Hong Kong is unique to China, as are Beijing, Shanghai and all major cities in the country. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, I visited Beijing and Shanghai a few times, witnessing how the state-led Zhongguancun initiative in the capital and the pilot free-trade zone in the mainland’s economically freest city shaped the future of innovation and business in China. As a 21-year-old born and raised in post-handover Hong Kong, lately I have wondered if my hometown can maintain its special economic privileges and status, given that in recent years the gross domestic products of first-tier mainland cities have surpassed that of Hong Kong. I used to work at a local youth think tank, where it was my role as a facilitator to attempt to resolve conflicts across generations and the social spectrum. While there was diversity in political belief, most people agreed that the uniqueness of Hong Kong arose from the intersection of the Western system, traditional Chinese society and Lingnan culture. Notably, another narrative shared by people from both elite and grass-root communities was that the key to maintaining Hong Kong’s prosperity and competitiveness was to preserve our fundamental system, nothing more, nothing less. Undeniably, our society is now polarised. Some people have proposed structural reform to solve the question of Hong Kong’s future after 2047 . However, Val Koromzay, as director of the country studies branch of the OECD’s Economic Department, once said that popular sentiment could not be often translated into a concrete solution due to the conservative nature of the ruling class. Hence, from the perspective of economics, sweeping change requires the blending of two factors that are not easy to combine. How would pushing for reform help reconciliation in Hong Kong? A dialogue between neoconservatism and neoliberalism, written by mainland scholar Yang Ji-kai, might offer a clue. He points out that reform is the result of incremental change and respect for the historical continuity of traditional values. Extrapolating these ideas into the Hong Kong context, our society needs a group of middlemen who both acknowledge the traditional values of the city and have a great deal of leverage which would allow them to strive for a balance between the “two systems”. A pluralistic Chinese society, in which the uniqueness of every part of its territory is preserved, would benefit national rejuvenation . Edward Kelvin Choi, politics student, Chinese University of Hong Kong