What will Hong Kong look like in 2047?

Come back and ask me in 40 years…

Predicting the city’s future can be a mug’s game unless you take a close look at how New York and London have developed, writes Jake van der Kamp.

[1] The e-mail command popped up on the screen.

“Tell us,” said the boss, “what the future is likely to hold for Hong Kong in 2047, and make it forward-looking, will you? We don’t want just a recap of past events.”

[2] So I decided to get it deliberately wrong and look back to 1947 instead. Well, why not? The boss needs someone to yell at, doesn’t he?

[3] But there is a reason for starting in 1947. I want to imagine what I would say if I had been employed by this newspaper in 1947 and asked to make a forecast of what Hong Kong would be like in, for argument’s sake, 1977.

[4] I think I would have looked around me and come to the conclusion that there really wasn’t much future for the place. It was poor, people had deserted it throughout the war, and even the Royal Navy hadn’t much use for it any longer. Perhaps there was still some potential for China trade, but otherwise, agriculture and fishing would have to do. Hong Kong and the Falklands – backwaters of the Empire, both. How wrong can you get?

[5] Now let’s shift forwards to 1977 and I shall imagine myself with the same assignment. What will Hong Kong look like in 2007? I look around me and I say,

[6] Then I would forecast that, in 30 years, Hong Kong would be the world’s biggest name in garment production, taking advantage of the closed mainland economy’s inability to compete. The city would become to ship-owning what Greece had once been, and unemployment would stay low because of the vast demand for Hong Kong seamen.

[7] Look around you. The words ‘spot on’ hardly strike you as the most appropriate comment on that 1977 prediction, do they? Yes, wrong again – and not just a little wrong, but way off the mark. Here I am in 2007, trying to predict where Hong Kong will be in 2047. I’m pretty certain that looking around me, to see where we are, would be the wrong approach.

[8] Taking that approach, I would predict that in 40 years’ time Hong Kong will be the world’s biggest banking and finance centre; its centrepiece economy will sit astride the crossroads of world trade with the mainland; and it will have established itself indubitably as Asia’s World City [got the point, cut the poetry – Ed] – except for one thing. Everyone has left because of the air pollution.

[9] OK, let’s do it a different way. Let’s look at two cities that are ahead of us on the path we are treading – London and New York. They are still financial centres and will probably continue to have a stronger position in finance than we can ever hope to have. But they have lost their port business, lost their manufacturing business, and become weaker in trading businesses. Yet they are clearly wealthy

[10] And there we have the difficulty; just how do you describe what people do when they put their brains to work rather than their muscles? What you get is a wide range of activities that don’t always strike you as commercial, but which prove to be so in the aggregate.

[11] To some extent you can call it the arts, and both London and New York are very obviously centres of the arts in every way – music, theatre, literature, film, take your choice.

[12] But that is still not enough. You can also see these two as centres of applied sciences – engineering, architecture, and the like. They are media and publication centres; they are research centres, education centres. They are many things and it is not always easy to pin down just what those things are, but you know that they all contribute because you can see the physical evidence in London and New York.

[13] I think Hong Kong in 40 years’ time will be a centre of the creative arts in a way that we cannot now imagine. I think our film industry will revive; that this town will be the publication centre of Asia with an incontestable lead over other Asian cities; that it will be the first place Asian artists will want their paintings shown; and that even in music it will make a name for itself.

[14] This progression is simply natural. For creative achievement, you need unfettered talent, not just in the creative arts but in the political and economic spheres as well. Hong Kong is well ahead of other Asian centres in this regard. Bangkok could be in contention because of the tolerance that characterises Thai society, but Bangkok is not wealthy enough, and prosperity is required. Tokyo might qualify, but only for Japanese society. Singapore? Hah! Tolerant, unfettered Singapore, yeah, right.