Lai See | Tung Chee-hwa's faulty connection to the leadership

We had always assumed that former Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa was pretty well plugged into what was going on in the upper echelons of the leadership in the mainland. But the recent changing of the guard and the new lin-up in Beijing would seem to indicate that is not actually the case.

Tung is a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation. The old boy told CNN in September that President Hu Jintao was likely to remain chairman of the Central Military Commission for a few years after the 18th national congress - much as Jiang Zemin did in 2002.

The feeling was that Tung wouldn't have made these remarks without some sort of tacit authorisation and without some confidence that he had his finger on the pulse of the senior leadership. However, it turns out he was completely wrong and Hu has stepped down from the commission. If Tung does have a connection to what the leadership is thinking it seems to have been faulty on this occasion.

Good to see such a high-level turnout yesterday to promote British Beef in Hong Kong. Yes we are talking about meat. There was Britain's Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, who had just flown in from Shanghai where he opened the largest food trade fair in China, the Food and Hotel China exhibition. We met the new British consul general in Hong Kong, Caroline Wilson, and were able to discuss the elative merits of grass fed over corn fed beef.