As the 10th anniversary of the end of British rule in Hong Kong approaches, it is tempting to compare then and now. Relative to the star-studded, media-clogged handover ceremony of July 1, 1997, the government's lengthy but pedestrian list of anniversary events is uninspiring. From Beijing's point of view, the celebration will be part of the preliminaries to the 2008 Summer Olympics in the capital, planned as the nation's coming out ceremony as a superpower.
The rest of the world is likely to view it as a non-event. Even in Hong Kong, the anniversary is complicated by a latent fear that the city is being marginalised by a combination of the mainland's strengths and the scarcity of eye-catching headlines.
Pedestrian is not half bad, from a governance perspective. Lack of attention gives Hong Kong breathing space to attend to the many pressing issues of keeping one of Asia's wealthiest, most efficient and livable cities up to par. The past 10 years have been fascinating and frustrating. Hong Kong's leaders have weathered horrendous problems such as the Asian financial crisis and severe acute respiratory syndrome. There are unused assets and a bridge yet to be built, but the city has begun to attend to the 'hundred issues' of Hong Kong in transition, as Anna Wu Hung-yuk once put it.
A wave of pro-democracy activism in 2003 and 2004 has translated into a healthy civic activism. You can see it in the mounting pressure to act to fix our deteriorating air quality, as business and civil society have begun to pitch in and admit that it is not up to the government alone to solve the problem.
The real question is whether Hong Kong has the will and resources to maintain its cutting edge in the next 10 years. It never had significant resources beyond its people and its deepwater port, and now both face new competition from the mainland. Shanghai has replicated both the port and the skyline, and Guangzhou and Shenzhen are building new central business districts. All will at least compare with the efficiency and comforts of Hong Kong.
Is our city becoming marginalised? Two trends that lead to such anxieties are the shift of mainland listings from Hong Kong to Shanghai, and the squeezing out of Hong Kong's small and medium-sized enterprises in the Pearl River Delta due to competition and lower costs. In both cases, the trends are driven by central government imperatives and local motivation to succeed.
