Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam faces her biggest test yet, with joint checkpoint row set to spark two wars

Alice Wu says as pan-democrats dial up the rhetoric over Hong Kong’s fears about ‘two systems’, Lam and her justice chief will have to address the jitters while also assuring Beijing that all is on track

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Carrie Lam visits the West Kowloon station of the high-speed railway with key government officials, on July 23. Photo: Handout

Published: 2:31pm, 30 Jul 2017Updated: 5:18pm, 30 Jul 2017

At the crux of the Hong Kong government’s controversial proposal to have a joint immigration checkpoint at the local terminus of the high-speed rail link is the issue of “fear”. It is also about all the legal stuff.

Under the government’s proposal, a quarter of the terminus will be leased to the mainland as its designated port area. Our constitution will need to be changed for that to happen.

But the raging debate right now is not about the leasing of land, but about allowing the mainland full jurisdiction, apart from a few exceptions, in a confined and limited space, but nonetheless in the heart of Hong Kong.

The pan-democrats are playing this up as an existential threat, the death of “two systems” and Hong Kong’s Armageddon.

Old heavyweights lined up to get the opposition campaign in gear, playing and preying on the “fear” Hongkongers already have.

Watch: All you need to know about the express rail link

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