Hong Kong CE John Lee says the government will issue a ‘public consultation’ document on the city’s first ‘Five-Year Plan’ by the end of June…
“We have referred to the mainland’s experience in formulating five-year plans – it usually takes 18 months to two years for preliminary research. This is the first time for Hong Kong to draft a five-year plan, the timeline is tight and we are facing a heavy workload in research,” he said.
“Therefore, the government and the Legislative Council have established a synergistic mechanism to study a number of development topics under the executive-led principle, and gather public opinions after the government publishes the public consultation document.”
From HKFP…
Lee announced in February, ahead of the Two Sessions in Beijing, that Hong Kong would launch its first blueprint alongside China’s 15th Five-Year Plan…
The chief executive also said on Tuesday that the inaugural plan would be “closely related to livelihood issues,” encompassing areas such as economic development, property, housing and education.
“The five-year plan will create a synergising force in society… and provide more certainty for businesses to pursue development,” he said in Cantonese.
Since the 1950s, five-year plans in China have set the stage for the country’s social and economic development initiatives outlined by the Chinese Communist Party.
…Lee added that the plan would ensure Hong Kong can integrate into the national blueprint and contribute to the success of One Country, Two Systems.
The Standard has a story with the headline ‘Xia Baolong meets senior HK civil servants in Beijing, urges alignment with 15th Five-Year Plan’, though it doesn’t mention the HK and Macau Affairs boss saying anything…
[Secretary for the Civil Service Ingrid] Yeung noted that the National 15th Five-Year Plan supports Hong Kong in consolidating and enhancing its competitive edge across multiple key areas. Hong Kong is formulating its first five-year plan, and under the leadership of the Chief Executive, the civil service will proactively align their work with the national plan to lay a more solid foundation for Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability.
A quick reminder from Wikipedia that Five-Year Plans originated in the USSR in the 1920s and assume a centralized, state-controlled system…
In each five year plan, the plans for all sectors of the economy are synchronized for a period of five years.
The idea being that the Party and civil servants could manage state-owned industries in such a way as to meet Stalin’s production targets for steel, wheat and tractors. By definition, it is a top-down process. In Hong Kong’s case, it is also supposed to align with the Mainland’s own blueprint (which nowdays is more a wish-list of nice things rather than a detailed strategy). It’s hard to see how a ‘public consultation’ can have a meaningful role.
(Public input into a plan to introduce, say, household waste-charging or seat belts on buses might make good sense. Or you can have an election every five years.)
So what is this all about? Probably symbolism. The administration has long-term measures in the pipeline on housing, hub-zones, etc. These can be relabelled components of the ‘Five-Year Plan’ as required – as happened with CEPA (remember that?), ‘Belt and Road’, and the ‘Greater Bay Area’. Hong Kong must look more integrated.
All that synergising sent a thrill up my leg.
The executive led patriots governing Hong Kong have to continually prove they are subservient otherwise they could be accused of soft resistance. Think of this as a piece of performance art.