In a boardroom high above Hong Kong's twinkling neons, several dozen cyber-entrepreneurs have gathered to brainstorm on harnessing the power of information technology to help spark Asia's economic recovery. For an hour the buzz is infectious. The 20- and 30-somethings swap e-mail addresses and big ideas in a supercharged atmosphere that is more Palo Alto than Hong Kong. Then Stephen Chan enters the room. Vice president of cyber-entrepreneur Richard Li's Pacific Century Regional Developments, Chan is here to sell the crowd on a $1.7 billion plan to build a "Cyberport" info-tech center on 26 hectares of reclaimed land on Hong Kong island. The government has awarded the project, without competitive bidding, to Li's firm.

But as Chan describes the plan, the techies express disdain, dismissing it as just another property deal in a city whose business environment knows little else. "A more appropriate name would be Cyber Villas," cracks Internet analyst David Webb, a former investment banker. The techies cringe when Chan proposes that the Cyberport's "intellectual cluster" be reserved for "technology élites," with a screening committee to filter out "inappropriate tenants." The approach seems to run counter to the anything-goes ethos that built California's booming Silicon Valley--and that characterizes the Netizens who live, work and play there. Says Hong Kong cyber-investor Nick Anthony, who is building an entrepreneurs' club of technology start-up companies: "The world has moved on and we're stuck in the mud. We're not in the plastic flowers business anymore."

That's an apparent dig at the business empire of Richard Li's father, Hong Kong's legendary plastic-flowers-to-property tycoon Li Ka-shing. As the Li family well knows, Hong Kong is desperate for a new economic angle. But a clutch of government initiatives has failed to define a future for the territory. The Cyberport plan follows last year's massive stock-market intervention and talks (still continuing) with U.S. entertainment giant Disney to build a $3 billion theme park. Besides rankling Hong Kong's fledgling cyber-élite, the Cyberport has rival property developers and other critics complaining of cronyism. Meanwhile, the city languishes in a recession, with unemployment at a 20-year high. "It's a reversion to type," says Stephen Brown, head of research at Kim Eng Securities. "It shows what little inspiration there is in official circles."

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R E L A T E D L I N K : Disney Save Us! Mired in recession, Hong Kong grasps at the dream that the building of a new theme park could boost the territory's sagging fortunes --TIME Asia, March 15, 1999