With two elections having successfully been held in recent months, a clear expectation on the quality of officials administering Hong Kong should have been set by now. Indeed, those who are tasked with resolving the deep-seated problems of the city should have impeccable political integrity and exceptional talent in administration.
The accountability and capability of governing officials, moreover, are crucial to getting Hong Kong back on track to realize good governance. Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, has repeatedly reiterated that those who hold important offices, exercise significant powers and shoulder important responsibilities in the governance structure of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region should be held to a higher standard of political and moral integrity. In other words, they should be high-caliber administrators. For this reason, he specifically articulated five expectations for officeholders including members of the new Legislative Council a few days before its inauguration.
To everyone’s dismay, however, Xia’s admonition seemed to have been conveniently put aside. Thirteen principal officials and 20 lawmakers had to be quarantined after they attended a COVID-19-hit birthday party amid a looming new wave of the pandemic outbreak. Such a blunder begs the question of what makes up a competent administrator. As far as I am concerned, a higher-caliber administrator should possess at least four fundamental traits or qualities.
The first quality is self-discipline and leading by example. Administrators should be whiter than white; their behavior should be beyond both legal sanction and moral reproach. At the end of the day, they are no ordinary citizens but, according to Xia, officeholders to be held to a higher standard of moral integrity; thus it follows the logic that they should conform to something beyond the legal reach in terms of behavior.
It beggars belief that officials and legislators who are drafters, enforcers or advocates of strict anti-pandemic rules attended the virus-struck birthday party. Failing to lead by example, they are only as convincing as their tarnished image in front of the public. Self-discipline, therefore, is a must for people who administer Hong Kong.
Self-discipline can be judged at least from three perspectives: to purposefully uphold the rule of law, as a requirement for all citizens; to consciously adhere to work regulations, as a requirement for all public officers; and to constantly pay attention to their demeanor outside work, as a requirement for all administrators of the HKSAR. What should characterize someone who shoulders important responsibilities in the governance structure is his or her strict compliance to a tougher moral standard.
It would be a grave mistake to assume that high-ranking officials or public officers should not be held accountable for what they do in their private lives. The birthday-party blunder, which left many of the officeholders unable to discharge their responsibilities during their mandatory quarantine, is a typical example of how personal activities can negatively impact civil service.
Secondly, those in power must be down-to-earth and speak the concerns of the public. For example, on an outreach visit to the grassroots organized by the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR, the office’s director, Luo Huining, together with some of his deputy directors and secretaries, walked into a subdivided unit in Sham Shui Po to hear the tenant’s woes and aspirations. With mixed feelings of shock and gratitude, the tenant said she didn’t expect that anyone, let alone senior officials, would bother to care about her life.
With so many political campaigns championing “public concerns” or “human rights” in Hong Kong, and political figures who brand themselves as the “voice of the people”, it begs the question of why the problem of some 200,000 people living in subdivided units has not been effectively addressed. After all, such squalid living conditions deprive the occupiers of their dignity and do not tally with basic human rights. The mere existence of such miserable living conditions within the “Pearl of the Orient” is a conspicuous manifestation of the fact that those who are tasked to administer the special administrative region have not gone far enough in serving the people.
Although economic liberalism is a common justification for the wealth gap, administrators must take the high road or else they would rationalize income inequality and allow the grassroots to languish in misery. At the end of the day, they are duty-bound to resolve the housing shortage, one of the major deep-seated problems plaguing Hong Kong and to ensure even the poor can live in dignity. Helping every member of society, even the poorest, to live in dignity is a bottom line that those tasked with administering Hong Kong should uphold.
The third quality is behaving in strict compliance with the political order. Anyone who attempts to pursue political objectives incongruent with the political framework set up by the constitution and other laws lose the eligibility to participate in the governance of the HKSAR. The nation’s Constitution and the HKSAR Basic Law prescribe the constitutional status of the HKSAR and the Legislative Council: The HKSAR shall be a local administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, which comes directly under the Central People’s Government; LegCo, a local legislature whose powers are delegated by the central authorities through the Basic Law, is subject to the supervision of the central authorities. Furthermore, as LegCo is the legislature under the executive-led system of Hong Kong, it should strive for mutual collaboration with the executive branch in policymaking while maintaining the function of checks and balances. This political order is a red line that no one should challenge, particularly those tasked with governing the HKSAR.
Coming to the last quality, which is magnanimity and charisma. Democracy is not about a power struggle in which one party tries to overwhelm the other, but about protecting and serving the interests of the people. Therefore, achieving the greatest common good is the key. In retrospect, Hong Kong was mired in a deleterious political ecosystem, particularly in the legislature, where the opposition had no qualms about holding hostage people’s interests in a bid to bring down their political enemies, i.e., the “pro-establishment” camp and the HKSAR government. Those political saboteurs were blinded by their ideological bigotry and had totally abandoned their original commitment to serving the people. Fortunately with the establishment of a patriot-only legislature, all members of LegCo can put aside partisan interests, and respect and accommodate each other’s political beliefs. Their magnanimity is what makes them charismatic policymakers.
Those who are tasked with administering Hong Kong should be wise men who listen to counsel. This echoes with the lyrics of one of the most legendary local songs, Below the Lion Rock: “Leave our differences behind, let go of the conflicts we have with each other, and let us chase after our dreams.”
The author is a Hong Kong member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the Hong Kong New Era Development Thinktank.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.