Why is Beijing’s liaison office going on ‘listening tours’ in Hong Kong and should Carrie Lam worry about a second governing team in charge?
- Liaison office publicised about 20 trips by director Luo Huining and his deputies, as they visited homes, youth clubs, a building site and fishermen
- Tours have reignited talk of whether office is becoming a ‘second governing team’, a term ironically coined by one of its own officials over a decade ago
Senior officials from Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong emerged from their heavily guarded headquarters in Western district earlier this month and popped up in multiple unexpected locations across the city.
The office publicised about 20 such trips by director Luo Huining and his deputies, as they went to various places including a construction site, a fishing village in Lantau, Chinese medicine halls, youth clubs and even fishing boats moored in Aberdeen.
After the first day, on the eve of the country’s National Day, the office made plain the mission.
“The liaison office doesn’t only value the opinion of representatives of various sectors in society. It also values directly listening to grass-roots residents’ voices,” it said in a statement, signalling this new approach to “listen directly” to the ground would augment their traditional outreach.
In all, hundreds of liaison office employees were mobilised to visit 979 housing units – subdivided flats, and public, subsidised and transitional homes – and small businesses. They met 3,985 residents and received 6,347 pieces of feedback, from livelihood concerns to challenges of working in mainland China.
