One of the most talked-about subjects in town of late has been: does Hong Kong have a future? I find this fascinating because people suddenly care about their future here. The future is an entirely new subject in Hong Kong; before the handover, the ruling British lived in a 'borrowed place, on borrowed time', and they only cared about Hong Kong's future as 1997 crept closer and they wanted to stay.
During the next decade, the question of Hong Kong's future was directly translated into: 'Is there life after the handover?' The expat community was quite pessimistic, as evidenced by the mass exodus and the 'Death of Hong Kong', which was forecast by Fortune magazine.
Some locals were affected by the pessimistic mood and started migrating in the 1990s, only to return en masse later. For the majority of us who stayed, we enjoyed a terrific time - for a while - as the value of our assets rose by the day.
As long as we were the centre of the universe, we had no need to worry about our future. That position has been greatly eroded now, but Hong Kong is still decades ahead of Shanghai, our only rival in sight. At least, that is what we think.
Despite our grumbles, deep in our hearts we know that, as long as 'Daddy' loves us, we have nothing to fear.
The crunch came when Premier Wen Jiabao announced that Shanghai was destined to be China's international financial centre, and later warned Hong Kong that, if it did not move forwards, it would lose its lead. We are on our own now, with no special favours in the future. Suddenly, the roof has fallen in; Daddy has thrown us into open competition. The future has suddenly become a problem.
The consensus now is that Shanghai will surely overtake us in less than a decade as the international financial centre of the country, and that will be the end of Hong Kong as the Pearl of the Orient.
