Letters | Should Hongkongers be proud of never giving up?

Readers discuss the need to embrace a spirit of change, and the service quality of large private companies falling short of that of the government

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A man walks past graffiti created as a collaboration between the Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation and six local artists at The Mills in Tsuen Wan on January 3. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 11:30am, 19 Sep 2024

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I’m tired of hearing people, including government officials and news reporters, repeatedly saying that our athletes demonstrate the Hong Kong spirit of “never giving up”, as if this was a spirit unique to Hongkongers and athletes from other countries and regions tend to give up. All Olympians don’t give up, or else they wouldn’t be at the Olympics.

I’m more concerned about what Hongkongers don’t give up. They are not giving up the old ways of doing things and being gratified by past success. I recently met two groups of senior public officials and a young friend of mine who sits on a public committee. Despite the government’s repeated claims of youth development and innovation and technology being policy priorities, we both found that the senior officials were tightly holding on to their obsolete, bureaucratic values and mentality.

While the intent is to attract young people to bring in innovation and creativity, in practice government officials often seem to think young people don’t understand “the way we do things here” and wish to educate them about the old ways in turn.

Despite wanting to attract and retain young talent, government officials appear to be sticking to manual and bureaucratic practices which put off young people. Despite wanting to boost tourism, they seem to have no new ideas other than government-organised “carnivals” which do not reflect the real Hong Kong and where prices are often unreasonably inflated. No one seems to have any idea how to support the cruise terminal.

Although members of the public are fed up with taxi services and the younger generation prefers more technologically advanced and transparent point-to-point transport services, the government is still sticking to the heavily criticised taxi licencing regime.

What I wish to hear more of is not about Hongkongers not giving up, which is not enough today. Rather, I wish to hear that Hongkongers are willing to give up old ways which no longer work and have the courage and wisdom to change and invent something new.