Hong Kong chief executive John Lee (李家超) might emulate the Chinese government by establishing a surveillance mechanism in the territory, a report commissioned by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said.
The report, analyzing the possible influences the new chief executive might bring to Hong Kong, said the inauguration of Lee on Friday is Beijing’s signal that Hong Kong’s civil service system would be restructured and the power of administrative officers would be weakened.
Lee’s team in April released its political platform, which avoided urgent issues such as reforming the “one country, two systems” framework, post-COVID-19 economic stimulus programs, Hong Kong district council by-elections, conflicts between Hong Kong and China, the split between the government and the public, freedom of the press and labor rights, the report said.
Instead, Lee pledged to give Hong Kongers a government that “does things and gets things done,” and said that he would lead an outcome-focused administration if he were to be elected, the report said.
His platform included four guiding principles that the pro-establishment camp has been concerned about, it said.
His vows to facilitate the supply of land and houses, as well as enhance Hong Kong’s competitiveness, were extensions of the “Greater Bay Area” project that aims to integrate Hong Kong with the Chinese mainland, the report said.
Lee said he would also create “a caring society” and support youth development,” focusing on raising the quality of education, especially regarding the professionalism and training of teachers, to heighten national consciousness.
It is noteworthy that Lee has pledged to bolster the government’s ability to govern, including by redrafting Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, which criminalizes treason, secession, sedition, subversion and theft of state secrets, the report said.
He said he would “set up a new emergency mobilization mechanism” to strengthen the executive power of the government when new risks present, it said.
More specifically, he said he planned to set up a systematic volunteer network, which would consist of service and care groups in the 18 districts of Hong Kong, to have a clear grasp of the number, capabilities and background of the personnel that could be mobilized, it said.
The “emergency mobilization mechanism” refers to a set of command and execution systems established in the event of major public incidents and crises, the report said, adding that the systems, with centralized control and distribution of resources, would be led and supervised by important officials.
The measures seem to suggest that the Hong Kong government’s current system is not capable of handling emergencies such as social movements or pandemics and therefore, the proposed “emergency mobilization mechanism,” might be a step toward emulating the kind of “grassroots management and surveillance mechanism” that is implemented in China, the report said.
While implementation details of the measures have not yet been announced, Hong Kong seems to be ushering in a government that would comprehensively monitor society — similar to that in China, it said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching