Pokémon GO, the smartphone game based on the beloved animated series that also features collectible trading cards and videogames, was launched globally in 2016. Unlike any other game before it, Pokémon GO forced players to get outside and search for their favourite characters in real time while the distance they covered helped hatch the Pokémon eggs collected on their journeys.

One similarity between old Pokémon games and the new Pokémon GO was that players could also battle against each other both casually and competitively. Similar to other esports championships, contestants in the World Championship must qualify through regional tournaments or receive invitations or exemptions from qualifiers. Ultimately, 200 out of over 15,000 qualified Legend elite players from a pool of 24 million global players compete in the annual World Championships.

This past August, Hong Kong finally came in first place at the World Championship event in Honolulu, Hawaii. The winner was Cheng Yip-kai, a 16-year-old secondary school student who began playing when the app first launched but didn’t dream of becoming a champion until just two years ago.

To learn more about how Cheng became the best like no one ever was, the FCC held a Club Lunch panel with the young champion, as well as Samuel Chueng, the manager of Hong Kong’s Pokémon GO team. Moderating the discussion was Journalist Board Governor Joe Pan.

“Pokémon GO battles are like a game of speed chess. You have to make a decision every half-second,” Cheng said.

On the Verandah screen behind him, Cheng played a clip from his championship-winning game. He pinpointed the exact moment when he calculated a decisive move just 4 seconds before defeating his opponent and becoming this year’s champion.

It was a moment of redemption for Cheng, who had also competed at the 2023 World Championships but lost at the first round of the tournament.

Last year’s defeat didn’t faze him, though. Instead of feeling upset, he took the experience as a learning opportunity and continued practicing with the World Championships’ “show 6, pick 3” format which requires players to initially choose 6 Pokémon, examine their opponent’s 6 Pokémon, and then choose a final 3 to officially battle with. Cheng mastered this playing style over a year full of matches in regional Pokémon GO tournaments.

As Cheng won more matches, his skills and his online fanbase grew, and he quickly climbed higher and higher on the Pokémon GO global ranking system.

“I saw the global ranking system as a way to train my basic skills. I tried to make zero mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes in Japan last year, so I knew I had to perfect my skills to increase my chances of winning,” Cheng said.

While it may seem like Cheng was able to pull off his World Championship win on his own, in reality he had — and needed — a lot of support, primarily from his manager Sam Cheung.

Cheung, a full-time tutor, spoke at length about the financial hardships that anyone must endure in order to not only qualify for the Pokémon GO World Championships, but also to afford the travel expenses required to attend these competitions. He recalled a previous year where  several Hong Kong players qualified for the competition but forfeited their opportunity because they were unable to purchase plane tickets and hotel stays.

“I knew I couldn’t let that happen to Yip-kai and Team Hong Kong,” he said.

Cheung admitted that he worked 7-day work weeks in order to help cover some of the expenses, but that it still wouldn’t be enough. He tried to network as much as possible to hopefully find a sponsor, but most people weren’t convinced and said they needed hard proof that Cheung’s team would win. It wasn’t until Dr. Lai Ching-lung, a 75-year-old liver expert who is also a fan of the mobile game, donated HK$10,000 for the team travel costs.

“It’s not much, but I hope it helps,” Dr. Lai told Team Hong Kong.

Cheng also had a lot of support from his teammates who cheered for him all throughout the World Championship event. In his final match, the champion admitted that his opponent had a stronger set of Pokémon, but the support from his friends made a big impact on his performance.

“He might have had a stronger team of Pokémon, but I had a stronger team of people. This is where Team Hong Kong really made a difference,” Cheng concluded.

To watch the full discussion, please visit the FCC’s YouTube channel:

The World Economic Forum estimates that around 10-20% of the world’s population is neurodivergent, and yet nearly 85% of these individuals are unemployed. People who aren’t neurodivergent (often described as neurotypical) have an unemployment rate of only 4.2%.

But what exactly does neurodiversity mean? How are neurodivergent people different from everyone else? Also, what can companies and organisations do to help accommodate neurodivergent people in the workplace?

To answer these questions, the FCC held a Club Lunch panel that featured three professionals who were diagnosed with neurodivergent conditions as adults — Jonathan Mok, a neurodiversity advocate and public speaker; Noelle Sinclair, the CEO of Diverse Minds; and Khoa Tran, a freelance writer and journalist. Moderating the panel was Correspondent Board Governor Jennifer Jett.

Each panellist first offered their own definition of what it means to be neurodivergent.

“It’s more than what’s just going on in our heads, it’s about how we’re experiencing the world around us,” said Sinclair, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and later attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when she was 40 years old.

“Neurodiversity is more about one’s identity,” Mok said. He was also diagnosed with ADHD and ASD when he was 37 years old.

“It’s not just learning disabilities, it’s not just quirks… it’s broader and broader,” said Tran, who was diagnosed just two years ago with ADHD.

Tran also described his first time taking Ritalin, a prescription drug used to treat ADHD symptoms.

“Oh, this is what it feels like to be normal, to have a quiet mind. It’s almost like an awakening,” he said, adding that the experience of feeling “normal” left him with tears in his eyes.

Along with ASD and ADHD, neurodiversity also includes dyslexia, Down syndrome, bipolar disorder, and a variety of other conditions. While each of these conditions has its own set of characteristics, Sinclair added that the umbrella term “neurodiversity” was created in the same sense that the term “biodiversity” was created, as a social movement term to highlight how an ecosystem thrives on diversity.

