Preamble: Many people don’t understand why Hong Kong under British colonial rule — a place that offered not even a fraction of democracy or freedom, where locals were treated as third-class colonial subjects while government institutions were staffed wall-to-wall with blonde-haired, blue-eyed Britons and brown-skinned Indians — was not only tolerated by the “Hongkongers” of that era, but worn as a badge of pride.
And yet these same people resent the current era of free elections and shared prosperity.
My dear fools: it’s because the Hongkongers of that time had an enormous sense of superiority — they got to look down on their mainland counterparts.
(The majority of Hong Kong’s general public remains quite rational.)
It’s like a child taken in by a fallen aristocratic family. Though he endured cold stares and mistreatment in that borrowed home, the moment he saw that his own siblings were still starving and suffering, he forgot every indignity he had endured and felt nothing but gleeful schadenfreude.
But times change. When those same siblings suddenly flourished and surpassed him in every way, envy and resentment naturally took root.
The truth was revealed: he was, at the end of the day, nothing more than a small fishing village that had its moment of glory only by riding borrowed power.
The inferiority complex that emerges once this truth is laid bare — that is the source of the hostility carried by those fools.
And so you’ll find Hong Kong’s society and media are deeply polarized. The city’s true elites and “near-upper-class” are, in fact, quite self-aware. They understand clearly that Hong Kong did not rise through their small circle alone, but through a complementary division of labor with the mainland — a partnership that enabled the city’s prosperity.
But Hong Kong’s lower-class agitators know only one thing: “I am a Hongkonger, and Hong Kong was built by people like me.” This is frankly absurd. How could a group of people who cannot afford a decent apartment have possibly built an international financial hub?
(To be clear: none of these words are directed at all Hong Kong residents. Master Chi visits Hong Kong regularly, and the deepest impression he carries is that the general public — and virtually all of the elite and upper-class — are warm toward and embrace the mainland.)
The truly tragic thing is that Hong Kong’s lower classes have never paused to reflect on one genuinely critical question: is Hong Kong still the gilded powerhouse it was thirty, or even twenty, years ago? Or is this once-magnificent citadel now bleeding talent and vital energy — on its way back to being a small fishing village?
If memory serves correctly, Hong Kong’s golden era was something truly extraordinary. The Hong Kong of that time was not merely a high-cost city where mediocre masses clustered around a handful of elites. It was the city that gave birth to the Four Great Masters: Jin Yong, Ni Kuang, James Wong, and Cai Lan. And today? Hong Kong cannot produce a single figure capable of reviving the literary brilliance of that era.
What’s more — where is the Hong Kong that once produced legends of film and entertainment? The Hong Kong that gave us Stephen Chow, Chow Yun-fat, Tony Leung Ka-fai, Andy Lau, Leslie Cheung, Anita Mui, Joey Wong, and countless genuine icons? Today, Hong Kong cannot produce a single entertainer worth the stage.
As for the business world — forget the Four Great Families, forget the elite business clubs — virtually none of the second generation has managed to inherit their fathers’ acumen or grip on power.
(The root cause of the Four Great Families’ decline is addressed later.)
In plain terms: Hong Kong is unquestionably entering its own cycle of decline, and the culprits have never been outsiders — they are precisely those unambitious, arrogant, and reckless lower-class agitators within the city itself.
Honestly, if not for the mainland’s sustained support and forbearance, Hong Kong might have been irreversibly reduced to its “small fishing village” origins the very moment the British departed.
That said, I hold no worry for Hong Kong’s finest. Elites will always be elites — they will find their footing, whether in Hong Kong or on the mainland.
Main Text:
Taking advantage of a break, Master Chi made a trip to Hong Kong — not to visit the Four Seasons this time, but to gather with friends from a different circle. Another year had passed, and the nuances of the destiny chart needed careful reexamination.
It was also an opportunity to understand firsthand what is truly happening with Hong Kong’s young people.
