West Kowloon cuts costs like ‘river of blood’ as HK$21.6b funding set to exhaust in March 2025

West Kowloon Cultural District Authority's board chairman Tang Ying-yen said on Thursday that a development proposal has been devised and submitted to the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, weeks after the district’s chief executive Betty Fung Ching Suk-yee warned that funding will exhaust in March 2025 the soonest. 

The WKCDA received the HK$21.6 billion funding back in 2008. Fung had said the WKCDA would cut costs but would not ask for further funding from the government. 

Speaking to the press today, Tang recalled he had told the Legislative Council that the funding was wrongly allocated when West Kowloon was first established. He continued that all museums have to rely on government funding and none can handle profits and losses on its own. 

Tang also mentioned that West Kowloon has been cutting half of all operational costs internally and described the knife is like “a river of blood flow.” 

It is expected that the capital chain will break in March 2025 and by then M+ Museum and the Hong Kong Palace Museum can no longer hold more events and exhibitions, Tang said. 

Still, Tang pointed out that museums in the city can recover about 50 percent of costs at most and West Kowloon is close to achieving this goal. 

Tang also said the WKCDA will not further seek funding from the government to avoid taking up the resources for other livelihood projects. 

Tang said the WKCDA will make good use of the land resources of West Kowloon and it is now waiting for the bureau’s approval for its latest development proposal. 

When asked if building hotels and offices in West Kowloon will change its main development direction, Tang said there were relevant policies to support the district’s cultural operations already. The WKCDA is now enhancing the development plans, Tang said, refusing to roll out more details. 

Tang referred to past experiences when he took the helm as the Financial Secretary in 2003. “The government was facing nearly HK$50 billion in deficit, but I turned that into some HK$100 billion in profits in four years,” he said. 

“The financial chief for the following decade didn’t even need to know how to write to word ‘deficit’,” Tang went on to say. Tang expresses strong hopes for tackling the issues for good as well. 

Tang said M+ has played host to over 4 million visitors since opening, and Hong Kong Palace Museum also welcomed some 1.46 million visitors. He noted that the visitors were mostly Hongkongers during the Covid era and thanked citizens’ efforts in cultural heritage.