Hong Kong’s new cabinet revealed with plenty of familiar faces

After months of trying to assemble a diverse team, Hong Kong’s incoming leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has had to settle for a safe slate of mostly incumbents and promotees from within the current administration, the official announcement on Wednesday morning confirms.

According to a press release issued by Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday morning, Beijing has approved Lam’s ministerial choices. The chief executive-elect is only bringing in one outsider: former Democratic Party member and social-policy scholar Dr Law Chi-kwong. Law is the second pan-democrat to join the administration since Hong Kong’s handover in 1997 from British to Chinese rule, after outgoing housing minister Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung.

Six incumbent ministers are keeping their portfolios, including the top three secretaries – for administration, finance and justice. Also staying put is Simon Peh Yun-lu, not a minister but the controversial head of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the city’s anti-graft agency.