George Chen

Mr. Shangkong | Last but not least, let’s talk about freedom once again and why it makes a difference for Hong Kong

Name: SCMP
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Why you can trust SCMP

George Chen

Published: 1:00pm, 13 Dec 2015Updated: 5:43pm, 13 Dec 2015

This is my seventh year in Hong Kong. If you ask me what really makes Hong Kong different, compared with Shanghai where I was born or the rest of China, the first word which pops up in my mind to this question will be “freedom”.

Freedom is not just a concept but something that all of us can easily understand and experience. Whenever you walk across the border and step onto Shenzhen, Hong Kong’s closest neighbour, you know you need a bit technical help to keep you connected and informed on your smartphone.

Freedom is not just about information. Freedom is about choice. Uber doesn’t kill traditional taxi business. It’s all about people’s choice.

It’s just like that some prefer coffee while others like to drink tea. Google won’t replace Baidu but you know where you can do better search in English, still the dominant language for information in the vast reaches of cyberspace, especially for our young students when they write their essays.

“I will also observe that if you are here in Hong Kong, and the Chinese government decides to change that, you will miss it. It’s important to stay right upfront. It’s an important aspect for real culture (in Hong Kong),” said Google chairman Eric Schmidt, alluding to the importance of freedom of speech and the Internet for both Hong Kong and Mainland China. That was from my 2013 interview with him when Schmidt visited Hong Kong.

Of course, as some of my readers will argue and I do agree that you can’t just keep writing about the importance of freedom in the hope that freedom can fix everything. No, it can’t.

What freedom can do is to help people to think, and think deeper for different ideas. The more ideas, the more solutions we will have to solve different problems. That’s why in Hong Kong we always welcome different kinds of debates and share many different views, no matter they are from a particular lens or not.