Financial Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen has been known to address Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa as louhbaan (boss) during internal government meetings. Colleagues say he is virtually the only civil servant to do this.
Now Mr Tung has graphically reinforced the fact that it is he who is the boss by unveiling an economic rescue package which runs counter to many of Mr Tsang's basic beliefs and much of what he was so stridently stating as recently as last weekend.
Presumably anxious to avoid a repeat of the Financial Secretary's much-criticised performance during the unveiling of the Government's last rescue package barely a month ago, when he provoked derision by giving himself and his fellow civil servants an A+ grade while announcing such minor measures as a new cable car to Lantau Island, it was Mr Tung who took centre-stage on this occasion.
With a grim-faced, but largely silent, Mr Tsang sitting alongside him, the impression was given of an errant schoolboy being given a thinly-disguised rebuke by his headmaster, as Mr Tung announced a deficit budget, suspension of government land sales and temporary cut in the duty on diesel fuel: all steps the Financial Secretary had previously publicly opposed.
While briefing legislators on the measures, Mr Tsang admitted some had caused him 'much soul-searching' and that there had been 'fierce internal' debate within the civil service over what steps should be taken to try to revive the economy. The Financial Secretary is clearly also well aware of the blow his image has suffered as a result of these policy U-turns. Appearing on the radio yesterday morning, the first thing he asked was: 'How am I doing this morning in the press?' That question reflects the extent to which his popularity appears to have deteriorated over the past year. At the time of the handover, there would have been no contest between Mr Tsang and his boss when it came to who the public trusted more. Now the situation is not so clear. While Mr Tung's ratings have also been falling this week, for the first time, it was he - with his insistence on responding to popular demands for an economic rescue package - rather than his Financial Secretary who seemed to be the one most closely in tune with the feelings of the community, something unthinkable only a year ago.
This rescue package also suggests that Mr Tung and his team are beginning to learn from their mistakes and are becoming slightly more politically sophisticated. The Government seems to have recognised that its first task must be to neutralise the coalition between the seven major political parties, which has the power to block legislation and funding initiatives.