In his whirlwind visit last week, Wang Guangya gave Hongkongers a fresh impression of a Beijing official in charge of Hong Kong affairs.
Tasting an egg tart in a Tin Shui Wai wet market, joking on the chief executive election, and answering a question in English at a press conference, the new director of the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) presented himself as a markedly different kind of mainland leader.
But there was more to Wang's high-profile visit than a fresh personal style. It was a sign of the Beijing body's increasingly active approach to the special administrative region (SAR), some local politicians with central government contacts said.
'The explicit message to the Hong Kong people is that the central government concerns itself with Hong Kong's development. The implicit message is that the HKMAO will in the future take up a more important role in the central government's communications with Hong Kong,' local National People's Congress deputy Wong Kwok-kin said. 'In the past, the office rarely appeared as an independent organ. It worked like a secretariat to state leaders handling Hong Kong affairs.'
In the 14 years since the city returned to Chinese sovereignty, the HKMAO has been largely invisible to the Hong Kong public. According to its official website, the office has eight functions. They include making recommendations on policies relating to the two SARs; handling legal issues about the Basic Law; co-ordinating economic and cultural co-operation between the mainland and the two former colonies; and helping with the management of mainland enterprises in Hong Kong and Macau.
But the office is just part of the state's and Communist Party's large and complex system to deal with the SARs. The party's policy group on Hong Kong and Macau affairs is headed by Vice-President Xi Jinping, with former HKMAO director Liao Hui as the deputy leader. Beijing is also represented in Hong Kong by the central government's liaison office, led by director Peng Qinghua. Various 'middlemen' or self-proclaimed middlemen keep contact with figures in Hong Kong's political, business and other arenas.