Word: tsang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Tsang says he's the man to take the territory forward. "I want to tell people what I propose to do in the coming five years," he says, "and why those things are important to them and to me." But Hong Kong is no longer as straightforward to govern as it was during British colonial times. Besides accommodating Beijing, the Chief Executive has to balance powerful local interests, especially a conservative business sector, with a growing civil-society movement agitating about everything from higher wages to "universal suffrage" (the local political jargon for full, direct elections) to clean air. Once...
...point about Hong Kong's election is not about the contest, even though this is the first time an incumbent has been taken on. Nor is it about the result, which is not in doubt. What Hong Kong's people want to know is whether Tsang and his team can address the many challenges faced by one of the world's truly great cities. On the surface, Hong Kong is doing just fine, thank you. The economy is humming along-gdp growth was 6.8% in 2006 and is forecast to be at least a respectable 4.5% this year...
...this year, as Hong Kong marks the 10th anniversary of the end of British colonial rule and the start of its existence as a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, the city is perhaps in a greater state of uncertainty than ever before. Tsang himself compares Hong Kong to New York and London. "As an international financial center, [they are the only] two global benchmarks for Hong Kong," he says. "Other places cannot compare with us." But Hong Kong does not have some God-given right to be a success; others would like some...
...political opponents say that Tsang has not yet shown the kind of world-class leadership Hong Kong needs and deserves. A former civil servant, Tsang was Financial Secretary under Britain's last Hong Kong Governor, Chris Patten, and No. 2 in the administration of Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's first Chief Executive after the 1997 handover to China. Tung-who came from a Shanghainese family rather than from Hong Kong or its neighboring province, Guangdong-was never wildly popular and proved ineffectual, unable to meet the challenges of either a downturn in the economy or of the SARS epidemic...
...only because he was not Tung-and because he was a local boy made good-Tsang came into office with much goodwill. But his first two years as Chief Executive were marked more by what he could not accomplish than what he did. In 2005, he was unable to push through a limited set of political reforms that would have increased the size of the body that picks the Chief Executive and added 10 seats to the legislature. The proposals were blocked by democratic lawmakers who felt the changes didn't go far enough and who objected, also...