Sports boost will enable youth with positive thinking

When Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po decided to pour $1.2 billion into sports promotion, he was investing in Hong Kong’s youth to lead the city into a secure and bright future.

There is no doubt that sport develops the mind to positive thinking. And that is what is needed among Hong Kong’s youth.

Chan’s cash input into the Arts and Sports Development Fund will be used to strengthen training for team sports athletes, improve the professional standards of coaches, as well as supporting and exploring more diverse and higher-level sports competitions to be held in Hong Kong.

This injection of funds will also enable organizations to develop and promote sport to international levels to attract tourism by staging major events like the Rugby Sevens and professional golf and tennis matches.

In Hong Kong there is virtually no graffiti, as our youth are too preoccupied with study or work to mess about with vandalism, unlike in the west where buildings and subways are defaced by vandals with too much idle time on their hands.

Hong Kong youth are keen sports participants and through those activity come discipline. Thus, no graffiti.

During his budget speech, Chan praised Hong Kong athletes for having achieved outstanding results on the international stage. Last year, local athletes achieved historic results in the National Games, winning nine gold, two silver and eight bronze medals. With this in mind, Chan allocated more resources to proactively promote sports in the community, support elite sports, maintain Hong Kong as a centre for major international sports events, enhance professionalism in sports, and develop sports as an industry.

However, their minds are still young and subject to exploitation by undesirable forces as we learned in 2019 when the US Department of State’s National Endowment for Development (NED) infiltrated primary and secondary schools as well a university graduates and convinced them to rebel against Hong Kong and seek its independence. There was a price to pay for the young rebels as well as the community, which suffered losses in property and lives.

The NED is still here waiting to strike again when the time is ripe, and Hong Kong will be prepared for such an onslaught.

The minds of our youth must be attuned to recognizing the good and the bad. They must be able to recognize that the propaganda uttered by NED is false and must be repelled. Primary school children can become intensely focused on peer relationships, which means team dynamics can be a powerful vehicle for learning conflict resolution. And this is where sports comes in.

Playing sports teaches far more than how to throw a ball or run faster. It builds a specific set of mental, emotional, and social skills that show up in classrooms, careers, and relationships long after the final whistle. The lessons range from obvious ones like teamwork to less visible changes in how the brain handles stress, makes decisions, and stays focused under pressure.

Throughout their adolescent years young players grow from being mere team members to team leaders. They learn as a team and the importance that has on their future life.

Research on athlete leadership development shows that effective team captains learn specific skills through their roles: clear communication, emotional control, tactical decision-making, and the ability to make sure every teammate has a voice. These aren’t traits people are born with. They’re practiced and refined through the daily demands of being on a team.

Not all sports teach the same things in the same way. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Psychology found a clear split: team sports primarily build psychological resilience through social support, while individual sports like swimming, tennis, or track build them through self-efficacy, your belief in your own ability to handle challenges.

Sports don’t just work your body. They sharpen three core mental abilities that an psychologist grouped the term as an “executive function”: working memory (holding and juggling information in your head), impulse control (resisting a snap reaction to make a better choice), and cognitive flexibility (switching between tasks or strategies on the fly). A meta-analysis published in Brain Sciences found large improvements in all three areas among children and adolescents who participated in sports-based programs.

With a pure mind developed by sports, our youth today, with support from the government, will lead Hong Kong into a futuristic world planned by their forefathers and shielding us from external forces which threaten our existence.

Mark Pinkstone

** The blog article is the sole responsibility of the author and does not represent the position of our company. **

Hong Kong’s ambitious Northern Metropolis has received a shot in the arm with a HK$150 billion (US$19 billion) fund launch to kick-start the high-tech park’s development.

The site is massive, covering some 30,000 hectares, which is about one third of Hong Kong’s total land area and about the size of Philadelphia in the USA, or Edinburgh in Scotland.

And before the ink has dried since the announcement of the plan, more than 60 firms have moved into the first two buildings in the Phase 1 development of the San Tin Technopole, the centrepiece of the entire project. The infrastructure is already well in place: drainage has been laid, internal roads built with slip roads connecting to the main highway, electricity has been connected and buildings are sprouting like stalagmites while construction cranes dot the skyline. The area is a hive of activity.

When completed, the project will create 650,000 jobs and house 2.5 million people.

Naturally, such a project will require money, and Hong Kong has plenty of that. Hong Kong is the world’s top capital market, ranking the top spot for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) in 2025. A combination of revenue earned from IPOs and bond sales, pushed Hong Kong’s 2025-26 budget to a surplus to some $3 billion (US$383 million). As Hong Kong is the envy of the world for its monetary management, raising the necessary funds for the $224 billion ($28 billion) project should not be difficult.

Normally, surpluses go into the government’s exchange fund, currently standing at $4.1 trillion ($524 billion), which is used to maintain the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the US dollar. But with such ambitious plans afoot, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po has proposed taking some $150 billion ($19 billion) from the exchange fund to support the Northern Metropolis. Investment returns from the exchange fund last year topped $300 billion ($38 billion). This, he sees, as an investment, not an expenditure. After all, he said, this is only half of last year’s profits.

In his Budget speech last week Chan announced the setting up of a “Northern Metropolis Urban-Rural Integration Fund” which will entail an initial capital of $200 million ($25.5 million) to boost rural tourism in the area. Hong Kong is rich in heritage, and some 200 villages will benefit from the scheme. Another $1 billion ($128 million) will be earmarked for a heritage conservation fund for revitalzation projects and maintenance of historic buildings.

The government will also inject another $10 billion ($1.27 billion) into an adjacent project known as the Hetao Hong Kong Park, otherwise known as the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park. A dedicated company for this development, set up by the government in 2023 is seeking public-private partnerships to take up its offer to occupy some 1 million square metre gross floor area on 87.7 hectares of land. It is expected this site alone will provide some 52,000 innovation and technology jobs.

Although the metropolis is mainly high-tech, it will also house a university town with accommodation for students and a training hospital, as well as possibly earmarking some land for private hospital development. Applications will soon be open to develop campuses in the Hung Shui Kiu/Ha Tsuen area with an offer of $10 billion ($1.3 billion) in loans to the successful applicants. Tertiary education bonds are likely to be issued to support the construction of the university and its facilities. The universities have the capacity to issue bonds with their substantial financial reserves and profitable self-financing programes. After all it is normal for universities elsewhere to raise capital by the issuance of bonds. The government can provide a guarantee for the bonds, allowing them to receive a credit rating equivalent to government bonds which currently stands at AA+.

Investors can rest assured the Chinese Central Government will do everything in its power to preserve its southern treasure for generations to come with Hong Kong being the pinnacle for the Greater Bay Area.