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Strategies & Market Trends : China Warehouse- More Than Crockery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (4140)	1/12/2005 6:04:50 PM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6370

HK chief admits to flawed leadership By Alexandra Harney in Hong Kong Published: January 12 2005 09:52 \| Last updated: January 12 2005 10:50 Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s chief executive, used his annual policy address to acknowledge “shortcomings and inadequacies” in his leadership, vowing to listen more closely to the public’s concerns. In his most extensive public assessment of his administration’s performance since popular dissatisfaction with the government began to escalate in mid-2003, Mr Tung listed policy failures. “We also lacked a sense of crisis, political sensitivity as well as the necessary experience and capability to cope with political and economic changes...these shortcomings and inadequacies have undermined the credibility of our policy-making capability and our ability to govern.” Mr Tung’s mea culpa comes less than a month after an unusual public reprimand from Hu Jintao, China’s president, in which he compared Hong Kong unfavourably with Macao and urged Hong Kong’s leadership to “turn back and look over the past seven years and find out what has gone wrong”. The chief executive’s speech focused on social welfare, cultural and environmental issues but provided few significant initiatives and touched only briefly on controversial topics such as political reform and a government plan for a massive cultural complex. The government’s handling of these issues has contributed to a loss of confidence among businesspeople, politicians and the public in recent months. “There were no fundamentally new initiatives, no changes in direction,” said Guy Ellis, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Hong Kong. Responding to concerns that his government favours the city’s tycoons, Mr Tung said he opposed “collusion between business and the government”. But in comments that are likely to grate on the territory’s pro-democracy camp, Mr Tung, who was hand-picked by Beijing to run Hong Kong after its 1997 return to Chinese rule, drew a connection between the speed of political reform and social stability. “We firmly believe that as long as we can maintain prosperity, stability and social harmony, our democratic constitutional system can develop at a faster pace. The ultimate aim of universal suffrage as set out in the Basic Law can be achieved at an early date,” he said, referring to popular demands for reforms to allow direct elections for the chief executive in 2007 and the entire legislature in 2008. Peaceful protests have become a permanent fixture of Hong Kong’s political landscape since half a million people took to the streets in July 2003 to voice their concerns about a government-sponsored anti-subversion bill. However, Beijing, which last April ruled out fully democratic elections in 2007 and 2008, considers public protests a sign of social instability, one of its greatest concerns. Mr Tung announced a commission to alleviate poverty, said he would impose caps on power companies’ emissions, and confirmed that he would not introduce a general sales tax in the two and a half years left in his term. Members of the pro-democracy camp, which functions as an opposition coalition, said the address appeared to be directed at Beijing following Mr Hu’s rebuke. James To, of the Democratic party, said he was particularly dismayed by Mr Tung’s insistence that Hong Kong people “must endeavour to avoid giving our country worries and trouble. We will help those who still have doubts about or feel antagonistic towards the central government to change their minds.” news.ft.com