Headlines about Hong Kong’s seemingly battered image have been getting increasingly frequent and strident. The once vibrant territory has made a fast transition from ‘Asia’s world city’ to ‘Asia’s most isolated city.’ Its journey from buzzing entrepôt facilitating global business with Asia, to widely-shunned hermit city, has left an unloved business class, eager to move to the more welcoming, progressive environment of Singapore.
Any discussion of how to rebuild Hong Kong’s once glistening image must start with the city’s core identity, embracing its citizens’ urban lifestyles and the myriad of surrounding islands and beaches. While ‘image’ is about how tourists, investors and governments perceive us, ‘identity’ is about how we define ourselves and express our soul.
Hong Kongers have struggled with this over the past 30 years. Back in the early 2000s, just 5 per cent of Hong Kongers aged 16-35 described themselves as ‘happy’ or ‘very happy’, according to a survey from Hakuhodo Consulting. This is hardly surprising. Today’s 35-year-olds have faced several existential crises since their teenage years: handover trauma’, life-threatening pandemics, a poorly thought-though Covid vaccination programme and widespread political flare-ups of 2003, 2014 and 2019. As a result of their protests, Hong Kongers have been labelled ‘anti-establishment’ and ‘irascible’.
Missing the point
To use Singapore – a republic with its own charter – as a comparison, misses the point. To understand Hong Kong’s short but intense, turbulent and testosterone-filled history, we have to understand it is an inalienable part of China and Chinese political structures. Shenzen and Shanghai provide better comparisons. Shanghai, the go-to city until its decimation during the cultural revolution, remains an intrinsic part of China’s northern heritage.
Shenzhen in the south – separated from Hong Kong only by the Sham Chun River, and growing spectacularly within the Greater Bay Area – provides the best reference. This once seedy border area only won city status in 1979. It had all the early trappings of a haven for refugees fleeing economic strife and persecution in the north. Shenzen was designated a Special Economic Zone by Deng Xiao Peng to create a more capitalist, liberal environment – a crucible to germinate Western-standards of prosperity with less stringent socialist protocols.
Hong Kong, as a British colony with associated safety nets of jurisprudence and governance, had enjoyed a head-start. However, in one respect, it mirrored Shenzhen, as a city of refugees seeking to make it big. Hong Kong’s persuasive narrative of a frontier region, where poverty-stricken migrants later become rich industrialists, was aided by the hands-off, ‘small government’ approach of the British.
As the refugees’ roots were in the north, they needed to redefine themselves and their new home, reshaping a once barren rock into a modern global trading hub, bridging an increasingly influential China with the sophisticated business leadership of New York and London. This combination of stability and market access was something neither Singapore nor Shenzhen could offer – and still cannot. The issue today is striking the balance between Hong Kong’s comfort and connectedness with the West, and Western institutions while shaping a brand narrative that no longer sparks suspicion in Beijing as a risk to Chinese security.
Regeneration
Hong Kong is described by writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb as ‘Antifragile’, not just resilient to shocks, but strengthened by them. I would take it a step further: Hong Kong is the embodiment of a city’s capability to regenerate. Its unique success is the summation of thousands of refugee narratives, transforming hopelessness and poverty into dreams and wealth.
Every day in Hong Kong is an encounter with regeneration, from lands and property to people and institutions, redefining Darwinian adaptability in a pragmatic, urgent and ambitious drive to recreate new futures. Before embarking on charm offensives to rebuild its image, Hong Kong needs to dig deep to understand the unique tensions within its own identity. By defining its own purpose, in the context of China and the global family of nations, Hong Kong can leverage a powerful identity to embark on reputation recovery and future growth.
Anant Deboor is a long-time Hong Konger and C-level strategic marketer. Follow him on Twitter: @AnantDeboor
