John Lee is the brand new leader govt of Hong Kong. The 64-year-old ran the one accredited marketing campaign to be triumphant Carrie Lam, the embattled head of the Chinese language territory who oversaw a dramatic degradation to democratic establishments all through 2019’s pro-democracy protests. Lee’s tenure will most probably deliver extra of the similar: a former deputy leader of Hong Kong’s police pressure, he was once instrumental within the brutal crackdowns on pro-democracy activists.
As the only Beijing-approved candidate to switch Lam, Lee’s victory was once all however confident once he introduced his candidacy. Whilst Hong Kong doesn’t have what American citizens would acknowledge as a democratic electoral gadget, earlier elections have noticed more than one applicants vie for Hong Kong’s most sensible process. However this 12 months, Lee was once the one individual Beijing it seems that deemed sufficiently unswerving to China’s Communist Celebration underneath its new electoral insurance policies for Hong Kong, unveiled ultimate March. He received handily with 99 % of the votes from the 1,500-member electoral fee.
Since 2019, the Chinese language govt has instituted rules and insurance policies that have eroded the relative autonomy that Hong Kong loved after the territory was once returned from the United Kingdom to China in 1997. Protests about adjustments to extradition rules, which might permit Hong Kong citizens accused of crimes may well be extradited to mainland China for trial, erupted around the area amid calls for for reinforced democratic establishments. The ones protests, even supposing they had been efficient in indefinitely delaying the extradition rules, resulted in the long run in a nationwide safety regulation being enacted. Underneath that regulation, many high-profile activists like Agnes Chow, a pro-democracy activist and member of pro-democracy civil society crew Demosisto, in addition to opposition politicians and trade leaders, had been arrested. Since then, a “local weather of concern” has pervaded town and nearly extinguished the democratic resistance motion, in line with a February 2021 research by way of Thomas E. Kellogg and Lydia Wong of the Georgetown Middle for Asian Legislation. (Lydia Wong is a pseudonym for a pupil running within the Folks’s Republic of China.)
The federal government in mainland China additionally instituted a number of reforms to Hong Kong’s governing construction, which helped solidify China’s keep watch over over town, as Michael Martin of the Middle for Strategic and World Research defined in a February file. Twelve pro-democracy applicants had been barred from working within the 2020 Legislative Council (Hong Kong’s legislature, regularly shortened to LegCo) elections, which have been then postponed till December 2021. For the time being, China’s Status Committee of the Nationwide Folks’s Congress (NPC), with Lam’s assist, instituted adjustments to Hong Kong’s Elementary Legislation — town’s governing constitution — assuring a better percentage of seats at the LegCo would pleasant to China.
The Status Committee of the NPC additionally created an establishment to vet attainable political applicants, the Candidate Eligibility Overview Committee, or CERC. As of April 14, the CERC had most effective 4 participants — all unelected govt officers — and 3 non-official participants, in line with a govt press liberate. Lee, now poised to take over as Hong Kong’s leader govt, was once till April 7 the chair of the CERC.
John Lee, cop
Previous to becoming a member of Hong Kong’s govt as Leader Secretary for Management — the second-most tough place within the govt — Lee was once the deputy head of the police pressure and a occupation cop, having joined the pressure in 1977. He’ll be the primary leader govt from the police pressure within the 25 years since its handover to China, and can take administrative center on July 1, the anniversary of that day.
During the last 4 many years, Lee rose throughout the ranks of town’s police pressure to turn out to be the Secretary of Safety, overseeing town’s police pressure throughout the 2019 protests over the extradition invoice (for which, in line with the BBC, Lee was once a robust suggest). Throughout his tenure, Hong Kong police had been strongly criticized for the usage of over the top pressure, equivalent to deploying rubber bullets, tear gasoline, and water cannons, and every so often the usage of are living ammunition towards protesters. Lee defended the usage of pressure and the reaction to the protest, together with the Nationwide Safety Legislation, announcing it had helped “repair steadiness from chaos.”
Lee has additionally stated he intends to enact law that can “limit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion,” which is criminal underneath Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Elementary Legislation, in a bid to rid town of “the ideology of Hong Kong independence, violence and extremism.”
