Accel­er­at­ing North­ern Met­ro­polis devel­op­ment, cement­ing the advant­ages of the pro­fes­sional ser­vices sec­tor, and enhan­cing social wel­fare, includ­ing birth incent­ives, are key themes in pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted by Hong Kong com­munity lead­ers for the city’s first local five-year plan and the annual Policy Address.

The spe­cial admin­is­trat­ive region gov­ern­ment is cur­rently col­lect­ing views on both the city’s five-year blue­print, which is sched­uled for release by the third quarter of this year, and Chief Exec­ut­ive John Lee Ka-chiu’s fifth Policy Address, expec­ted to be delivered in Septem­ber or Octo­ber.

The New People’s Party on Fri­day sub­mit­ted a pro­posal con­tain­ing 29 sug­ges­tions, cov­er­ing high-qual­ity eco­nomic growth, greater open­ness, and social wel­fare enhance­ments.

Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, the party’s chair­wo­man and the Exec­ut­ive Coun­cil’s con­venor, told report­ers that as a regional intel­lec­tual-prop­erty trad­ing hub, Hong Kong should provide more sup­port to small and medium-sized enter­prises strug­gling with pat­ent man­age­ment, and help uni­versit­ies offer spe­cial­ized pro­grams to nur­ture rel­ev­ant pro­fes­sion­als.

Ip’s fel­low party mem­bers elab­or­ated on their pro­pos­als. Law­maker Judy Chan Ka-pui urged the gov­ern­ment to increase the cur­rent new­born-baby bonus from HK$20,000 ($2,551) to HK$30,000 for fam­il­ies hav­ing a second child, with each sub­sequent child receiv­ing a pro­gress­ive increase of 30 per­cent.

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Bar­ris­ter Eunice Yung Hoi-yan urged the gov­ern­ment to estab­lish a high-level “arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence gov­ernance strategy” to keep pace with AI’S rapid advance­ment, and for­mu­late a long-term plan for Hong Kong.

Lai Tung-kwok, a former law­maker, focused on dis­putes involving own­ers’ cor­por­a­tions. He pro­posed a three-tier medi­ation mech­an­ism in the city modeled on Singa­pore’s approach. The first tier would involve com­munity medi­ation for daily com­plaints such as noise and hygiene issues; the second tier would have a tribunal com­posed of pro­fes­sion­als to handle dis­putes involving com­pens­a­tion, such as water leak­age cases; and the third tier would have a high­er­level court for more ser­i­ous or large-scale dis­putes.

Lai said he believes this sys­tem would help reduce fric­tion among own­ers and res­id­ents, pre­vent­ing minor issues from accu­mu­lat­ing and escal­at­ing into struc­tural prob­lems.

The city’s largest polit­ical party in the legis­lature, the Demo­cratic Alli­ance for the Bet­ter­ment and Pro­gress of Hong Kong, sub­mit­ted 54 recom­mend­a­tions on Thursday, focus­ing on North­ern Met­ro­polis devel­op­ment, industry diver­si­fic­a­tion, qual­ity of life, urban liv­ab­il­ity, and domestic and external con­nectiv­ity.

On the same day, the Lib­eral Party sub­mit­ted 139 pro­pos­als across 13 them­atic areas, cov­er­ing North­ern Met­ro­polis devel­op­ment, tal­ent and employ­ment, innov­a­tion and tech­no­logy, and Guang­dong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area cooper­a­tion.

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The party also sug­ges­ted dis­trib­ut­ing spe­cial con­sump­tion vouch­ers to cel­eb­rate the 30th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the moth­er­land next year.

Earlier in the week, the G19 group of law­makers, com­pris­ing Legis­lat­ive Coun­cil mem­bers from the Elec­tion Com­mit­tee and func­tional con­stitu­en­cies, sub­mit­ted 100 pro­pos­als, includ­ing research on the “NEETS” — young people not in edu­ca­tion, employ­ment, or train­ing — and com­pil­ing an Ai-affected occu­pa­tion list.

Speak­ing on a local TV and web media pro­gram on Wed­nes­day, Lee said that in plan­ning Hong Kong’s future gov­ernance, the city should con­sider not only its own interests but also how to bet­ter integ­rate into and con­trib­ute to the nation’s devel­op­ment under the 15th Five-year Plan (2026-30). He said that efforts should focus on two key areas: clearly recog­niz­ing Hong Kong’s exist­ing strengths; and explor­ing oppor­tun­it­ies for com­ple­ment­ary cooper­a­tion with the main­land.

Contact the writer at stacy­shi@chin­a­dailyhk.com