Word: tsang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
...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...
...developer that would be chosen. Critics also questioned the government's wisdom-and expertise-in creating a costly arts hub without first gauging the level of public interest in it. Today, West Kowloon, possibly some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, stands idle-a dirt wasteland. Tsang has failed to advance other elements of his agenda, too. Air pollution, a perennial problem Tsang has vowed to combat, continues to choke the territory, harming public health and hurting Hong Kong's international reputation as a wonderful place to live...
...Even Tsang's one major legislative success, getting the go-ahead for a new $665 million government headquarters on the harbor's southern edge, has run into criticism that the new development is unnecessary and will aggravate downtown gridlock. Tsang counters that his administration has been productive: "We have passed nearly 300 pieces of legislation of one kind or other. People just listen to one piece of law being a stumbling block, without realizing that a lot of things are going through every day." He admits that "some things I tried to do did not come through," but adds...