Hong Kong should increase its population by more than 40 per cent to 10m to match the power of New York and London as global financial centres, according to Donald Tsang, its chief executive.

“We must not allow the population to age and then shrink. We must grow in order to be competitive,” Mr Tsang said in an interview with the Financial Times. “We have the fundamentals, like New York and London, to create a global financial centre and a reasonably good living for 10m people here.”