The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s first five-year plan is more than a policy milestone. It is a useful reminder that even the most fast-moving city eventually has to look up from the day-to-day and decide where it is heading. That may sound obvious, but in a place known for agility, improvisation, and an almost heroic tolerance for last-minute adjustments, it is still a meaningful shift. The real question is not whether Hong Kong needs a plan. It is what kind of plan will help.

The best answer is a plan that offers direction without pretending to control every detail. Hong Kong does not need a thick, over-engineered document that attempts to predict the next five years with unnatural confidence. It needs a strategic compass — clear enough to guide decisions, focused enough to avoid drift, and flexible enough to survive the inevitable surprises of a city that changes as quickly as the weather.

That means the plan’s job is not to prescribe every outcome, but to shape the conditions in which progress becomes possible. It should identify where government action matters most: land release, spatial planning, transport links, housing delivery, innovation infrastructure, talent attraction, and the quality of life that makes the city livable and investable. It should explain what public institutions will do, where bottlenecks will be removed, and how momentum will be sustained over time. If that sounds like a modest ambition, it is. But in public policy, modesty and clarity are often more valuable than grand declarations.

This is where Hong Kong has a real opportunity to do something distinctively useful. A five-year plan here should be less about instruction and more about alignment. It should bring departments, sectors, and institutions into the same conversation about the future, and turn a broad vision into a manageable set of priorities. The point is coherence. The point is to make the city easier to build in, easier to invest in, and easier to plan for. In a fast-paced city, that alone would be a serious achievement.

In the end, Hong Kong’s first five-year plan should not be read as an attempt to script the city’s future. It should be understood as an effort to make the future more governable. That, more than anything, is what Hong Kong now needs: not a crystal ball, but a compass; not instructions for every turn, but enough direction to keep moving with purpose, pragmatism, and patience

The consultation document for the five-year plan already suggests the broad shape of the agenda. It includes Northern Metropolis development, economy and trade, innovation and technology, social development, regional cooperation, and culture, sports, tourism, and green living. That breadth is understandable. But breadth is not the same as strategy. Anyone can produce a long list. The harder task is deciding what genuinely shifts and pushes the city forward and what merely makes the document look busy.

A good plan also has to resist the temptation to confuse activity with progress. Public policy can sometimes fall into the trap of sounding very active while moving very slowly. Hong Kong cannot afford that. If this plan is to matter, it should be judged not by how many aspirations it contains, but by whether it produces visible change: faster implementation, more predictable coordination, sharper public investment, and a stronger sense of direction. A city can live with occasional uncertainty; it struggles more when it cannot tell whether anything is happening.

Equally important is tone. Hong Kong does not need a heavy-handed planning culture. It needs confidence, but the useful kind — the kind that understands markets, institutions, and that people are often better at solving problems than government alone. The plan should therefore respect the city’s market dynamism, institutional independence, and role as a place where different forms of capital — financial, human, creative, and social — can circulate productively. The best plan will not try to replace that ecosystem. It will strengthen it by reducing uncertainty and making long-term choices more legible.

That is why the consultation process matters so much. If it is handled properly, it can do more than collect views. It can build shared ownership of the city’s next phase. That matters in a place as diverse as Hong Kong, where business leaders, professionals, educators, developers, cultural figures, and ordinary residents all see the future through different lenses. A plan with public legitimacy is always stronger than a plan that merely announces itself. And, as anyone who has sat through a public forum knows, legitimacy is usually easier to defend than enthusiasm.

In the end, Hong Kong’s first five-year plan should not be read as an attempt to script the city’s future. It should be understood as an effort to make the future more governable. That, more than anything, is what Hong Kong now needs: not a crystal ball, but a compass; not instructions for every turn, but enough direction to keep moving with purpose, pragmatism, and patience.

The author is vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Interactive Marketing and an adviser to the Film and TV School at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.