The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government recently announced that it will formulate its first five-year plan to align the SAR’s development with the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30).
One leading local commentator posed a central question following this announcement: “Can a city that has long prided itself on light-touch governance and market reflexes execute a whole-of-society planning process without the institutional muscle, the technical bench, or the political habit of doing so?”
This is a fair question. We need to remember, however, that Hong Kong is well-placed to draw on decades of successful forward planning, stretching back to the 1950s.
Moreover, the 15th Five-Year Plan is being bedded down just as Beijing reconfirms a remarkable, nascent insight that the British essayist George Orwell offered in 1945, when he implicitly wondered whether China might develop a rather different perspective on global interaction from that favored in the West.
The active embrace of free-market principles in British-ruled Hong Kong after World War II, first celebrated by Professor Milton Friedman around 70 years ago, was eventually given the name “positive noninterventionism” in 1971 by Hong Kong’s then-financial secretary, Philip Haddon-Cave (building on the work of his predecessor, John Cowperthwaite). Friedman regularly cited Hong Kong as his favorite economy. He marketed Hong Kong as a type of free-market Shangri-La in his 1980 book and TV series, Free to Choose.
In fact, massive government intervention in the Hong Kong economy was well underway by the time Friedman first visited.
The initial decision to build high-density public rental housing was prompted by a crisis triggered by a devastating fire that destroyed a large squatter settlement. This emergency response soon evolved into a well-planned, large, exemplary public housing project that remains in place today.
Other vital, long-term, planned interventions included the development of Hong Kong’s superb public transit system and airport, its remarkable educational expansion, its first-world health care infrastructure, and extensive mechanisms for coping with annual weather crises.
Friedman paid little heed to these fundamental, interventionist realities, as they got in the way of his evangelical free-market advocacy. Yet, all this carefully planned intervention was crucial in buttressing the substantial free-market story he told the world.
Also underpinning this conspicuous success is another factor (largely ignored by Friedman) that continues to ground so much successful planning in Hong Kong — the indefinite retention by the government of a core proprietorial interest in all land. This mother of all forward-planning initiatives was locked in place by the British in 1842.
Next, let us consider, with Orwell’s assistance, how China has evolved (over a very long period) into a different sort of superpower.
In a 1945 essay, shortly after the United States dropped two atom bombs on Japan, Orwell argued that all superstates, including America, might well, in the future, be “ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy”.
Orwell also envisaged, four years before the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the creation of an East Asian superstate centered on China. He did not explicitly consider whether his imagined, dominant Chinese state might craft a primary growth pathway that broke away from the embedded imperial Western model. He was, though, critical of the idea that “politics is essentially the same in all ages”. Orwell remained open to the possibility that a ruling group in a future superstate could perceive that “it will probably stay in power longer if it behaves decently”.
The American economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs argues that avoiding distant imperial wars has consistently dominated China’s exceptionally long history. Another crucial feature of Chinese civilization has been the ability — drawing on a vast, highly developed culture — to work together for the common good. This has been evident over the last four decades. As the influential historian Adam Tooze lately observed, China has produced “the greatest success story in developmental history”.
The American economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs argues that avoiding distant imperial wars has consistently dominated China’s exceptionally long history. Another crucial feature of Chinese civilization has been the ability — drawing on a vast, highly developed culture — to work together for the common good. This has been evident over the last four decades
China’s first Five-Year Plan (1953-57) emphasized rapid “smokestack” industrialization, with a primary focus on steel, coal, cement, power generation, and machinery production. It was directly modeled on the Soviet central planning approach.
The recently approved 15th Five-Year Plan exhibits a critical emphasis on advanced technological development and self-reliance. According to the World Economic Forum, it “signals a new phase of strategic adaptation”. Yet one can still see how this new blueprint is underpinned by the plans implemented before it.
This new plan aligns with the four global initiatives China initiated over the past several years, including the Global Development Initiative (2021), the Global Security Initiative (2022), the Global Civilizational Initiative (2023), and the Global Governance Initiative (2025).
This set of broad, interlocking proposals, with its unwavering, globally inclusive focus, is unlike any framework generated during the long period of imperially sourced Western world leadership.
This comparative reality was captured in an acute observation by the prominent commentator Pankaj Mishra about six months ago. After noting that “there is much that is imperfect about China”, Mishra argued that “China is a very different kind of late modernizing power that is setting an example that there are other ways of being a powerful country in the world”.
Finally, it is helpful to consider some timely observations by Harvard Professor Stephen Walt. He recently argued that: “The second Trump administration has been far more disruptive, damaging, and dangerous than most observers — including me — expected, and the tragically inept war with Iran is driving that point home in spades.”
Walt then advised how the White House should remedy this dire focus: “A far-sighted great power will use its power with restraint, adhere to widely held norms whenever possible, recognize that even close allies will have their own agendas, and work to fashion arrangements with others from which all parties benefit.”
It is fair to wonder whether Walt had China in mind as he crafted this rectification formula, as it essentially summarizes Beijing’s settled, distinctly globalized approach to managing China’s geopolitical interactions.
Looking ahead, Beijing clearly expects that its best interests will be served — and mutual benefits will arise — when China positions itself as a fundamental anchoring nation operating within a fully interactive, multipolar world. This is the promising — and challenging — context within which Hong Kong, Asia’s World City, will need to craft its first five-year plan. This plan will also have to be developed and applied, bearing in mind that it will lay crucial foundations for the five-year plans to follow.
Completing this demanding, multifaceted task will significantly test the SAR. The positive opportunities are remarkable, however. And the exceptional success of so many past strategic development interventions confirm how adept Hong Kong is at applying itself assiduously to long-term planning and execution.
The author is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law, Hong Kong University.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.