Hong Kong could learn from Shanghai. It won't, because of the combination of arrogance and avarice that drives this city and its attitude to the mainland. But that is Hong Kong's loss.

Shanghai boasts a broad avenue of colonial buildings called the Bund. Not even decades of Communist rule have dented these magestic buildings, the sense of history and the uniqueness of the place. In HK there remains few such buildings. Instead there is a mad rush to knock everything down and building skyscrapers instead. Shanghai is in a building frenzy too. Yet Shanghai has managed to build interesting new office and apartment towers (as well as plenty of bland ones) while keeping its older historical buildings intact. Shanghai is dotted with parks. Not country parks with tarmac trails, but real parks with grass and boulevards and people walking backwards and playing cards and statues of Marx. On the other hand, Shanghai has nothing to match the fast-disappearing Victoria Harbour, the vibrancy and pace of Hong Kong. But if you didn't know which city you were in you would assume Shanghai had been the British colony and that Hong Kong had been Chinese all along.