The global system is entering a new phase. Competition is intensifying across markets, geopolitics, and technology, while trust in rules, institutions, and established alliances is eroding. As uncertainty grows, states, companies, and societies alike are forced to take initiative and reassess how they work together: openness and interdependence alone no longer guarantee stability, and cooperation is increasingly shaped by strategic interest rather than shared assumption. Alliances are being repriced, supply chains reorganized, and solidarity extended on narrower terms. Partnerships have not disappeared — but they are becoming more conditional, more transactional, and more readily revised as circumstances shift. The shift runs through all three domains of cooperation at once: between states, in markets, and within individual partnerships.

The 4th edition of the Hong Kong-GBA Forum, riding on the 56th St. Gallen Symposium, will explore how partnerships can be shaped and used effectively under these more demanding conditions:

• How can leaders turn growing conditionality into a source of resilience, growth and competitive advantage?
• What makes partnerships thrive when access, trust and cooperation can no longer be taken for granted?
• What role(s) Hong Kong can further reposition and play in such changes of dynamical impacts and changes at the global backgrounds?

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