Hong Kong's first five-year plan bets on AI skills: from kindergartens to the workforce

John Lee's policy address sets out Hong Kong's first five-year plan, and the reception from the business side has focused on predictability rather than on any individual measure. Our Hong Kong Foundation vice-president Kenny Shui Chi-wai called it an important start. Explicit directions, set out over a five-year horizon, are read as insurance that the city's economic priorities will persist even if government leadership changes.

The workforce commitment is the clearest of the AI measures. Upskill Hong Kong, the upgraded Employees Retraining Board, will run an 18-month AI upskilling campaign from the first half of 2027. It opens with a free online training course for everyone, focused on applying AI at work, and anyone who completes it can enrol at no cost in short-term advanced courses on AI application across different industries. The government expects the campaign to benefit around 40,000 employees.

The education measures reach considerably further down the age range than the workforce campaign suggests. The government plans a free digital education resource platform built around AI large language models, and will progressively extend its AI Teaching Assistant to more subjects. Funding reserved under the Quality Education Fund will digitalise kindergarten administration, improve kindergartens' digital equipment and AI tools, and pay for innovation and AI training for kindergarten staff. Parents are included too, through programmes on technology ethics and digital literacy.

That kindergarten focus is more practical than it sounds. Many Hong Kong kindergartens are under financial pressure, and government sources have drawn the comparison with companies using AI for workforce planning, suggesting the same tools could ease administrative costs. The same funding is meant to let kindergartens run activities that build curiosity and exploration in children.

Behind the training sits a longer-term build. University Grants Committee-funded research postgraduate places will rise around 30%, from 7,200 to 9,600 by the 2030/31 academic year, and the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme grows from 400 to 550 places by 2029/30. The San Tin University Town in the Northern Metropolis will concentrate on medicine, life and health technology, AI, robotics, microelectronics and other emerging industries.

Governance arrives alongside the spending. A new Commissioner for AI will sit within the Digital Policy Office, coordinated by the Chief Secretary for Administration. The remit spans deepfake regulation, with the Law Reform Commission already reviewing cyber-enabled crime laws, legal powers to remove AI-generated fraudulent content online, protection for minors using AI and social media, and ethics and safety compliance requirements for government AI procurement.

Taken together the plan treats AI as workforce and education policy rather than as an industry subsidy, which is a meaningful shift in emphasis for Hong Kong. Additional reporting on the school and kindergarten measures from the Hong Kong Economic Times (香港經濟日報).