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Opinion | For Hong Kong to thrive, the private sector must rise to the challenge
- The past will not deliver the future – the art and culture, hotel, restaurant and entertainment sectors must all take responsibility to identify and embrace today’s vastly different economic opportunities
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Businesses in Hong Kong are hoping for a boost from visitors over mainland China’s Labour Day “golden week” holiday. But hope cannot be a substitute for action in this difficult environment, and it is up to us whether Hong Kong’s economy perishes under the fiery challenges or finds a transformative rebirth – like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
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In Chinese mythology, the phoenix represents resilience, duty, propriety and virtue. Perhaps it should be the symbol of our times: Hongkongers must take more individual and collective responsibility for the city’s economic future.
The past will not deliver the future for Hong Kong and the private sector needs to take on more direct responsibility, to identify and embrace today’s vastly different economic opportunities.
The first step is to not let the economic comparisons of Hong Kong today vs pre-2019 cloud emerging evidence that points to new growth opportunities. After the triple torpedoes to Hong Kong – from the 2019 riots and the Covid-19 pandemic to the new geopolitical environment – the city has entered a new era. Let’s call this “post-2020 Hong Kong”.
Comparisons to a pre-2020 Hong Kong can be an unhelpful distortion when assessing the trajectory of the city’s new economic drivers.
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Yes, retail sales growth has been muted this year and the restaurant sector has been confronted by changing tourism trends and consumer behaviour. Yet amid all this, visitor numbers have been increasing dramatically if we sensibly use the first year of the post-2020 Hong Kong era as the baseline.
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