Exclusive | Beijing ‘under no illusion’ apparent calm in Hong Kong means city no longer has radical supporters, former city leader CY Leung says
- ‘I don’t think anyone, Beijing included, has the illusion of being able to change the political situation in Hong Kong overnight,’ Leung Chun-ying says
- He urges young Hongkongers to travel to mainland China and see for themselves the lives people have
Beijing recognises that Hong Kong’s political situation will not change overnight despite the recent years of apparent calm, former city leader Leung Chun-ying has said as he called for more to be done to win over the supporters of radicals.
In an exclusive interview with the Post, Leung, who is now the city’s only vice-chairman of Beijing’s top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said it was too early to conclude if the social divisions from the social unrest in 2019 had healed.
Work had to be done to make Hong Kong residents, especially those previously cynical about mainland China, understand the prospects there and to learn more about their country, he said.
“I think we should take a long-term view on the political situation in Hong Kong. It is not going to be changed overnight. I don’t think anyone, Beijing included, has the illusion of being able to change the political situation in Hong Kong overnight,” the former chief executive noted.
“Because, after all, if you assess the situation by the percentage and the number of people who voted for the opposition, particularly people who voted for the more extreme members of the opposition, it’s actually quite a large number. It’s much larger than the number of people who emigrated.”
There have been no official statistics on the number of people who moved overseas, but Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu last year acknowledged an emigration wave that has created a brain drain in his policy address, noting the local workforce had shrunk by about 140,000 over the previous two years.
