Hong Kong 2.0

Congratulations to Charles Mok on the publication of his new book, Hong Kong 2.0!  He had a well-attended launch event on Thursday, at which he asked me to say a few words.

Charles, who has become a good friend and ally over the past year, invited me to write a preface for the book. Since my written Chinese isn't up to the task I wrote it in English and he had it translated. Below is my original English draft.
----------
Many foreigners show up in Hong Kong and start drawing public conclusions about the place and its people within days of arrival. I can imagine that many Hong Kong people must be quite tired of such instant experts. Thus, as a recently arrived Westerner who speaks no Cantonese, I was surprised that Charles Mok invited me to write this preface.  Yet he insisted, so I will try hard not to waste his readers' precious time.

Having spent altogether 12 years living in Beijing, when I moved to Hong Kong in January 2007 I brought with me many prejudices that Beijing people tend to hold about Hong Kong. According to these prejudices, Hong Kong people are allegedly not very creative, are culturally superficial, materialistic, are easily intimidated, and can be counted on to choose profit over principle.

Charles Mok is one of the many people I've met since moving to Hong Kong who have proven to me that such stereotypes are grossly unfair.

In my limited experience, the most inspiring and exciting people in Hong Kong are not the tycoons, the movie stars, or the celebrity politicians. Hong Kong has many talented individuals who do not dominate the newspaper headlines: entrepreneurs, independent writers and artists, local community leaders, and many others who are doing their own thing in their own way, staying true to their ideals and beliefs, trying to make difference for the people around them.

In Hong Kong version 1.0, it was the tycoons, pop stars, celebrity politicians and the media's favorite "pundits" who had most of the power and influence.  In the 1.0 version of any country or territory, getting attention and having an impact was much more difficult without access to substantial investment capital, without contracts from recording or film studios, without access to a printing press or broadcasting channel, without somebody to publish and distribute your books, without journalists who agree to interview you and put your quotes in the newspaper or soundbites on television, and so forth.

Now Hong Kong and all of the world's modern cities are facing the 2.0 era.  Successful transition from 1.0 to 2.0 will be key for maintaining Hong Kong's competitive edge in the global knowledge economy. In a global knowledge economy, competitiveness increasingly depends on a country or territory's ability to innovate: innovation not only in terms of business, products and services; but also innovation that creates the kind of working and living environment in which the world's top knowledge workers – and their families – can live happy and healthy lives.

As a cosmopolitan, multicultural city with one of the world's most highly educated populations, Hong Kong 2.0 has the potential to be one of the world's most vibrant and creative places. In Hong Kong 2.0, ideas and innovations in all fields would be able to emerge from the "bottom up" rather than from the "top down;" from the "edges" rather than from the "center" – after all, experience shows that the best business ideas and most exciting cultural innovations in the past few years have tended to come from the most unexpected places, and almost never from a government planner's desk.

This is great news if you do not belong to one of the categories of famous people listed above. Internet entrepreneurs are launching startups with small amounts of pooled savings. Independent artists, filmmakers and musicians are increasingly using mobile and internet technologies to get their works known. Bloggers and podcasters who put their creations directly on the Internet are gaining popularity among young people without having to first get a TV or radio show.  Citizen media groups like InMedia have used the internet to organize social movements to preserve Hong Kong's historical heritage. Journalists can publish pointed political analysis directly on their blogs, whether or not their newspaper editors dare to publish it.

But as Charles Mok has pointed out in many of his essays over the past few years, it is not yet clear whether Hong Kong's legislative and regulatory structures will enable Hong Kong to evolve successfully from 1.0 to 2.0 and achieve its full potential. Is Hong Kong capable of truly taking advantage of all that its highly-educated, culturally diverse people have to offer?  Or will the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region potentially squander its potential by sticking to a set of outdated 1.0 style regulatory structures and laws – a system which might favor the entrenched 1.0 interests, but which might also hold Hong Kong back while the world's most competitive cities boldly stride forward to 2.0 and beyond?

The good news is that there are more ways than ever for all of us as Hong Kong residents and citizens to make our views known – both to each other as well as to the people who currently hold power in Hong Kong. In his essays, Charles describes many of those ways, and discusses many of the policy reforms he believes are necessary in order for Hong Kong to transition successfully from 1.0 to 2.0. No doubt you will have other views – you may or may not agree with everything he says. But the point is that if you want the dream of Hong Kong 2.0 to be fulfilled, it's up to you to help make it happen. Don't sit and wait for 1.0 leaders to solve Hong Kong's problems in a top-down 1.0 fashion. We have only ourselves to blame if we sit around waiting for other people to build Hong Kong 2.0, and do nothing about it ourselves.

------

Read on for the Chinese translation (use of the terms 老外 and 洋婦 were deliberate)..

