Leung's gamble on livelihood issues

On reflection, what is most fascinating about Leung Chun-ying's first policy address is the way in which his thinking mirrors that of the Chinese Communist Party. Some may say this is hardly remarkable and will point to the chief executive's remarks about extending co-operation with the mainland. But this misses the point.

The issue here is the thought processes that drive Leung and his mainland counterparts to focus on economic development and raising living standards, in the hope that this will satisfy the public.

It has long been the party's claim that it is successful because it brought economic prosperity to the nation, and the party's defenders maintain that to do so required a singular focus on the economy. China's lack of civil liberties can, they argue, be left on the back burner because such issues detract from the central aim of improving living standards.

Leung was implicitly making the same argument in his policy address when he focused on livelihood measures and skirted around other areas of public concern. In addition, he put to bed the previously sacred mantra of "positive non-interventionism" in government economic policy.

Authoritarian governments have routinely claimed that their job is to provide prosperity and that the best way of doing this is not to be sidetracked by alleged frivolities such as rule of law and democracy. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, most of their effort was initially focused on reviving the faltering economy and they mocked opponents for questioning their war on democratic freedoms, saying people wanted better living standards, not freedom.

We all know how that ended: much the same disastrous way that other dictators' plans have ended, from Stalin's fatal collectivisation of agriculture in the Soviet Union to the even more devastating economic policies of Mao Zedong during the Great Leap Forward.

Rigid state planning and collectivism has largely gone out of fashion in the world's remaining dictatorships, but the belief that liberty stands in the way of economic progress lingers, not least on the mainland.