Vijay Verghese

Opinion | John Lee offers a chance for real change. Hong Kong must seize this opportunity

Beijing can afford to ratchet down the threat level with Lee at the helm. It’s time to expand the discourse from patriotism, bring in the disenfranchised and flesh out policies to secure Hong Kong’s future

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John Lee visits the West Kowloon Cultural District on May 4. He needs to show he can be a leader for all of Hong Kong. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

Vijay Verghese

Published: 9:15am, 11 May 2022Updated: 11:55am, 11 May 2022

As the dust settles, a lone rider has emerged from the haze. He was duly anointed by the central government’s liaison office, thus saving a beleaguered Hong Kong from the onerous task of picking a chief executive. John Lee Ka-chiu was the sole candidate in the election and is now chief executive-elect. Case closed.

Lee has a tough image that would not be out of place in a reimagined Marlboro ad. He set out on a career with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force in 1977, steadily making his way up to secretary for security, before being elevated to the city’s No 2 spot as chief secretary. He has seen both sides of the coin.

Despite misgivings among the city’s rudely defenestrated democratic rump, he carries the sort of no-nonsense credentials reassuring to a mainland battling a range of distracting issues from Ukraine and Taiwan to Covid-19. Yet few in Hong Kong have much idea about his political bent or thinking.

Will he simply provide tough stewardship for a flustered city? Or does he have an alternative vision? Will he further Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s master plan for an ambitious hi-tech Northern Metropolis, that sparkling gift of an IT necklace for Shenzhen, fusing the energies of these twin cities to power the Greater Bay Area development?

Whatever the emotions and calculations, Lee’s arrival offers the possibility of change, a new beginning. And it is this that must now be the city’s singular focus.

After years of what looked to be a slow death by a thousand protests and bureaucratic blunders, here is the prospect of a rock-solid start with the backing of a nation set to become the world’s No 1 economic superpower by 2030.