許多「老外」來到香港不過數天，就為香港這地方和這裡的人妄下
定論，我可以想像香港人對這些「即時專家」有多厭倦，所以，身為一
位來港不久的「洋婦」，莫乃光找我來為他新書作序令我有點驚訝，但
既然他盛意拳拳，我唯有盡力而為，不要浪費他的讀者的時間。
我在北京共住了十二年，當我在2007年1月移居香港時，也帶著很
多北京人對香港的成見。根據這些想人法，香港人不太有創意，文化上
膚淺，屬物質主義者，很容易被威嚇，多數選擇功利先於原則。
莫乃光是我搬到香港後所認識的人之中，能夠向我證實這種見解是
不公平的很多位朋友之一。
在我有限的經驗中，香港最鼓舞人心和令人興奮的人物，不是那
些大亨、電影明星和名人政客們，反而香港有很多有天份的人才—像
創業者、獨立作家和藝術家、地區社群領袖等等，他們不能霸佔頭條新
聞，但卻在他們的綱位上，以他們自己的方法作出貢献，堅守著他們的
理想和信念，為他們身邊的人做事。
在香港的1.0版本中，的確是那些大亨、流行明星、名人政客和
媒體的各大名嘴擁有最大的權力和影響力。在任何國家或地區的1.0版
本，得到別人的注意和要達到有影響的效果，如果沒有龐大的資本投
資，沒有大型電影或唱片公司的一紙合約，沒有印刷廠或廣播頻道，沒
有人去出版和分發你的書籍，沒有記者訪問你再刋登於報紙上或在電視
台播出的話，真的難於登天。
然而香港和全世界各現代城市都正面對2.0時代的來臨，成功地從
1.0轉型至2.0對香港要在全球知識型經濟保持競爭優勢是極之關鍵性的。
在全球知識型經濟下，競爭力愈來愈倚賴該國家或地區的創新能力，而
且不單是在商業、產品和服務上創新，更要利用創新來創造出能讓世界
上最佳的知識型工作者—和他們的家庭—都可以歸快樂地、健康地
生活的工作及生活環境。
作為一個多元文化的世界城市，香港2.0的確有潛力成為全球最
有活力和最具創意的地方之一。在香港2.0，在每一個範疇的意念和創
新，將會「由下而上」而非「由上而下」傳達，源自「邊緣」而非「中
心」。經驗告訴我們在過好幾年間，最好的商業意念和最令人興奮的文
化創新，始終大多來自我們最意想不到的地方，而幾乎永遠不會來自政
府規劃官員的桌上。
如果你不屬於以上所提及的各類名人，這就是對你最好的消息了：
互聯網創業者正在用他們小小地聚集的資金創業；獨立藝術家、製片
人、音樂家正在利用更多無線移動和互聯網技術推廣他們的作品；直接
把創作放在網上的博客和podcast製作者正在年青人之間流行起來，而無
需透過電視或收音機；像「獨立媒體」的市民傳媒群體正在利用互聯網
組織社會運動，以保護香港的歷史遺產；記者正在博客上發表尖銳的政
治評論，即使他們的編輯不敢刊登出來。
但就如莫乃光在他多年來發表的文章中指出，香港的立法和規管
架構能否有利香港從1.0至2.0的演化，以達至充分發揮潛力，是一大
疑問。香港能否充分利用香港這具高度教育、多元文化背景的人才，
還是結果香港特區只默守那些過時的1.0式的監管架構和法律—一
種傾斜於1.0既得利益的系統，當全球最具競爭力的城市正在跨步邁
前的時候，還要把香港拖在後面的制度，結果只會令我們浪費我們的
優勢。
不過，好消息是今天有比以前更多的渠道，讓香港的居民和市民可
以發表我們的意見，不論是在市民互相之間或是向當權者表達。在莫乃
光的文章中，他談及了很多的各種方法，和討論了很多他認為香港要
成功地從1.0演進至2.0所須要的政策改革，當然你也會有你的意見，也
未必同意他所說的全部，但重要的是，如果你也希望香港2.0的夢想可
以實現，是要你親手參與，所以，請不要坐著地等那些1.0領袖們，用
他們由上而下地去解決香港的問題。若然我只坐著地讓人家去建造香港
2.0，最後可以責怪的也只有自己啊。

Comments

[Seamus]

So nigga! With what purpose was 'laowai' deliberately chosen?

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Actually in my original draft I wrote "gweilo" but they changed it to "laowai."

[28481k]

@Rebecca MacKinnon: Perhaps that's due to the "Mandarin" hedgemony of the formal written Chinese in Hong Kong such that they changed it from "gweilo" to "laowai"? ;) Did you put "gweipo" as well to refer to yourself? :)

Your argument is very cogent and gives justice to this book. :)

@Seamus: Jocular usage?

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

@28481k, yup I also used "gweipo" to refer to myself. Jocular usage, exactly. :)

[Nevin]

One minor point: Hmmm, I see no point in using the Mandarin version. "Gweilo" and "gweipo" are commonly used terms to refer to foreigners in especially Hong Kong. And using the Cantonese equivalents will give the preface a local taste. Or are we going to use "Beijing duck", "Chinese Gongfu" and so on instead of "Peking duck" and "Chinese Kungfu"? These are already loan words in the English speaking world, aren't they? Welcome to Xianggang!

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

@Nevin I would be inclined to agree with you but didn't see the point of getting into a thing about it since that's really not central to the piece's argument.

[Charles Mok]

Thank you so much for your kindness and support!!

Charles