By a stroke of fortune, Master Chi found himself sharing a meal with Mr. Wu, a name that appears on Hong Kong’s billionaire list. One remark during that dinner stayed with me long after.
“Hong Kong’s young people have been completely defeated by their mainland counterparts.”
He said this with quiet certainty, punctuating it with a slow, deliberate clench and swing of his fist.
I turned to the television news, where a crowd of young agitators was engaged in senseless chaos. All Master Chi could feel was sorrow.
To see this city — once celebrated as the Pearl of the Orient — treated so recklessly by these ignorant youth is deeply painful.
I understood Mr. Wu’s words completely. He had struck at the absolute root of the matter.
Because what Master Chi has felt most acutely is this: over the past two decades, as the mainland has surged forward, Hong Kong’s young people have entirely lost whatever grounds they once had to look down on their mainland peers.
In terms of vision: today’s mainland youth have decisively overtaken them. One is rooted in the vast, fertile soil of a great nation, carrying the gravity of a major civilization. The other remains confined to the narrow enclave of Hong Kong Island, its horizon limited to small local comforts. It is simply impossible to equate those who dream of national prosperity with those whose greatest wish is that a boxed lunch gets a little cheaper.
In terms of financial standing: even middle-class mainlanders — sometimes mere students — who come to Hong Kong have stripped many local youth of their last shreds of confidence. Those who manage to establish themselves in Hong Kong tend to arrive with some degree of backing. And mainland development has long since moved beyond the era when a Hong Kong truck driver could cross into Shenzhen to keep a mistress. Today, the voices that carry real weight in Central speak, almost without exception, in Mandarin.
In terms of capability: across the vast majority of Hong Kong’s industries, foreign firms have long since prioritized mainland talent — the resources and networks they bring are simply too extensive to ignore. As for mainland-owned firms, that goes without saying.
Only some local Hong Kong firms still cling to a degree of stubborn local preference — but even they have long since begun to soften and compromise.
Of course, all of this is surface detail. The true turning point came over the past decade, when a portion of those once self-righteous Hongkongers — through the increasingly close contact between the two sides — suddenly found themselves with no remaining basis for arrogance.
Shame evolved into resentment. Resentment hardened into hostility. The result: a deep rejection of the mainland, paired with a strange, irrational nostalgia for the colonial era.
One of the most telling examples: if you visit Hong Kong, try communicating with locals in Mandarin.
In the early years when Master Chi would ask for directions or go shopping on Hong Kong’s streets, the pattern was unmistakable: speak Mandarin, and the young locals would respond with coldness or outright avoidance. Speak fluent English, and they’d offer a warm, deferential smile.
This reveals something about a certain type of young Hongkonger — they carry a very clear internal hierarchy. They see themselves as definitively superior to mainland Chinese, yet undeniably beneath overseas Chinese returnees, to say nothing of blond-haired, blue-eyed foreigners.
(Master Chi returned from Canada, so his spoken English and Mandarin are at the same level. A heavy Chinese accent in English would actually invite ridicule.)
Middle-aged Hong Kong residents, by contrast, are invariably more gracious and accommodating. They will sometimes make the effort to explain things in their imperfect Mandarin.
And it is precisely that spirit of openness and inclusivity that was the true essence of Hong Kong’s golden age.
This brings me to Master Chi’s personal history with Hong Kong. As early as the early 1990s, I was traveling regularly between the mainland and Hong Kong for family reasons. Over many visits I came to know the city well — but the moment that struck me most deeply was in 1995, when I saw a slogan displayed at Pacific Place:
“Connecting Heaven and Earth — Only Hutchison.”
Beyond its sheer rhetorical power, this slogan seemed to quietly signal something about the political winds gathering around Hong Kong’s future — including the trajectory of the Four Great Families.
Because Hong Kong, at its core, was always an enclave elevated by circumstance. And so every prominent figure in the Dragon City (Hong Kong) was watching closely: as the new century approached, who would truly hold the sky?
From the perspective of Chinese metaphysics — and particularly for the Li family, firm believers in Feng Shui — the answer had almost certainly already been found.