“The point was to drive awareness that those of us who are neurodivergent face biases, discrimination, stigma, and if the world were in some people’s hands, people like myself and Jonathan and Khoa would be taken out of existence,” she said.

The panel then discussed how Hong Kong’s corporate world has evolved to be more accepting and inclusive of neurodivergent people. While positive changes have been made, like including non-discrimination statements at the end of job ads on LinkedIn, the panel agreed that there is still room for improvement.

“We need to create a new affirmative environment for people,” Mok said when describing how neurodiversity information needs to be localised for a population that primarily speaks Cantonese and may be unfamiliar with these emerging concepts.

Mok also said that by focusing on university students, Hong Kong’s current efforts may be unintentionally excluding people like him and the two other panellists who were diagnosed later in life and may already have quite a bit of work experience.

On top of hiring practices and workplace accommodations, Sinclair also gave a business perspective. She reminded the audience that neurodivergent people are also potential clients and customers who all run a chance of interacting with nearly any type of business.

“If you are providing a service and your business isn’t taking into consideration people who are neurodivergent, you are losing customers,” she said.

To watch the full discussion, please visit the FCC’s YouTube channel:

In October 2020, roughly a month before Donald Trump was elected out of office in favour of Joe Biden, Raymond Yeung published his book China’s Trump Card: Cryptocurrency and its Game-Changing Role in Sino-US Trade (2020). In it, he outlines the role of digital currency in geopolitical affairs, especially when it comes to the relationship between China and the United States.

“When I wrote this book, I was just testing my ideas, but now the last four years [are] clearly telling you this is actually happening,” Yeung said while also admitting that back then, his ideas didn’t sell well.

He even joked that China’s Trump Card made it to the New York Times’ “Worst Sellers” list and that his publisher refused to print any more copies.

Yeung made these remarks while sitting next to Professional Committee Member Andrew Chan at an FCC Club Lunch in October — roughly a month before Donald Trump was re-elected to serve as the 47th President of the United States.

As the Chief Economist for Greater China at ANZ, Yeung shared an overview of the world’s trade issues, as well as cryptocurrency dynamics and what he thinks will help fundamentally different governments navigate through economic tension.

“Openness is the key word,” Yeung said when describing how blockchain has been used in attempts to mitigate some of these issues.

However, Yeung finds that blockchain’s impact is small and can’t be used as a blanket-solution to worldwide problems. Instead, Yeung suggested that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) create a neutral cryptocurrency that can be used by every country across the world. The appeal of this move is so that transactions are decentralised and not limited by banking restrictions.

“The best way to address trade imbalance is [by] establishing a global-first, apolitical, very neutral global currency. [This] is the only way to solve the global impact,” Yeung explained.

Yeung also used the talk to break down some of the terms he created in writing China’s Trump Card, particularly the phrase “factory-dollar recycling”.

With the concept of the US Dollar (USD) being a direct exchange for oil from Saudi Arabia, Yeung uses factory-dollar recycling to describe the relationship between USD and the Chinese Yuan, or Renminbi (RMB). In the same way that the value of USD is directly linked to oil, Yeung explained that this is exactly how China uses RMB in exchange for USD.

This explanation prompted moderator Andrew Chan to ask whether or not oil would one day be substituted by different valuable resources.

Yeung agreed that we now live in a world with a “multi-polar system” and maintained that if this becomes the case, a blockchain solution can help retain trust in a new, global financial environment.

To watch the full discussion between Raymond Yeung and Andrew Chan, please visit the FCC’s YouTube channel:

“We feel like history is repeating itself.”

Michael Bociurkiw, a Canadian of Ukrainian heritage, finds that the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia was foreshadowed by scenes from his childhood, when tensions between the two sides were already strong.

“I never learned how to play hockey, I was too busy being Ukrainian… it meant protesting in front of the Russian embassy, saying ‘KGB — Set Them Free’ or ‘Free Ukrainian Prisoners of Conscience,’” he explained.

Bociurkiw, a journalist-turned-global-affairs-analyst who has been based in Ukraine since before the Russian invasion in February 2022, first went to Ukraine more than 30 years ago as a reporter for The South China Morning Post.

In a discussion at an October 3 FCC Club Lunch with Correspondent Board Governor Jennifer Jett, he explained what he thinks may happen with the coming U.S. election and Russia’s inability to accept Ukraine as an independent nation.

With the conflict approaching the end of its third year, neither Russia nor Ukraine appears willing to negotiate. But Ukraine’s ability to continue resisting Russia’s aggression depends on continued support from its allies, particularly the U.S.

At the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, which Bociurkiw attended, world leaders were unenthused about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan.” Zelenskyy also sought U.S. approval to send long-range missiles deep into Russian territory, which he says will be a game-changer in the war.

Bociurkiw echoed skepticism from U.S. officials as to how much difference those long-range weapons would make.

“It’s not enough to push the Russians back completely,” he said.

Russia also shows no signs of giving up after already taking over parts of Donetsk, Kharkiv and other Ukrainian regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Moscow will make “no concessions” to end the war.

Since Bociurkiw’s event at the FCC, there have been reports of North Korean troops training alongside Russian soldiers for possible deployment in Ukraine, signaling the lengths that Putin is willing to go to in order to win.

“I could see this war keeping on until Putin dies, whenever that happens,” Bociurkiw said.

To watch the full discussion, please visit our YouTube channel: