, Hong Kong’s roles – as an intermediate hub for trade, an offshore bonds centre and even in international relations – have diminished. We once played an instrumental role in securing China’s most-favoured nation status with the United States. 

The sheer size of China’s economy and the nation’s standing in the world have changed so fundamentally that Hong Kong cannot be stuck in the past and blind to the present: we are no longer the star player in every game. We’ve increasingly been put on the bench.