City Beat | Why Beijing wants a bigger say than ever in who makes Hong Kong’s dream team

Here’s an old story worth retelling: 20 years ago, when Tung Chee-hwa was sworn in as Hong Kong’s first post-1997 leader, along with his cabinet, there was someone on stage who was not his first choice.

That was Elsie Leung Oi-sie, the first secretary for justice of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government.

As it happened, Leung went on to become one of Tung’s most trusted confidantes, and the two faced many tough times together.

It was understood then that Tung had decided to pick Leung upon Beijing’s advice, and that strong trust in her remains unshaken to this day. She was appointed deputy director of the Basic Law Committee under the National People’s Congress after retiring from government in 2005 and, until now, remains one of the most authoritative voices on the city’s mini-constitution.

When the country’s No 3 leader, Zhang Dejiang, recently made it clear that Beijing has the right “to appoint and to dismiss” senior officials and that the city’s governing teams “must be made up of patriots”, it was really not so unusual, or a departure from normal practice. Yet, it surely served as a reminder to incoming leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, who has come up with her final cabinet list and will submit it to Beijing soon for formal approval.

In mid-April, upon returning from Beijing after receiving her official appointment and meeting with President Xi Jinping, Lam told the media that she was allowed flexibility to look for her dream team. However, the “nightmare” of a task that it turned out to be has revealed that besides the political heat in the government’s kitchen deterring talent from joining, an unspoken factor which made it harder than she might have imagined was how to clear Beijing’s possible doubts about any name on the list.