Hong Kog – Asia’s Not-So-Smart City?

Http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/economy/article/2118934/why-singapore-much-smarter-hong-kong-city-left-trailing-rival

Hong Kog – Asia’s not-so-smart city?

Hong Kong has been, since the development of trade and industry in Asia, a front runner and a model to follow for other countries. But what has happened to its drive and ambition? Where has it gone? Why are we lagging other countries when it comes to economic development in the knowledge-based industry?

Hong Kong has been only recently placing more focus on the development of R&D.  Hong Kong’s annual R&D as a percentage of GDP (GERD) was 0.428 in 1996 1 and 0.761 in 2015. Singapore’s GERD was 1.36 in 1996 and 2.198 in 2015. Singapore started to develop its national innovation system during the 1980s while Hong Kong started to focus on R&D development in the 2000s, with the creation of the Innovation and Technology commission. 2 The current Chief Executive, Mrs Carrie Lam has addressed in her maiden policy address of the importance of Innovation and Technology with the goal of improving the GERD to 1.5% and the promise of injecting over HKD 1 billion into the industry.

 Hong Kong was one of the four Asian Tigers, a label also given to Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. It was during the transformative and explosive growth through the heydays of the manufacturing and financing years. Recently, Hong Kong was placed at 68, way behind other Tiger regions in the 2017 Smart City Index. The Smart City Index considers various government policies and Inno-tech infrastructure in its calculation including innovation economy, digitalization and citizen participation in government.

Given the lack of much focus on research and technology, Hong Kong has been taking active steps in recent years to catch up to its other fellow tigers by encouraging entrepreneurship and research through its grants and its science parks. While this is making up for lost time, other tiger economy are taking another great leap in efficiency by embracing smart cities strategy. Even the well-developed transport system places Hong Kong at a mere 62nd place in the Index. Hong Kong must double its effort in the coming 5-10 years to at least keep pace with the other tiger economies in both its Inno-Tech development and as well as creating a Smart City.

Being traditionally a financial center for the world, one way both cities have sought to diversify their offerings is to encourage the growth of innovation and technology, with FinTech being a case in point, so as to bolster their financial services sector, and hedge against potential disruption in this field. In doing so, transforming themselves into smart cities

In fact, the Hong Kong Government has commissioned the commerce and economic bureau and other consultants to do 3 different studies in a span of 4 years. The government announced that they will develop Kowloon East into a pilot for the Smart City project. Up until now, these are just been colorful pamphlets and presentation of the futuristic Hong Kong

Hong Kong has not done enough in the way that we use technology to improve citizen services. For example, the debate on Electronic Road Pricing has been going on for over thirty years. You can pay your taxi fares in Tokyo with credit card since the 1990s but not in Hong Kong. Taxi drivers like to test passengers’ knowledge of road network by asking how to get there? No one uses GPS.

Only recently the government has started to test parking meters which accept credit card when you can do the same for the past 20 years in major cities like London and New York. Other parts of the world have no toll booths at all, only recently HK government allows Octopus and contactless credit card payments.