When your entire focus is solely on your imaginary competitor...

Hong Kong people are known to be tunnel visioned. All we care about is money. How can I earn more than the guy next to me? How can I get richer than yesterday? How can I get higher returns from the stock market? How can my apartment be sold at a better price than my neighbors?

It seems like Hong Kong people really have nothing better to think about. It is sad. Yet, this is our reality.

How did we evolve into our current species? How did we become unshamefully proud of the fact that we are money machines?

I guess, it is our tendency to be competitive.

Yes, competitiveness is also another thing that Hong Kong people boast about. Again, this is funny.

We are proud to be competitive.

We want to do better than the guy next to us.

It is because of our competitive behavior pattern, Hong Kong has evolved from a fishing village to our current status of international financial center.

We get to where we are today because we are incessantly obsessed with money, as well as competition.

But wait a minute, if competitiveness is what gets us here, is this strategy a sure-win and impeccable way to victory and success?

Actually, it may have some major flaws and issues.

Let's look at Hong Kong's macro economy as an example.

We want to be competitive. We want to be the best in Asia. We want to outperform our peers, when in reality, we really should be collaborating with our neighbors and peers, instead of outperforming them. Yet, Hong Kong has long taken pride in its position of "being different from China", and offering "goods and products" that China cannot.

As time evolves, Hong Kong is constantly evolving as well. We always try to sell our competitive edge as being the hub that is international, dynamic, vibrant, competitive, convenient, which is basically anything that is not China.

We want to maintain this orientation too, to the same extent. Hong Kong experienced its peak in the 90s, because this self identity actually worked and aligned with economic reality. China was lagging way behind economically and financially in the 90s. Everyone in Asia was watching Hong Kong produced movies and dramas. Hong Kong did not have an identity crisis.

But unfortunately, as China slowly catches up, Hong Kong comparatively speaking is no longer profiting from its advocacy of "being different from China". Actually, Hong Kong is now very desperate to be "part of China" now.

This question has come to mind: how can we stay being the best and the champion of Asia so we can look down on and bully anyone in the region, like we did in the 80s and 90s?

Note that, Hong Kong people are racists, so we tend to worship western Europeans like they are gods and disdain black people like they are some sort of retards.

So if Hong Kong people hate black people and we know that we can never be white, our best strategy may very well be just staying put in Asia. This would keep us unshakable for some time, competitively speaking.

Asia consists of more than 40 different countries. Are we sure we can be different and better than all of them?

Ranking, therefore, has become very essential in our way of living.

Ranking of GDP, ranking of schools, ranking of affordability, ranking of billionaires networth, ranking of universities, ranking of household incomes.

It looks like all these indices have pointed to us in the way we would like to see. That Hong Kong is indeed doing very well with these KPIs. Hong Kong is prosperous, stable, war-free and relatively safe and wealthy.

We are happy with staying the best in Asia, noting that we can never be white and we treat black people as some sort of monkeys.

But wait, are we really the best in Asia? As an island in southeast region of China?

No, there is Japan!

Actually, China, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore are all outperforming Hong Kong, just without us knowing.

Nevermind that, let's just take Japan as our imaginary competitor.

In order to stay competitive, we want to copy whatever Japan is doing well and avoiding whatever Japan is not doing well.

For example, Japan has 歌舞伎町, Hong Kong has tons of red light districts. Japan has porns and AV, Hong Kong men like to videotape their own girlfriends too!

It looks like we are doing everything possible to stay ahead of the curve, by mimicking Japan in every single possible way.

Wait a minute, are you sure you are following Japan correctly? Or you are only following Japan in the way they want you to follow?

That's a huge difference.

But we have been tunnel visioned already.

We only go to Japan for travel. We only copy the styles of Japanese corporates. We only like Japanese food and fashion. We only watch Japanese porns. We only follow Japanese news and entertainment. We only compare ourselves with Japan.

Very soon, because of our "competitiveness", we are gradually blinded by the Japanese lights, things that are shown to us only because they want to be so.

Hong Kong has gradually and eventually grown into an island that tries to be Japan, but is not Japan.

We don't pay attention to China. We certainly don't pay attention to America. We also disregard our neighbors: Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, etc. We have grown into a monster that looks down on the entire Asia or even the entire world, because we feel good doing so.

So is "being competitive" a deadlock double edged sword?

When you look at national flags, for example, there are flags that have stars, stripes, flowers, animals, the moon, or the sun. Because they represent a country's reasoning and interaction with other nations. But when we only look at our imaginary competitor, we tend to disregard our peers, and this reflects in our city landscape, culture, movies, etc. We are losing sense of what's going on in the world, when we only focus on competition. Even though we may do well in the so called ranking, our connection to the world is compromised. We eventually become the UFO at the center of the universe.