The Chinese Academy of Social Science published the 2013 edition of its City Competitiveness Report on Sunday. Hong Kong once again ranks first on the chart, as it did in the previous 10 years, but the report also warns yet again that Hong Kong's competitive edge is waning while mainland cities' is growing. It illustrates what Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, said not long ago about Hong Kong - the city is losing some of its competitive strengths.

Zhang emphasized in a speech to a Hong Kong delegation in Shenzhen that economic development is no joke and top priority for Hong Kong right now. Everything else is off without continued economic development and improvement of people's well-being. The State leaders are usually full of praise and encouragement when it comes to Hong Kong and rarely voice their worries about its challenges so candidly. Members of Hong Kong society should have no difficulty understanding what problems the city needs to overcome in the near future.

The report points out Hong Kong's economy still depends highly on the financial and real estate industries, while the virtualization and "bubbling" of its economy is getting worse, making it hard for small- and medium-sized enterprises to develop. Meanwhile, the city has not achieved many outstanding feats in structural transformation of its industry and sci-tech innovation. Input in scientific research has slowed while the labor structure continues to age undesirably in comparison to mainland cities. Apparently Hong Kong has become a victim of its own bad habits and should take a serious look at all the major deeper problems and fix them before they get worse.

In addition to the outstanding issues the report states that Hong Kong is suffering from ill-motivated politicization of everything, a populist outbreak and growing radicalism. These illnesses destroy social harmony, leave the SAR government and businesses under fire almost constantly and make it impossible to focus on raising people's livelihood as well as economic development. As long as such problems remain unresolved Hong Kong's competitiveness will only weaken.

This is an excerpted translation of a Wen Wei Po editorial published on May 20.

(HK Edition 05/21/2013 page1)