For those expecting the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress to dramatically issue an edict that would put in place a “caretaker” legislature made up of only Beijing-appointed members, the minimalist way the Standing Committee extended the sixth term of the Legislative Council must have been thoroughly disappointing, anticlimactic even. The NPC resolution was no Peking opera. Comprising only 82 words on the “continued performance of duties of the sixth Legco”, the decision sought to fix the problem of a power vacuum that came into being after the Hong Kong government postponed the Legco election scheduled to be held in September due to Covid-19. Beijing’s decision to not play to the tune of this city’s political drama kings and queens is clever. It is the least controversial option and best serves the purpose of having a serving legislature for the year. The conspiracy theories and political overtones that are usually attached to Beijing’s every act and word make the Standing Committee’s move as practical as it is smart. Opting for a provisional legislature – as the pro-establishment camp had wished for – would have given Beijing nothing but trouble. The legal issues it would have triggered would fuel the fire of the obstructionists. The resolution does not give itself the power to appoint or bar members. The central government is wise to steer clear of the advice of the likes of Executive Council member and local deputy to the NPC Ip Kwok-him, who had wanted Beijing to swoop in and rule that lawmakers who had been barred by Hong Kong election officials from running for the seventh term would be shut out of the “caretaker” legislature. That invited Beijing to reach long – funnelling Beijing’s “river water” into Hong Kong’s “well water” – and directly disqualify Hong Kong lawmakers. So far, the controversial disqualifications – whether over lawmakers’ oaths or their positions on other issues – have been this city’s own political doing. It is time for the pro-establishment camp in Hong Kong to realise that Beijing is not their fairy godmother. Their wish in their own narrow political interests is not Beijing’s command. The opposition need not reach for the Art of War just yet; there is no plan of attack in the resolution. But it does leave these politicians in a bit of a political jam , since they, too, had their political repertoire prepared and had expected Beijing’s curtain call. Now that there is to be no caretaker legislature, they no longer have the political mileage they had counted on having, should Beijing have chosen to extend Legco’s term and directly disqualify members. The ball is in their court now. What reason is there for resigning en masse ? Is it politically sound to vacate their seats now, in the middle of the pandemic, and excuse themselves from being the people’s representatives when the government rolls out recovery measures? If they stay put and carry on, how are they going to work together? Their primaries created more bad blood in the camp. So let’s remember that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. The NPC Standing Committee resolution, without all the political frills that would invite “political reverberations”, addresses exactly the problem at hand. By not shutting down Ip and those who naively thought that Beijing would be the agency that eliminated their political foes for them, the central authorities created a red herring for the opposition, and this “plot twist” landed them squarely in a bind of their own making. For the pro-establishment camp, this is a wake-up call: they have seriously lost the plot and their ineptitude and ineffectiveness is evident. Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA