“The setting sun sinks behind the mountains and the Yellow River flows into the sea; if you wish to see a thousand miles further, climb one more story.” The Tang Dynasty poet Wang Zhihuan (688-742) wrote these lines some 13 centuries ago about the view from the Stork Tower, and there is no better guide to reading the latest Economic Freedom of the World report, because Hong Kong has reached the top of the table again, and the poem reminds us that the view from the top is exactly what makes a city want to climb higher.

Hong Kong has been named the world’s freest economy for the third consecutive year, according to the 2026 report published on Tuesday by the Fraser Institute, the public policy think tank headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, which assessed 165 jurisdictions using data from 2024. The city lost the top spot for the first time in 2023, regained it in 2024 and kept it in 2025.

In May, Boston Consulting Group’s Global Wealth Report 2026 showed Hong Kong surpassing Switzerland as the world’s largest booking center for offshore wealth, managing around $2.95 trillion in cross-border assets.

The symbolic significance was enormous: It reflected a shift in the center of gravity of global wealth toward Asia.

The latest Global Financial Centres Index, published on Sept 16 by London-based Z/Yen and the Shenzhen-based China Development Institute, again placed Hong Kong third.

It has remained in third place for five consecutive editions, dating back to September 2024.

And in fintech, Hong Kong kept its first place, while Shanghai, Tokyo and Shenzhen all moved up the general table, confirming once more that Asia is gaining weight in global finance.

What is most convincing, however, is not any single ranking but the way they all lean in the same direction. Hong Kong was 24th among 143 jurisdictions in the 2025 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index; it leaped to fourth place in the IMD World Talent Ranking 2025, its highest ever, and first in Asia; and in the Global Innovation Index 2025, the Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou cluster was ranked first globally. Add to that, the artificial intelligence market is projected to grow from about $770 million in 2024 to $3.43 billion by 2030. It becomes very hard to sustain the old story of Hong Kong in “decline”. The doomsayers have been predicting the end of Hong Kong since the 1997 handover, and every year the data makes them look more out of touch. Hong Kong is not “over”. It’s adapting to different times as it has always done.

Policy has been the engine behind much of this. Hong Kong unveiled its first five-year development blueprint on Sept 16, along with the 2026 Policy Address, which works as the action agenda for the big blueprint.

Each Policy Address builds on the previous one, iterative and at times cautious but increasingly bold, and the 2025 edition, with its promises on dual counter trading in renminbi, new-economy listings and second listings of Chinese mainland companies, laid the groundwork that this year’s annual milestones will now measure.

Nowhere is that ambition more visible than in the Northern Metropolis, which is the project with the highest potential in the city. Its 30,000 hectares, slightly less than a third of Hong Kong’s total area, are meant to house some 2.5 million residents and provide around 650,000 jobs, with seven land boundary control points tying it to Shenzhen’s innovation machine and the rest of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Since the 2025 Policy Address, the project has been steered by a committee under the chief executive’s leadership, charged with cutting red tape and speeding up construction. Economic freedom ranking is about more than just low taxes. It is also about land, infrastructure and rules that let companies plan a decade ahead, and the Northern Metropolis will be tested on exactly that.

The same logic applies to green and digital finance, two areas in which Hong Kong can build new products on top of old strengths. The special administrative region government has built one of the world’s most advanced sovereign green and digital bond programs, including the world’s first tokenized government green bond in 2023, the first digital bond offering to integrate e-CNY and e-HKD in settlement in 2025, and a fourth digital green bond issuance of about HK$20 billion ($2.55 billion) in September. Pair that with the Climate Action Plan 2050 and a taxonomy that now reaches manufacturing and information technology, and you get a financial center that is not merely preserving its past but writing its next chapter.

Hong Kong’s No 1 position in economic freedom, together with its continued presence among the leading financial, legal, talent and innovation rankings, shows that it is a city that is not just defending its status but reinventing it. The five-year plan and projects such as the Northern Metropolis and the Greater Bay Area will help turn that status into lasting prosperity. The skeptics have been proved wrong once again, but the real task, as ever, is to follow the late poet’s advice and climb one more story.

The author is a fintech adviser, a researcher, and a former business analyst for a Hong Kong publicly listed company.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.