Hong Kong stands at a rare hinge in its history. This year’s Policy Address will not be just another annual list of promises; it arrives in tandem with the drafting of the city’s first-ever five-year plan. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has said Hong Kong will launch its first five-year blueprint in step with the nation’s, with him personally leading a cross-departmental task force to drive the plan. That is why the ideas we place before the government now carry unusual weight. This is the moment when short-term budgeting gives way to genuine strategic direction, and where our proposals may echo for half a decade rather than a single fiscal year.
The significance is more than symbolic. This year marks the beginning of the nation’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is fully committed to drafting the city’s own first five-year plan. The premise is elegant: The five-year blueprint is a strategic, forward-looking and directional guiding document for the city’s development, one that integrates with overall national development and acts in tandem with the Policy Address, which will set policy targets and measures in line with the plan’s directions and requirements. In other words, the annual and the multiyear now speak with one voice. For a city too often accused of governing quarter to quarter, this is a discipline worth embracing.
It is against this backdrop that our party (the New People’s Party) recently met the chief executive at Government House to submit our recommendations. We did so not as petitioners but as partners because the government has deliberately built a mechanism for exactly this kind of collaboration. Indeed, the chief executive has already received briefings from Legislative Council members on research and views gathered in relation to Hong Kong’s first five-year plan, presented under a mechanism of collaboration between the government and the legislature, with a view to assisting in the plan’s formulation. When the executive and the legislature pull in the same direction, the public is the beneficiary.
Consider first our flagship proposal: a dedicated office to coordinate the city’s space economy. To some, this may still sound like science fiction, yet the timing could hardly be more grounded in reality. In the 15th Five-Year Plan, China has identified the goal of becoming a major space power as a key national objective. The scale is staggering: China’s commercial aerospace market is expected to expand from 1.2 trillion yuan ($177.2 billion) in 2024 to 4.8 trillion yuan by 2027, with the market likely exceeding 7.8 trillion yuan by 2030. Globally, the prize is larger still, with the space economy — valued at around $630 billion in 2023 — projected to roughly triple to $1.8 trillion by 2035.
As the chief executive has put it, the formulation of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan is a historic step of great significance, benefiting all sectors of society. History, however, is not made by documents alone. It is made by those willing to fill the blueprint with concrete, courageous ideas — and to do so now, while the ink is still wet
Naturally, the question is what Hong Kong could possibly contribute to a race dominated by rockets and satellites built elsewhere. The answer lies in the city’s institutional advantages rather than its launchpads. The Chinese mainland can provide the technology, manufacturing, licensing and sovereign capability, while Hong Kong provides the capital markets, legal infrastructure, global connectivity and international credibility to fund, structure, contract and resolve disputes over the country’s commercial space transactions at scale. This is not wishful thinking. The mainland’s industry sees it clearly, with executives noting that the two SARs of Hong Kong and Macao hold irreplaceable strategic positions in the development of the nation’s commercial space sector. Even our courtrooms are an asset, for Hong Kong can turn its financial markets, common law system and dispute-resolution capabilities into a genuine commercial advantage, with its sharpest edge lying in professional services and arbitration.
What Hong Kong lacks, however, is not talent or ambition but coordination and law. We therefore urge the government to appoint, within six months and through open recruitment, a leader versed in the space economy, and to establish a coordinating committee spanning technology, finance and law. The urgency is real: Rivals such as Luxembourg and Singapore have already moved early to enact legislation, and Hong Kong must take proactive measures to ride the trend rather than trail it. A dedicated office would ensure that when the national strategy calls, Hong Kong is ready to answer rather than scramble to catch up.
Yet a forward-looking city cannot neglect the ground beneath its feet. Our recommendations therefore turn from the stars to the streets, and specifically to the case for a fourth cross-harbor tunnel linking Tseung Kwan O with Hong Kong Island. Some will argue that the “three-tunnel diversion” arrangement has already solved our congestion woes. The evidence suggests otherwise. The Western Harbour Tunnel has become Hong Kong’s busiest crossing since time-varying tolls were introduced, with peak-hour queues lengthening rather than vanishing. Pricing has merely redistributed the jam, not eliminated it, because the three existing crossings are approaching saturation. When capacity is the constraint, only new capacity will do. A fourth tunnel is not a luxury; it is the infrastructural insurance that a growing population and an expanding Kowloon East demand.
Our submission ranged wider still, and each strand shares a common logic of preparing Hong Kong for the coming decade. We proposed developing intellectual-property trade by teaching patent law at local universities, so that graduates understand both pricing and the law. We called for progressive child tax allowances and continued baby bonuses to confront an aging, low-birth society. We urged a three-tier mediation system to defuse building-management disputes before they fester in the courts. We asked for a strategic group on extreme weather, and a high-level framework to govern artificial intelligence responsibly. The through line is that every proposal aligns the city’s own priorities with the national blueprint while addressing the daily concerns of ordinary residents.
None of this is theoretical. The government has already begun public consultations, and the plan is expected to be unveiled ahead of schedule. As the chief executive has put it, the formulation of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan is a historic step of great significance, benefiting all sectors of society. History, however, is not made by documents alone. It is made by those willing to fill the blueprint with concrete, courageous ideas — and to do so now, while the ink is still wet.
The author is the convenor at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
