Between Two Worlds

This essay follows from my earlier reflection on the decline of substance in service. If Polish Without Substance explored the emptiness of surface without depth, this piece considers what happens when an organisation tries to be all things to all people, and in so doing, becomes nothing at all.

Hong Kong once stood for clarity. It was the city that worked. Its institutions knew who they were, what they represented, and whom they served. Competence bred confidence, and confidence bred trust. There was no need for elaborate branding strategies or tortured identity statements, because the purpose was obvious: Hong Kong was the bridge, the connector, the place where worlds met.

That clarity has frayed. Increasingly, institutions here are asked to embody not one character but three: the local, the Mainland, and the international. It is sometimes described as a tripod, as if standing on three legs at once could provide balance. But in practice, the opposite is true. Each leg points in a different direction. International audiences look for openness, polish, and responsiveness. Mainland requirements emphasise stability, consistency, and alignment. Local expectations demand pragmatism and flexibility. Each set of demands makes sense on its own terms. Yet combined, they form an impossible brief.

The result is not harmony but confusion. An organisation pulled in three directions cannot stride forward; it can only shuffle uncertainly. To one side, it looks hesitant, to another insincere, to a third weak. The attempt to be simultaneously international and domestic, open and cautious, responsive and rigid, produces a hollow compromise. In trying to please everyone, it convinces no one.

The tragedy is that Hong Kong’s strength has never lain in being all things at once. Its strength lay in being a bridge; not neutral, not evasive, but confident in its role as a connector. A bridge is not a tripod. It has span and direction. It knows what it joins. It carries people forward. The tripod, by contrast, wobbles with every adjustment, never steady, never certain, always on the verge of collapse.

What is lost in this tripod balancing act is not just efficiency, but conviction. Institutions begin to follow scripts instead of exercising judgement, to issue statements instead of taking decisions. They move from serving with confidence to serving with apology. And with each concession, trust ebbs away.

Better to be one thing and to do it well than to attempt three and do none convincingly. No institution, and no city, can sustain excellence when it is caught between incompatible identities. To pretend otherwise is to condemn oneself to mediocrity.

Hong Kong must decide what it is, and live that truth fully. Anything less leaves it stranded between worlds, unconvincing to one, unsatisfactory to another, and increasingly unsure of itself.

Just as surface without substance corrodes trust, so too does identity without clarity. Both are failures of confidence. Both remind us that what sustains institutions is not breadth but conviction; the courage to be one thing, and the discipline to live it without apology.