Ivan Ko

Ivan Ko is the CEO of the Victoria Harbour Group, chairman of the RECAS Group and a director of the At Home Foundation. Born in Hong Kong, he has more than 27 years of real-estate development and finance experience across Hong Kong, China, Macau, the US and the UK.

His proposal, Nextpolis, was for a new city of around fifty square kilometres for Hong Kongers leaving after the national security law, with schools teaching in Cantonese and a charter setting out its principles, though governed under the host country’s law rather than outside it.

Ireland was the first candidate, with a site sought between Dublin and Belfast, and the plan drew international coverage before running into the obvious political difficulty: a host government has to want fifty thousand new arrivals in one place. He has since looked at other jurisdictions.

He is working to build new cities that could offer Hong Kongers an alternative place to live under the rule of law.