DISPATCH FROM THE URBAN FRONT: Education Offensive at North District
HONG KONG, 25 MAY — The universities stand overstocked, their grounds cramped, their ambitions choked by mountain and deed. No more. Retrenchment ordered: retreat to Lantau, sell downtown holdings, raise new citadels of learning on open ground. The scent of damp earth and fresh concrete rises where dormitories and labs will soon stand—entire campuses carved from wilderness. This is not abandonment, but advance: a bid to draw thousands, then tens of thousands, of foreign scholars, their families, their futures, into Hong Kong’s orbit. Let Boston boast its ivy. We shall build something sterner—functional, vast, self-sustaining. But heed this: if we delay, if we cling to old plots and older pride, the talent floods westward, and the hub becomes myth. The clock ticks under southern skies.
Published May 25, 2026