Before the turn of the century, the Dragon City was moving in two divergent directions.
One faction consisted of anxious middle-class residents and secondary wealthy families who feared the city would lose its vitality and potential.
“‘97 is coming — time to emigrate” became their rallying cry. But history proved this to be one of the most catastrophic decisions they ever made. The slap it delivered was both swift and merciless.
Not only did they miss the opportunity to rise again during Hong Kong’s golden decade after reunification — they were left watching with envy and regret as their peers built wealth and glory alongside the mainland. The consequence is that among today’s Hong Kong diaspora, there exists a particularly narrow-minded cohort permanently encamped in Australia, Canada, and elsewhere. These people despise not only their mainland compatriots — they have come to despise other Hongkongers as well.
The other faction consisted of Hongkongers and top-tier billionaires who embraced reunification with full confidence. They believed that returning to the motherland was not merely a prodigal son coming home — it was a fusion of two shores, a shared flourishing.
History vindicated them completely. Loving one’s country proved not only morally right — it was the most far-sighted and prudent choice. The clearest proof: every wealthy and elite figure in Hong Kong who can be named today was, from the very moment of handover, someone who deeply loved the motherland.
But beautiful flowers do not bloom forever — and with no new generation to carry the torch, Hong Kong’s young people are a deep, deep disappointment.
That disappointment does not stem only from the recent conduct of Hong Kong’s young agitators. It runs deeper: a widespread failure among Hongkongers to understand who they actually are.
Two friends have offered particularly apt explanations. One was a former senior Chinese executive at HSBC, whose view was as follows:
“Hong Kong is just a harbour, lah. It doesn’t produce any value on its own. We need traffic and resources flowing in from every direction to keep us going. Hong Kong has no solid economy of its own — it’s all financial and transport-type. That kind of industry doesn’t require a mass population to back it up. We elites are enough. But the scary thing is, many people here think Hong Kong is what it is because of them. Even scarier — they think it’s because of themselves personally. Very headache-inducing, truly. They matter less than they think. If this continues, this whole group of fools will drag down the entire culture of the city.”
You see — Hong Kong’s elite class holds a very clear and rational view. In their eyes, Hong Kong is simply a city that rose to prominence because of a fortunate confluence of era and geography. Nothing more.
The true arbiters of this city’s rise and fall are, in fact, the mainland compatriots so scorned by a certain segment of the local lower class.
The other group consists of the elites who have made genuinely outstanding contributions to Hong Kong. As for those who spend their days stirring up conflict — they are, in truth, peripheral figures, outside the mainstream of what Hong Kong actually is.
This is also why class conflict has become a serious problem in Hong Kong today: the vast majority of the city’s population is, in reality, riding on the shoulders of the elites who actually create what might be called “Dragon City value.”
And yet these same people are enthusiastic noise-makers, constantly disrupting those who are doing real work.
In the end, the fairest summary of these individuals is this: a group of pitiable people with little inherent value, who — upon realizing that even their last remaining shred of petty dignity is about to be surpassed and crushed — have no recourse but to huddle together with fellow unfortunates, clinging to their only remaining fig leaf.
How does one address this?
By telling them clearly and directly: Hong Kong’s past achievements and present standing have genuinely nothing to do with them. Hong Kong today was built by Hong Kong’s patriotic citizens together with the nation.
And they are the ones who are truly unworthy of this city.
It is the same as what happened with certain xenophobic factions in Shanghai. Once mainland elites began pouring in in large numbers, those fools had no choice but to concede — and to quietly accept their true place and standing.
They eventually came to understand that they were always just ephemeral mayflies, living in the city’s reflected glow, contributing nothing of substance.
(Master Chi is himself Shanghainese, but holds an intense distaste for xenophobic attitudes. Such people simply fail to understand that the future of any great city depends on the convergence of talent from every corner of the land.)
This is a good moment to discuss the current situation of Hong Kong’s so-called “near-upper-class” — to give readers a more complete picture.