Whilst his insurance policies and reaction to the 2019 and 2020 pro-democracy protests obviously happy Beijing, the US Treasury Division sanctioned Lee, Lam, and different govt officers for “undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy and proscribing the liberty of expression or meeting of the voters of Hong Kong” in August 2020. Lee was once particularly designated for his function in “coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning folks underneath the authority of the Nationwide Safety Legislation, in addition to being excited about its building, adoption, or implementation,” in line with a press liberate from the Administrative center of International Property Regulate. Then again, for the reason that the order applies most effective to belongings which can be in the USA or underneath the keep watch over of US individuals, it received’t most probably impact his financial standing. It will probably lift headaches as Lee tries to salvage Hong Kong’s economic system after the Covid-19 pandemic and the Nationwide Safety Legislation driven foreigners and world corporations out of town, even though.
Lee’s variety isn’t utterly with out precedent, both. Beijing has regularly had a most popular candidate within the contest for leader govt. However the uncontested run of the previous safety leader is sort of too on-the-nose after pro-democracy activism and requires Hong Kong independence threatened China’s grip at the town. It additionally issues to the erosion of the civil carrier in Hong Kong. Lee’s no longer a part of the civil carrier and political magnificence, or a trade chief, as previous leader executives were. Fairly, the dear experience he brings to the process is his loyalty to Beijing, Kenneth Chan Ka-lok, previously a pro-democracy lawmaker and affiliate professor at Hong Kong Baptist College, instructed the Washington Publish in April, after Lee introduced his candidacy. “What issues maximum is that Lee is a cadre appointed by way of Beijing. So long as he can serve his grasp neatly, [Hong Kong’s] pro-establishment aspect is not going to have a voice that deviates a ways from his,” he stated.
The truth that loyalty, slightly than competency, is a very powerful high quality for management in Hong Kong doesn’t bode specifically neatly for the long run, Ho-fung Hung, a professor of political economic system at Johns Hopkins College and knowledgeable at the politics of Hong Kong instructed the Publish. Hung predicted that Lee’s management issues to the “slow erosion of professionalism spirit in Hong Kong in all quarters of society can be proceeding and even dashing up.”
Hong Kong’s trade ties
Lee’s loss of enjoy — both in govt or in trade — places him in a difficult place with regards to one of the crucial major mandates of his management: rebuilding Hong Kong’s economic system after the one-two punch of the Nationwide Safety Legislation and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hong Kong has occupied a center position over the last 25 years, with a point of social and political autonomy a ways exceeding that of mainland China — encompassed within the “one birthday party, two techniques” philosophy that has ruled Hong Kong since 1997. That degree of Western-style openness and freedom, coupled with tax breaks, attracted world firms and hundreds of expats. Then again, because the Related Press reported ultimate 12 months, a survey from the American Chamber of Trade ultimate 12 months confirmed that 40 % of expats surveyed that Would possibly had been bearing in mind leaving Hong Kong because of the Nationwide Safety Legislation, and lots of world firms moved their operations somewhere else.
Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic close off town, and breakouts crippled the well being gadget. The dynamic zero-Covid coverage hired by way of the Chinese language govt has added to the exodus, with greater than 150,000 folks leaving because the starting of 2022, in line with Al Jazeera. “It’s an unarguable truth that we have got a mind drain and a few senior control of a few corporates have left Hong Kong,” Lam stated of town’s Covid-19 insurance policies.
Lee is tasked with shoring up Hong Kong’s trade sector as soon as once more, however as an alternative of luring world firms again, in all probability with a much less restrictive political setting and Covid-19 coverage, he’s proposing a unique manner altogether: Opening the border with mainland China and growing the northern a part of the island, the so-called Northern City, as an solution to alleviate town’s housing disaster — and shore up connections with the mainland.
“He could also be a decisive chief. He would possibly make town serve as higher. That’s true. However he’s no longer a businessman. He doesn’t have hyperlinks to trade,” Tara Joseph, the previous president of the American Chamber of Trade in Hong Kong, instructed Al Jazeera. “He has hyperlinks to the safety equipment.”
