Tam Yiu-chung has a point: Beijing’s Hong Kong policy will only get tougher

Alice Wu says that the warning from the only Hongkonger on the NPC Standing Committee should be taken seriously, because the end of term limits for Xi Jinping means Beijing won’t be taking a softer line on Hong Kong any time soon

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Tam Yiu-chung has long been known as a level-headed political actor. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 11:03am, 25 Mar 2018Updated: 5:50pm, 25 Mar 2018

Tam Yiu-chung is a veteran – his political resume includes a 28-year tenure as a Hong Kong lawmaker that spanned the 1997 handover, his membership on the Hong Kong Basic Law Drafting Committee, membership on the first Executive Council of the first SAR government, 14-year member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the largest political party in Hong Kong.

History tells us Tam is no fire starter. And he definitely didn’t get elected to the top echelon of the nation’s legislature, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, as a freshman deputy for being an incendiary politician.

As far as political personalities go, Tam is known as the man to go to if you need to keep things “safe”, never goes off-script and has been dousing political fires throughout his career.

So when Tam volunteered to air his new-found “concerns” over Hongkongers who use the slogan calling for an end to “one-party dictatorship” in mainland China risk being barred from running in elections, it seemed completely out of character.

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Those comments sparked a political firestorm. Many were quick to condemn and decry Tam’s concerns, as he had anticipated. We can emote and give him all the hate we can muster in response, or we can be thoughtful.

If it were just Tam breaking character and giving provocation a try, then we need not feed his new alter ego by reacting to it. But if Tam is a messenger of sorts – some speculate his task was to “test the waters” – then it makes no sense to shoot that messenger because he is the bearer of news we don’t want to hear.