First, in Master Chi’s view: Hong Kong has never truly had a “near-apex” tier, and never will.
For the Dragon City, unless the Four Great Families can produce a new generation of figures matching their founders in stature — and consolidate at least two of the four family empires under unified control — even the Li family’s city cannot truly be called the Li family’s. At most, it is a somewhat larger powerful clan.
The Four Great Families were the concentrated expression of Hong Kong’s peak fortune. But today, not one — not a single one — of their descendants can replicate their fathers’ achievements.
Because the fortune of the era has passed. When the tide withdraws, the dragon’s roar fades. Don’t believe it? Put them in the arena against the rising tigers and dragons of the mainland — they wouldn’t survive three rounds. The only ones who could truly hold the fort have already aged out or stepped back.
The inevitable outcome is the gradual fragmentation and dissolution of the entire family empire system.
Of course, for the next two generations, the Four Great Families’ heirs will still be considered elites far above ordinary people. But they no longer possess the capability or strength to compete with the mainland’s finest. As Master Chi has said before: take either of the two great mainland real estate dragons and send them across — they will dominate as outsiders (過江龍, a powerful force arriving from beyond one’s territory). Not one of those so-called blue-blooded heirs could hold their ground.
So it’s not hard to see that the Four Great Families have all long since made their arrangements.
The Li family’s strategy has been to shift assets into “absolutely stable” large-scale essential infrastructure projects — which is why you see them acquiring utility-type businesses in the United Kingdom.
Many people have never understood why Superman Li (Li Ka-shing’s widely-used nickname) chose to withdraw from the mainland.
The answer is actually strikingly simple — but everyone approaches it as a businessman’s calculation rather than a father’s, and so they remain puzzled.
He understands too clearly that with his family’s current capacity, a full-scale repositioning into the mainland is not something achievable in one or two years. And Superman himself, even if capable of blazing a trail in the early phase, is a ninety-year-old man. How many more rounds of turbulence can he realistically absorb? If his strength fails, which of his two heirs is capable of carrying the weight? The answer: neither.
Better then to read the moment, withdraw and consolidate in time, live out one’s remaining years in peace, and choose the least demanding platform migration available.
The other three great families chose an entirely different path: they aligned themselves with their chosen “interests operator” — the so-called “Big Stamp Brother,” Xu Jiayin of Evergrande.
This was, in truth, a very shrewd move — essentially allowing one of the most powerful mainland powerhouses to enter a joint partnership with the three families, building wealth together.
Why invest in Xu Jiayin? Like the power circles of the mainland, the elite class in any region understands the meaning of “every destiny has its appointed course.” Some money is simply not yours to earn — so let another carry it for you. On the destiny chart, this is what is called “borrowing momentum.”
For instance: those born with a BaZi configuration of “pearls cast upon the sea” often rise from regional official positions — but for wealth to truly accumulate in the treasury, the chart must carry complementary structures such as “seven killings facing the throne” or “war horse bearing a sword.”
In this context: declining great families whose founders have aged and whose era has passed inevitably need to attach themselves to a rising force in order to carry the family’s fortune and bloodline forward.
This, in a certain sense, also illuminates the Chi fortune and future direction of the city of Hong Kong itself. Which is why when someone asks: “Can Hong Kong still be saved?”
The correct answer is: Hong Kong has never needed saving. The only ones who need saving are those foolish masses who fail to understand the limits of their own allotted fortune.
The aging of Hong Kong as a city is an undeniable reality. The rise of mainland cities across every sector is an achievement that cannot be ignored. And what has caused the Dragon City to lose its golden luster is simply this: Hong Kong’s young people no longer have the capability — or the will — to revive the greatness of the generation before them.
As Master Chi has said before: think carefully. In the last ten years, has even a single notable figure of genuine talent emerged from Hong Kong? Not in finance, not in real estate, not in film, not in culture.
The answer is no. Not one.
The reason? Hong Kong’s fortune has passed its prime. The sons are unworthy. The legacy has no heirs.