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Opinion | 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
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Why you can trust SCMP
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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.
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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.
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