The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government on Monday kicked off a two-month public consultation on the city’s first-ever five-year plan for socioeconomic development. Stakeholders are no doubt encouraged to contribute their ideas. As this is the first time that Hong Kong tries to formulate a comprehensive, long-term development blueprint, some people might initially struggle to distinguish the essence of the five-year plan and that of the annual Policy Address, leading to misfocused ideas and proposals. For their proposals to be relevant and of value, they must first have a correct understanding of the nature of the proposed five-year plan.
The five-year plan serves as a medium-to-long-term strategic blueprint, answering the fundamental question of what the city wants to become in the next five years. In contrast, a Policy Address is an annual action agenda answering what will be done in the coming year, while the financial secretary’s Budget is an annual resource allocation plan answering what the revenues and expenditures are for the fiscal year. Conflating these differences would foil the consultation process. For example, proposing short-term demands — such as sector-specific tax relief for next year or immediate welfare subsidy hikes — for the five-year plan is akin to drawing construction details on a master blueprint, a mismatch that would only dilute the five-year plan’s overarching strategic value.
Furthermore, the primary function of a five-year plan is to unravel long-standing, systemic bottlenecks. Hong Kong currently faces deep-seated problems, including a relatively homogenous economic structure, decelerating growth momentum, an aging population, and a protracted land and housing shortage. These issues, accumulated over decades, require sustained, long-term remedies. The five-year plan needs to provide an overall deployment framework that spans multiple years, sectors and areas, constituting a systematic solution to complex problems.
Therefore, when conceiving ideas, stakeholders should ask themselves whether their proposals are structured with a five-year horizon, whether the issues they identify are universal to society, and whether their proposals offer a fundamental solution to a systemic conundrum or challenge. They must look well beyond a one-year horizon and subordinate narrow interests to the broader societal good.
Public consultation is neither an exercise for political posturing nor an occasion for gaining visibility. Therefore, submissions should eschew lofty adjectives in favor of quantifiable metrics. For instance, a constructive proposal may recommend measures to help shorten the average waiting time for public rental housing to under four years by the end of 2030, or urge the government to set a definitive target of raising Hong Kong’s research and development expenditure to 2 percent of GDP.
Hong Kong’s five-year plan should not exist in isolation; it must align with the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), take reference from the development blueprints of other cities within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and benchmark against leading mainland economic powerhouses like Shanghai and Shenzhen
At the same time, vague, overly broad ideas should be avoided in favor of specific proposals. For example, one could propose designating a pilot block for artificial-intelligence application inside the Northern Metropolis to pioneer AI-driven solutions in the fields of smart traffic, elderly-care services, and environmental monitoring, with a view to creating a scalable, replicable model for other fields within five years. Such targeted proposals allow the government to readily assess feasibility, deploy pilot projects, and realize early-stage benefits.
Crucially, if the five-year plan represents the master design, the Policy Address and the Budget constitute the working blueprints. Therefore, the formulation of a five-year strategy must ensure that long-term goals can be broken down into annual benchmarks backed by robust fiscal capacity. Proposals must be pragmatic and executable, as overly idealized scenarios, such as livelihood-related or welfare targets that decouple from Hong Kong’s projected economic growth and the government’s fiscal realities stand little chance of implementation.
Hong Kong’s five-year plan should not exist in isolation; it must align with the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), take reference from the development blueprints of other cities within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and benchmark against leading mainland economic powerhouses like Shanghai and Shenzhen. When conceiving suggestions, attention should go beyond what the HKSAR government can achieve alone, and be extended to what can be achieved by promoting collaboration between Hong Kong and other Greater Bay Area cities and mainland provinces. To that end, three strategic perspectives should be taken, taking into consideration both regional alignment and local fiscal realities:
First, Hong Kong’s innovation and technology (I&T) strategy should be conceptualized within the framework of national strategies. That is, with the staunch backing of the central government, how can Hong Kong achieve crucial I&T breakthroughs over the next five years? Hong Kong people must look beyond the city to evaluate its position, adopting an alignment-oriented mindset to formulate forward-looking policies.
Second, cross-border strategy should always be prioritized when creating solutions to problems such as elderly-care insufficiency in Hong Kong. While Hong Kong faces severe land scarcity, as well as exorbitant construction costs, the nine Greater Bay Area cities on the mainland side have compelling land and labor advantages. How can these advantages be integrated into Hong Kong’s elderly-care system? And how can local medical benefits be made seamlessly portable to Guangdong? The public is highly encouraged to offer their insights on these focal issues.
Third, public-private partnerships (PPP) should be maximized to reduce public fiscal burden and ensure sustainable welfare. Government expenditure on social security and welfare services already accounts for approximately 60 percent of its recurrent expenditure. Against a backdrop of persistent geopolitical conflicts and heightened external uncertainties, the scope for further growth in recurrent expenditure remains constrained. Therefore, when submitting proposals, stakeholders should adopt a multidimensional perspective — exploring which livelihood projects can be developed via PPP arrangements and which public services can involve nongovernmental organizations. Such diversified approaches will significantly enhance the feasibility of their policy proposals, helping Hong Kong map out a clear and prosperous future.
Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, attaches great importance to the formulation of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan. During his meetings with HKSAR government officials, he emphasized that the formulation of the SAR’s five-year plan is an important manifestation of Hong Kong’s governance capacity, and public participation is an indispensable part of it.
The author is vice-chairman of the Committee on Liaison with Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Overseas Chinese of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and chairman of the Hong Kong New Era Development Thinktank.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.