The loose cannons

The recent meetings of the National People's Congress, with a new group of Hong Kong deputies, indicates that Beijing has basically achieved what it set out to do to assume power in 1997. The new political elites are in place - but there is a wild card in the pack. The Sino-British Joint Declaration is seldom mentioned any more. It has served its purpose: to provide a political settlement to the transfer of sovereignty. The Basic Law vests most of the powers in the executive. The civil service has been brought under control with the ministerial system in place since 2002, and a layer of deputy ministers being introduced this year.

The Legislative Council remains relatively weak, as it is meant to be. Beijing has had to deal with elections, but hard work over the years has resulted in the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong being the biggest and best-organised political party in Hong Kong, with more than 11,000 members today. Together with the Federation of Trade Unions, the Liberal Party and other groups, pro-government forces may well sweep more seats in future rounds of legislative elections.

Beijing has been identifying fresh blood to serve on the NPC and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Hong Kong 'capitalists' have proved to be good collaborators. The number of pro-government elites is growing. Perhaps the old-time politicians in the pro-democracy camp will run out of steam soon, and their successors will be more pragmatic about the realities of 'one country', at which time electoral competition would nevertheless acknowledge the leadership of the Hong Kong government.

Beijing's strategy to deal with the demands for universal suffrage is to possibly allow the chief executive to be selected by universal suffrage in 2017, before considering the same for the legislature. In the course of the next few years, the challenge will be how to construct a low-risk nomination system from Beijing's perspective. Perhaps this is what Beijing would most like to see - politics that keeps a technically competent executive slightly more on its toes but under its leadership in fact, if not in name.

The wild card in the pack remains the Hong Kong community. There are many factors that affect the results of elections and the degree of 'harmony' in society. The performance of the government is one such factor. The notion of 'executive-led' government does not necessarily mean a competent or good government. With weak policymaking skills and not very robust politics, those in power are unlikely to get the tough feedback they need to hear.

There is also a generational change taking place in Hong Kong society. This is shown by the heightened public interest in a whole range of policies that had not previously come to the fore as priorities. These issues include social equity, better education, cleaning up the environment, planning for a more people-friendly city and protecting heritage. The issues will shape the future political discourse. So far, the Hong Kong government has not been able to respond adequately to them because of different priorities. The current generation of political leaders sees development in terms of building physical infrastructure such as highways, bridges, airport runways and container terminals, and has difficulty devising software management systems, such as education, health care and a new tax system. This is evident from the 2008-09 budget. At a time when the government is flush with cash, and when it estimates growth will increase by an annual average of 4.5 per cent in real terms from 2009 until 2012, it could only bring itself to make capital expenditure and resisted raising recurrent expenditure.