LettersTo preserve Hong Kong’s status as international financial hub, checks and balances must remain

Readers discuss the need for government officials and advisers to avoid conflicts of interest, the shifting goalposts on the completion date of roadworks, and the need to help the large number of unemployed during the pandemic

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Commercial and residential buildings on Hong Kong island are reflected on the ground at East Coast Park precinct in Causeway Bay on August 5. Photo: Yik Yeung-man

Published: 11:30am, 19 Aug 2022

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Hong Kong’s governing elite has got to stop deluding itself and recognise that it needs to prove to the world that its institutions and governance are up to the standards expected of an international financial hub. That means demonstrating competent governance, proper regulatory enforcement where necessary, and following internationally recognised standards on business ethics and conflicts of interest.

Hyperbolic statements about being the “gateway to China” or the huge “potential of the Greater Bay Area” do not cut it with the investors and the professionals that really matter.

Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee’s comments about the potential removal of stamp duty for mainland buyers were, for a senior member of an international financial hub’s Executive Council, at best naive and at worse woefully ignorant. She must have known what the consequences of her words could be – if she didn’t, she should have done.

The Legislative Council, as part of Hong Kong’s system of governance, is supposed to provide checks and balances to the Hong Kong executive arm – Ip was very clear about that when the debate over the term “separation of powers” was raging a while ago.

She is a member of both the executive and legislature, which means she cannot provide those checks and balances and, as such, she has a conflict of interest. Being a member of the Hong Kong Golf Club in Fanling and, at the same time, being a member of the advisory council to the executive that will decide on whether that land should be used for public housing, is also a conflict of interest.