Mainland No 3 official, CY Leung hold private meeting in Beijing

The mainland’s No 3 official on Thursday held a closed-door meeting in Beijing with Hong Kong’s outgoing leader, Leung Chun-ying, whose shock decision not to seek a second term was followed by a new opinion poll recording the city’s highest level of trust in the central government in five years.

Two days into his final annual duty visit to the nation’s capital, some of Leung’s limelight was stolen by his No 2 official, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. She attracted a media frenzy on Thursday when she arrived in Beijing amid intense speculation over her expected bid for Hong Kong’s top job, although she was not officially in the capital to discuss the possibility.

Lam, who will stage a high-profile and rare press conference in the Forbidden City on Friday as part of her involvement in organising events to mark the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, remained tight-lipped on her pledge to “reconsider” whether to run for chief executive in the March election. She made her pledge soon after Leung ruled himself out of a second term two weeks ago.

Leung was seen on Thursday entering the Great Hall of the People, where he met Zhang Dejiang, the nation’s third highest-ranking official. Zhang received the chief executive as head of the Communist Party’s leading group on Hong Kong and Macau affairs.

On Thursday afternoon, just across Chang’an Avenue, Lam paid a visit to the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City to prepare for a press conference that she is to host Friday on the handover

anniversary events.

Lam, who is to go on holiday starting Saturday, did not answer media questions on whether she would meet any central government officials to discuss her election plans while on leave.

Earlier in Hong Kong, she insisted that her two-day trip would solely focus on the cultural programmes being planned to celebrate the handover anniversary, with priceless artefacts and national treasures being loaned to the city from the Palace Museum.

In a related development, a Lingnan University poll commissioned by NowTV was released on Thursday showing that public support for Lam as a chief executive candidate surged to 20 per cent, or a 12-point jump from before Leung’s announcement.

That put her just six points behind John Tsang Chun-wah, who previously enjoyed a dominant lead. Tsang is waiting for Beijing’s approval of his resignation as financial secretary before

announcing his widely expected bid for the chief executive’s job.

Leung will meet President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang on Friday, his first meeting with state leaders since announcing his retirement.

Meanwhile, the central government has received the highest rating of trust among Hongkongers since Leung was elected in March 2012, according to the latest University of Hong Kong public opinion poll.

The poll – conducted between December 12 and 15 – found the level of trust at 38.9 per cent, the highest since March 2011. That compared with 38.6 per cent around the time Leung was elected.

“This shows that Hongkongers generally do not believe in Leung’s version that he chose not to seek re-election due to family reasons,” Ivan Choy Chi-keung, a political scientist at Chinese University, said. “They consider it as Beijing’s removal of the leader, which reflects the public mood.”

The poll also recorded Hongkongers’ distrust of the Beijing government dropping nearly 10 points to 37.3 per cent, compared with the last poll in August. Subtracting the level of distrust from the level of trust, the “net trust” rating is 1.6 points, which is up 18.5 percentage points and marks the third-biggest increase since the 1997 handover.

Additional reporting by Naomi Ng and Oliver Chou