By CGTN's Ge Yunfei

As President of the Fok Ying Tung Group, 71 year-old Timothy Fok Tsun-ting is one of the most powerful men in Hong Kong.

His father, Henry Fok, was known as the "Godfather of real estate" who had a 70-percent market share in Hong Kong at the peak of his career. Even before Deng Xiaoping announced the "reform and opening-up" policy on the Chinese Mainland back in the late 1970s, Henry Fok was already beginning to make inroads in China's main landmass.

Twenty years on from the handover of Hong Kong, his son says its return to China has been good for this former British colony.

Fok said he remembered Fortune magazine’s infamous story entitled “The Death of Hong Kong,” but he believes “Hong Kong did not die, actually we prospered.”

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In 2017, Hong Kong topped the world’s most competitive economies again, ahead of Switzerland and Singapore, according to the International Institute for Management Development, a Swiss business school. 

“The One Country, Two Systems” principle leaves the Hong Kong capitalist system intact while making it a special administrative region within the socialist China. 

Timothy Fok said One Country, Two Systems has allowed Hong Kong to benefit from China’s tremendous economic growth.  

From 1841 to June 30, 1997, Hong Kong was a colony of Great Britain. “We learned their language, we learned their history, and we learned their values,” Fok said. For him, Hong Kong’s return to china was not only an economic and political one, but also a cultural return.

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Fok hopes that young people in Hong Kong can develop more solid emotional ties with the Chinese mainland by traveling, working and making friends there. On the other hand, people in the mainland should also learn the history and uniqueness of Hong Kong, he said.

From the Occupy Central movement to the occasional call for Hong Kong independence, tensions are growing in the city. And the skyrocketing housing prices have made it increasingly difficult for many people, especially younger Hong Kongers, to make ends meet.  

So how can the young Hong Kongers get more opportunities and enjoy more dividends in the development of the country?  

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Fok acknowledges that things are tough. In the 1950s and 60s, he said, you could earn success simply through hard work. "But we have a difficult world now with globalization… things are not what they used to be.”

Perhaps the answer lies in exploiting government-created opportunities. “Young Hong Kongers should more actively participate in the growth of China,” Fok said, citing the Belt and Road Initiative and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area.

“Like I tell everybody, please get on the train, the world doesn’t wait for you."