City Beat | From ‘favourite’ to ‘spoiled child’ – what’s next for Hong Kong?
- As Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s recent trip to Beijing showed, the days of receiving preferential treatment are over
- Hong Kong will have to rebuild its ‘can do’ spirit and leverage its unique role in the Greater Bay Area, which will require strong leadership
When Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, and in the early post-handover years that followed, this “Pearl of the Orient” was no doubt the apple of Beijing’s eye.
The special attention from Beijing that the city enjoyed may have been taken for granted here, but it was to the envy of many mainland cities.
Time flies and seasons change, and so has sentiment turned across the border. But it was the changed perception of China’s leadership, seeing this once-favourite child becoming too spoiled, that also changed Hong Kong’s course.
All those days of top-down “gifts”, or preferential supportive measures, from the central government for the city whenever it ran into deep trouble are now past tense.
“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime,” the old saying goes. Well, for Hong Kong, the days of free fish are over – it’s time to learn how to fish instead.
