More exciting hub-zones!

With Bitcoin plummeting, maybe the time is right: a Standard editorial sees trading card games as the next big thing for Hong Kong…

With Pokemon cards having outperformed the S&P 500’s gain since 2004, the global TCG market is projected to grow to US$23.5 billion (HK$ 183.3 billion) by 2030 and Hong Kong stands uniquely positioned to become a regional hub for this burgeoning asset class.

…According to data cited by The Wall Street Journal, Pokemon cards have risen 3,821 percent since 2004, significantly outperforming the S&P 500’s 483 percent gain over the same period. 

Hong Kong’s emergence as a TCG investment hub is not accidental – it’s structural. The city has witnessed a revival of Pokemon cards and other TCGs throughout the city, even transforming an old shopping mall, Smiling Plaza at Cheung Sha Wan, into a destination for card game enthusiasts. 

Like crypto, Pokemon cards do not produce income of any sort. But, unlike digital ‘assets’, trading cards are at least real objects and could in theory have a productive use, such as, um, lighting a fire.

And there’s more. An SCMP op-ed proposes that Hong Kong become a ‘space debris hub’, helping to tackle…

…the so-called Kessler Syndrome, a situation when the amount of space junk reaches a critical tipping point and triggers a cascading wave of destruction that collapses the entire low-Earth-orbit ecosystem for satellites, space stations and space assets. This would destroy the space economy almost overnight.

…Hong Kong must seize the opportunities coming its way. Time is short. We need to react quickly to take advantage of these rapidly emerging opportunities.

We can put ourselves forward to serve China and the global good by hosting – perhaps via an NGO – an international space sustainability hub. This would need top-level endorsement from the central and Hong Kong governments. Such a body could be connected to – but independent from – a similarly needed Hong Kong space office.

I admire the tone of breathless enthusiasm.

Some weekend reading…

Human Rights Watch’s latest report on China…

President Xi Jinping mobilized the government to impose strict ideological conformity and loyalty to him and the Chinese Communist Party. Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other communities with distinct identities, including members of unofficial churches, face the most severe suppression of rights. Government repression of Hong Kong has also escalated.

…Repression has escalated quickly five years since authorities imposed the draconian National Security Law on Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s last active pro-democracy party, the League of Social Democrats, disbanded. For the first time, authorities used the national security law to prosecute a Hong Kong-based family member of a critic based abroad, the pro-democracy leader Anna Kwok. Numerous pro-democracy leaders remain in jail, including Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered Apple Daily newspaper.

George Magnus on China’s demographics…

The total fertility rate in 2025 was about 0.9-1. With a slump in fertility and high life expectancy after retirement, China is already the fastest ageing country on Earth and by 2050 it will be significantly older than the United States.

…Gender imbalance has played a significant role. The number of marriages has fallen over a decade, to just over 6 million in 2024, the lowest on record. According to 2024 survey of over 55,000 college students on marriage and parenting, two thirds of women wanted no children or one child only, and 15% were uncertain. The crucial child-bearing age cohort, aged roughly between 20-30 years, accounting for over 60 per cent of births, has fallen from 111 million in 2012 to 73 million last year, and is predicted to fall to 37 million by 2050…

…[One solution] is to raise labour input, by raising immigration, having people work longer, and by raising the participation rate in the workforce of people typically under-represented, namely older people and women. Immigration from abroad into China is and will likely remain so small as to be irrelevant. The government decided in 2025, finally, to raise the low retirement age for men from 60 to 63, and for women from 50 or 55 to 53 or 58, dependent on type of work by 2040. This was a welcome, if still rather timid change.

China Unofficial Archives on Chinese migrating to the US from Latin America, by the author of a book on the subject…

Living in a country that appears so prosperous and flourishing, why are some Chinese people willing to risk their lives and rush toward a foreign country and an unknowable future? In 2022, when I was living in New York and first learned the stories of these Chinese “line-walkers,” this question took root in my heart.

…The three years of China’s strict “Zero-COVID” policy caused the economy to plummet, leading to the bankruptcy of small business owners, the collapse of the real estate market, the decline of all industries, and the desolation of the people’s livelihoods. This immense economic pressure was the primary reason for most interviewees’ decision to walk the line and leave China.