The tides of Victoria Harbour have witnessed Hong Kong’s transformation from a fishing village to an international metropolis. While the nation’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) positioned the city into eight major centers — finance, shipping, trade, aviation, innovation and technology (I&T), and cultural exchange, and regional centers for international legal and dispute resolution services, and intellectual property trading — the special administrative region now stands on the brink of a new threshold. As we enter the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period, Hong Kong faces a fundamental deepening of its role. This era is about leadership rather than mere integration. To secure its destiny, Hong Kong requires a revolution in both mindset and developmental models, particularly in its synergy with Shenzhen and other cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Northern New Territories: a paradigm shift

Historically, Hong Kong’s development was anchored in the south, leaving the Northern New Territories as a “forgotten gatekeeper” watching Shenzhen transform into a global innovation capital. Today, this border must be the starting point for integration.

The traditional “real estate-led” model must be discarded. While it once created wealth, it fossilized, creating monolithic industries, sky-high property prices, and stagnant social mobility.

The north needs an “enterprise-led, industry-first” revolution. In coordination with Shenzhen, the SAR government should introduce advanced industrial park concepts, partnering with leading enterprises to drive district-wide development. This is about building “industrial chain ecological communities”, where companies lead spatial planning and infrastructure based on their research and development and production needs, following the successful precedents of Huawei’s Songshan Lake and Tencent’s Shenzhen Bay.

An even more pioneering vision involves moving core government functions northward. Shifting the government headquarters to the north would symbolize a strategic shift in developmental gravity. It would drive the flow of population and resources, creating a “2.0 version” of the city’s heart — a center more closely linked to the Chinese mainland, serving the Greater Bay Area while remaining a global gateway.

A multidimensional economic engine

Hong Kong’s “twin engines” of finance and real estate now exhibit the heavy burdens of dependency. A healthy economy requires diversity to sustain life. Deep cooperation with Shenzhen is a historic opportunity to build a new industrial ecology characterized by “all-around, multilayered economic fluidity”: Capital flow — guiding capital beyond the stock market toward technology, green industries, and cultural creativity; talent flow — breaking down barriers in professional qualifications, allowing engineers, artists, and doctors to find their stage as freely as capital; data and knowledge flow — jointly building research facilities and data centers to promote cross-border transformation of scientific achievements; market flow — creating a unified market through seamless logistics and payments.

This fluidity ensures growth “irrigates” all levels of society, providing young people with upward mobility and opening horizons for small and medium-sized enterprises beyond the local market. This is Hong Kong’s unique contribution to the national “dual circulation” strategy by releasing potential that was previously dormant because of institutional differences through regulations and policy supports, mutual recognition of markets, and innovation synergy.

Cultural soul-building: deepening Chinese roots

As artificial intelligence reshapes the production of knowledge, education must return to “what it means to be human”. Hong Kong’s cultural mission must be sublimated. For too long, the city’s identity leaned toward the exhibition of Western culture. During the 15th Five-Year Plan, Hong Kong must tilt its weight toward deepening the inheritance and innovation of Chinese culture and bringing it to the world.

This requires systematic investment to build: A modern interpretation center, supporting the interpretation of Sinology, history, and aesthetics through contemporary art and film, keeping traditions alive; an innovative transformation platform, combining Cantonese Opera and traditional crafts with technology to incubate new business forms with cultural depth; a contender for discourse, initiating Chinese-themed art festivals and academic forums to set the global cultural agenda.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a symbolic starting point. Establishing an international TCM center integrating research, clinical practice, and standard setting would make Hong Kong the gateway for Chinese life wisdom to go global, infusing the nation with renewed soft power.

Technology breakthrough: attracting the ‘moons’

Hong Kong’s I&T sector is often criticized for having “stars but no moon”, namely plenty of flashy startup teams, but a lack of global tech giants to anchor the ecosystem and create a powerful pull strategy in the supply chain. Solutions include: 1) attracting elite semiconductor and electronics firms from Taiwan to set up R&D centers in Hong Kong, enhancing mutual dependence through industrial collaboration; 2) partnering and aligning with Shenzhen’s industrial planning; in cross-border zones, we should explore mechanisms like “Shenzhen management, Hong Kong rules” to ensure innovation factors flow without obstruction; 3) expanding to Japan and South Korea to target high-end materials and robotics companies, offering a “Hong Kong base + mainland market” package to help them expand into Southeast Asia.

The presence of these “moons” will provide the technology and ecological support needed to illuminate local “stars”, fundamentally changing the “research without industry” pattern.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan, Hong Kong stands at a critical crossroads. Deepening integration with Shenzhen is not a zero-sum game; it is the only path to reinventing competitiveness. Turning the north into an enterprise-led center, nurturing economic fluidity, anchoring cultural values, and building an industrial ecology with global giants — this “quartet” is the movement of Hong Kong’s new chapter. This is a profound social reconstruction aimed at making prosperity more diverse, inclusive, and sustainable. When Hong Kong leads the future of the Greater Bay Area, the practice of “one country, two systems” will shine with a brilliance that transcends the era.

The author is a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies and artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron. 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.