One would like to think that Hong Kong's next chief executive would be someone who not only thinks about, but can also come up with policies that address, the two defining issues of this age: demographic change and environmental challenge.
These global issues are especially pertinent to Hong Kong, with one of the world's fastest-ageing populations and the worst pollution problems of any major developed city. Hong Kong's global relevance will be in part determined by whether it is at the forefront of tackling these challenges, or whether it continues to be run in accordance with the needs and policies of the 1970s and 1980s, when the population was young, growing fast and 'bigger was always better'.
It may seem equally simplistic to say that 'small is beautiful', to borrow the title of an influential 1970s economist's book. But there are two reasons why 'small' is now appropriate. First, the dramatic decrease in population growth almost everywhere, not least Hong Kong, has cut the need for rapid growth in physical infrastructure. At the same time, the reasonable expectations of people in poorer regions to enjoy more material goods - as their productive capacity rises and birth rates fall - put great pressure on resources.
Hong Kong has, for a decade and a half, been slowing down in one respect: housing construction. But that has gone too far and has been for all the wrong reasons of protecting the interests of property owners at the expense of a younger generation.
In another respect, Hong Kong appears to have gone backwards, probably as a result of a desire to copy the mainland, where 'bigger is better' is still the norm - though there are signs of rethinking in Beijing, where some academics and think tanks are proving to be rather bolder than their Hong Kong counterparts. It manifests itself in blind government support for the (railwayless) bridge to Zhuhai and Macau, bringing the (not very) high-speed rail to Kowloon and the (highly polluting) third runway at Chek Lap Kok.
But there are many lesser ways for Hong Kong to show it aspires to be up with cities that lead the way in cleanliness, efficient use of resources, realistic pricing of items from road space to water - investments in the long-term reduction of costs rather than immediate benefits. In all these areas Hong Kong lags behind rich societies as varied as Germany, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
The notion that such things are 'unpopular' is a nonsense spread by those like the Hong Kong administration, still in the grip of vested interests that profit from failure to modernise. Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Co have been as much an inheritor of late-Qing blind obstinacy as the British colonial method.
