Perhaps the tipping point was the promotional video of the Chang’e 8 robotic rover with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region flag proudly emblazoned on it as the rover traversed the cratered lunar landscape on display in Shanghai on April 24 — China Space Day. Perhaps it was recent updates on the HKSAR taikonaut, Lai Ka-ying, soon to be aboard China’s space station in 2026 — a superb Hong Kong female role model if ever there was one.
Maybe it was the gathering of 30 major HKSAR stakeholder group representatives from across our commerce sector, including aerospace companies, investor groups, legal and financial types, insurance brokers, institutes and academia, all nutting out a set of eight urgent policy recommendations over a one-day workshop for NewSpace for our city in mid-March. These were presented to the HKSAR government in early April where we are all, remarkably, on the same page. Perhaps, ultimately, it is a combination of all these things and more that have gelled, coalesced and thrust themselves to the fore in recent times around the issue of why and how the HKSAR can finally and strategically leverage our considerable advantages to really make a global difference in this burgeoning, soon to be trillion-US-dollar NewSpace economy.
I believe that too often we underestimate just how strong a hand in the global game of commercial poker and brinkmanship we hold in various suits. This is true not just in the accepted realms of strength in global finance, banking, fintech and regulatory excellence, compliance and arbitration but in their effective combination and application to the emerging NewSpace economy. It is a game we must play despite strong headwinds and sometimes stacked decks against us, but we need to play smarter and better and use all the nous, smarts and advantages we can lay our hands on to maximize our clout and impact.
Interestingly, the second installment of Executive Council Convenor Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee’s annual Global Prosperity Summit kicked off at the Fullerton Hotel on Monday with a special dinner. For the first time one of the sessions was dedicated to “space” with the ex-head of the United Kingdom Space Agency Katherine Courtney being one of the key panelists. The guest of honor was Chief Executive of the HKSAR John Lee Ka-chiu. He gave an excellent speech on the role and superconnector capacity of Hong Kong in a rapidly changing world and the potential that the Belt and Road Initiative offers our city under the “one country, two systems” framework. Special mention was made of the Middle Eastern states that he has nurtured as strong Hong Kong partners over two visits to the region. It would not have escaped his attention that these Gulf states are investing very heavily in the NewSpace economy. A veritable who’s who of institute and government department heads, dignitaries, eminent academics, business leaders, Legislative Council members, major families, representatives from various Hong Kong chambers of commerce, foreign guests, and even an ambassador were present to enjoy the speech and occasion and to also network and to press the flesh.
And so it was that the same four-member team that submitted an eight-point policy blueprint to the HKSAR government on how to support Hong Kong as a NewSpace and space sustainability hub (as output from our 30 broad stakeholder group workshop) were also all present at this dinner, all independently invited. Something is clearly stirring in the wind that seems to be blowing in the right direction at last.
Indeed, this same team submitted an even more important document to the government on May 16 that called for the creation of a Hong Kong space agency to direct, oversee and facilitate all this pent-up action-in-waiting and to help establish the HKSAR as an Asian and global commercial space hub. This will be for both NewSpace commerce (focusing on funneling public and private finance and insurance while supporting satellite and artificial intelligence ventures via the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area hardware ecosystem) and space sustainability (focusing on research and development support and international cooperation for debris remediation technologies) upon which all of the NewSpace economy critically depends. These twin pillars will be joined by a third crossbeam of an office for space law serving both pillars with a focus on leveraging the HKSAR’s global expertise and capacity for arbitration, compliance and regulation while building workable frameworks for international cooperation.
These ideas align very well with Hong Kong’s commercial and legal strengths, Greater Bay Area integration imperatives and aspirations to be a new technology hub and smart city. Implementation of this initiative will ensure that Hong Kong leverages and aligns its financial, legal, insurance, investment and compliance strengths together with its entrepreneurial capacity and technology incubator status toward this NewSpace and space sustainability vision that is expected to grow the city’s GDP significantly. Enactment will be bolstered via the strong talent emerging from the city’s globally elite universities and professionals attracted to Hong Kong. In this vision, the Greater Bay Area would build at scale while Hong Kong funnels investments and manages, insures, designs and prototypes.
I believe the HKSAR is on the cusp of something transformational here. It will leave a legacy that will endure and place the city front and center of a globally significant endeavor for the 21st century. The time is now.
The author is director of the Laboratory for Space Research, the University of Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
