Property developer Ronnie Chan says Hong Kong needs a ‘strong, political leader’ to handle protest crisis and putting civil servants in charge is ‘the most ridiculous’ idea
- Chan also blames British colonial government and Hongkongers’ lack of a sense of national identity in an interview with a mainland Chinese platform
- He says Hongkongers do not identify themselves as Chinese and look down on mainlanders
One of Hong Kong’s most influential property developers has dismissed the notion that the city’s chief executive should be an administrator, saying the job requires strong, political leadership and calling the idea that it could be handled by a civil servant the “most ridiculous thing”.
Ronnie Chan Chi-chung, the outspoken chairman of Hang Lung Properties, who supported embattled city leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor during her election in 2017, was equally blunt about the causes of Hong Kong’s ongoing turmoil.
Aside from leadership, he also blamed the city’s current turbulence on British colonial government and Hongkongers’ lack of a sense of national identity.
Chan said Lam, a former top civil servant, had made an effort to tackle the city’s land and poverty problems, but the job required more than that. Under Article 43 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, the chief executive is accountable to both the central government and the city.
The Hong Kong people’s DNA is different from mainlanders’ because many escaped from there
Chan made these comments in an interview published by mainland Chinese news platform Guancha Syndicate on September 18.
He elaborated on the remarks over the weekend, when a 22-minute online video was released and shared across Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform.
“When they wrote the Basic Law, they thought [the chief executive] was an executive position, but in fact it’s political,” he said. “The idea that someone would ever choose civil servants to become the chief executive, I say this is the most ridiculous thing.”
He continued: “Civil servants are the people most deprived of a sense of national identity and politics … The British locked up the city’s politics tightly – and only released it when they left.”
Chan also lashed out at the Lam administration last month, saying the city government’s “unwise policies” had contributed to an atmosphere that had ignited protests and social chaos.
In the video interview, Chan said the cause of Hong Kong’s problems was not any social issue, but the political issue of national identity.
He said Hongkongers did not identify themselves as Chinese and instead looked down on mainlanders. Chan attributed this to Hong Kong people watching their counterparts across the border grow wealthier than they were.
As well, many Hongkongers were descendants of mainland residents who had fled political unrest following the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, he said.
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“The Hong Kong people’s DNA is different from the mainlanders’ because many escaped from there,” Chan said.
“The British also trained this rare group, because Hong Kong people completely lacked a sense of national identity … so when the US-China relationship changed in the last two to three years, Hong Kong became a pawn.”
Chan said the nostalgia that some Hongkongers felt for the days of colonial rule was misguided.
“After 1997, there was never any discussion about the good and bad things about the British colonial era,” he told Guancha. “And with the influence of international forces, Hong Kong’s young people became intoxicated by it.”
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Chan also said Hong Kong had been governed by leaders without political skills.
“We must have a strong leader, a politically capable person, not someone only capable of administration,” he said. “I also hope that through this situation, Beijing can have a relatively accurate understanding of Hong Kong.”
Chan said some of his friends in Beijing thought Hong Kong developers were to blame for the housing and land problems that were generally blamed for triggering the city’s protest crisis.
Although Chan conceded that some developers had been “selfish and ignorant of political matters”, he also blamed the pan-democrats and former chief executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen for the shortage of land for housing.
Tsang tightened the housing supply during his term from 2005 to 2012, Chan said, and the pan-democrats later blocked the government’s plan to increase the supply.
But commentators and lawmakers said Chan had misjudged the city’s problems.
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Ivan Choy Chi-keung, a Chinese University political scientist, said Hong Kong’s problems were not about whether the chief executive was a civil servant or not.
“Chan supported former chief executive Leung Chun-ying, who was not a civil servant, but he was not a successful politician, either,” Choy said.
“In fact, Donald Tsang, a veteran civil servant, was quite successful and there were no serious social confrontations during his seven-year term.”
Choy said national identity was entwined with core values.
“Hong Kong people cherish freedom,” he said. “While mainland Chinese people value patriotism and nationalism.”
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Democratic Party chairman Wu Chi-wai also said Hong Kong’s unrest had erupted because Lam did not value the city’s core values.
“Hong Kong people cherish our freedom of speech and freedom from fear … We used to have a stronger sense of Chinese identity in the colonial days,” he said. “Something went wrong with the city’s governance.”
