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SCMP Series
Coronavirus and a world in flux: 20 most read commentaries of 2020
15 of 20
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Chief Executive Carrie Lam meets Luo Huining, then secretary of the Communist Party’s Shanxi provincial committee, at Government House on December 3. Luo has been appointed director of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. Photo: Information Services Department
Opinion
Opinion
by Michael Chugani
Opinion
by Michael Chugani

Carrie Lam is no longer Hong Kong’s real boss, but that’s less worrying than the man who now is

  • By bringing in a strongman with no Hong Kong experience to lead the liaison office, the central government shows that it has learned little from the mistakes that landed the city in this crisis in the first place
Michael Chugani
Michael Chugani
Why you can trust SCMP

Hong Kong has a new boss. No, Beijing hasn’t fired Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. That will happen, but at a time of Beijing’s choosing. For now, if you still believe she is the city’s boss, I can recommend a good psychiatrist.

To understand how the Communist Party works, you need to understand how illusions work. Here is an example: the Xinjiang gulags are actually enlightenment camps for Uygurs. The illusion in Hong Kong’s case is that Beijing’s liaison office doesn’t meddle in local affairs.
Anyone who believes the sacked liaison office director Wang Zhimin never meddled in local affairs will believe, as President Xi Jinping wants us to, that Lam is a leader courageously handling Hong Kong’s worst ever political crisis. That’s how illusions work.
Beijing abruptly dumped Wang because his meddling didn’t produce the required results. With the courageous Lam in hiding, his job was to rally local loyalists to sway public opinion with unproven claims foreign forces were funding the protest movement opposed by a silent majority.
His head rolled when he confidently but mistakenly assumed a silent majority would propel loyalists to victory in the district council elections. But why fire Wang with such haste if the liaison office is not supposed to get involved in local issues? The question provides the answer.
Just two days after Wang’s departure, successor Luo Huining briefly faced the media, using all the well-worn phrases mainland officials use about Hong Kong, then turned his back without taking questions. Reporters then grilled Lam instead the next day.

She dismissed as speculative when asked if Luo, a Xi loyalist who had served as a strongman party chief in two mainland provinces, was here to change Beijing’s Hong Kong policy. In what way was the question speculative?

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We are months into an anti-government uprising triggered by Lam’s now-withdrawn extradition bill. Protesters and the police have fought with petrol bombs and tear gas. Police have arrested more than 7,000 mostly young protesters. Beijing is spooked by foreign forces using the city to destabilise the country. It’s anything but speculative to ask if Luo is here to upend policy. Why replace Wang otherwise?

Lam’s refusal to answer was the answer. She is no longer the city’s boss in political matters arising from the protests. That role belongs to Luo. And the police have become a law unto themselves, forcing even Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung to backtrack on his critical remarks against them.

It doesn’t bother me that Lam is no longer in charge. She has already shown she doesn’t know how to lead. What bothers me is Beijing making someone who knows zilch about Hong Kong the de facto new boss.

Some say a liaison office boss who knows nothing about Hong Kong can see things from a different perspective. If you put that illusion aside, you will know why the “one country, two systems” formula has failed even though Beijing insists it has succeeded, a claim derided in Taiwan, the formula’s intended target.

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It has failed because mainland leaders – steeped in communist ideology – are clueless about freethinking Hongkongers. That is why Wang was so cocksure the democracy camp would lose the district council elections.

Deputy director of the liaison office Yang Jianping (left), director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council Zhang Xiaoming and then director of the liaison office Wang Zhimin hold a meeting to talk about the situation in Hong Kong in Shenzhen on August 7. Photo: Winson Wong

Lam, considered courageous by Xi but a puppet by most Hongkongers, believes she can quell the protest movement with mass arrests and political propaganda on television and radio depicting the government as righteous and protesters as criminals.

Licensing conditions require TV and radio stations to air the government’s so-called announcements of public interest, such as health care alerts. But Lam’s government has twisted the rules, forcing them to air blatantly political ads for free.

If she thinks she can kill the protest movement by bombarding the public with her propaganda ads, I can recommend a good psychiatrist for Lam, too. Here’s a reality check for her: listening to the protest song Glory to Hong Kong just once is more powerful than watching her propaganda ads 100 times telling us protesters are rioters.

Michael Chugani is a Hong Kong journalist and TV show host

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