Regina Ip

Opinion | Can Hong Kong reprise its role as China’s intermediary and window on the world?

China’s new-era socialist system is here to stay but economic reform and opening will continue, as will the successful ‘one country, two systems’

If Hong Kong wants to continue to succeed, its people must maintain their capacity for independent thinking, courage to give honest advice, and outward-looking character

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A journalist holds magazines featuring President Xi Jinping on the covers, at a hotel for journalists covering the 20th party congress in Beijing, on October 19. Photo: Reuters

Regina Ip

Published: 8:15am, 13 Nov 2022

At the Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, hosted by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority earlier this month, Fang Xinghai, vice-chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, caused a stir by urging the audience not to read too much foreign media, but to study President Xi Jinping’s report to the 20th party congress instead.

Some foreign media took Fang’s half-joking remarks as an affront, but Fang was being disingenuous. Xi’s report, steeped in China’s history, politics, culture and Communist Party jargon, is not easy to comprehend.

In the context of modern China’s political and institutional development, it is a bold, defining statement about the coming to fruition of Marxism with Chinese characteristics.

The central message in the report’s first three sections is that the party, under Xi’s leadership, has firmly established a socialist system with Chinese characteristics, which fits in well with China’s society and blends seamlessly with China’s cultural and political traditions.

For the world, the message is that China’s new-era socialist system with Chinese characteristics is here to stay, despite a strong push by some Western powers to wage an ideological battle between democracy and autocracy, and put China squarely in the latter camp.

The importance of Xi’s ideological triumph cannot be overemphasised. It marks the culmination of a 100-year quest for a form of government that fits China’s political, social and cultural realities, and can solve people’s problems.