John Lee, Hong Kong’s security tsar turned chief executive-in-waiting

If all experienced gone according to system, John Lee would now be nearing retirement immediately after a extended career in engineering. In its place, the former Hong Kong policeman and safety tsar stands on the cusp of getting the territory’s future main govt.

The anticipated appointment of Lee, 64, as Hong Kong’s fifth chief executive since the former British colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 was all but confident this week soon after the incumbent, Carrie Lam, declared that she would not find a next five-12 months expression. Even prior to Lee verified his motivation to swap her, the Chinese Communist party’s reps in the territory instructed a 1,500-seat, “patriots only” election committee to back him in the May possibly 8 vote.

Assuming every thing goes as scripted, Lee, who is at the moment Hong Kong’s next greatest ranking official, will be sworn in on July 1. This falls specifically halfway by way of the 50 yrs of “one country, two systems” autonomy that Beijing assured to Hong Kong. He will inherit a town that has transformed substantially about recent several years, its beforehand strong freedoms and boisterous civil society decimated by the countrywide protection law imposed two many years back by Chinese president Xi Jinping.

Hong Kong’s status as one of the world’s wonderful intercontinental money centres also hangs in the harmony, as Xi’s stringent “zero-Covid” pandemic controls minimize it off from both the exterior environment and its Chinese hinterland.

“John signifies the significance of security and a stable natural environment for Hong Kong,” suggests Ronny Tong, a member of the cupboard that advises Lam. He adds that had Beijing opted rather to again Lam’s financial secretary, Paul Chan, it would have indicated Xi’s administration was “putting monetary recovery at the forefront” of Hong Kong’s plan agenda. In accordance to Tong, “John and Paul depict two completely diverse methods.”

From a modest track record, Lee excelled academically and attained a position with the engineering school at the College of Hong Kong. But he hardly ever took it up, alternatively becoming a member of the police force straight out of large school in 1977. Immediately after that, Lee all but disappeared into the power for the superior component of 40 many years before a late entry into politics in which he rose to prominence as Lam’s stability secretary in 2017.

“He has been relatively low profile until just lately men and women really don’t know a ton about him,” claims Lau Chi-pang, a professor at Lingnan University who sits on the election committee that will rubber-stamp Lee’s appointment.

In a city exactly where official asset declarations frequently expose extensive home portfolios and special club memberships among the general public servants, Lee has 1 apartment in a comparatively peaceful neighbourhood and belongs to a handful of police officer associations.

If it ended up not for two historic blunders by Lam that ended her hope of serving a next time period, Lee could have faded absent into a silent retirement. Ironically, in light of his imminent promotion, he was carefully included in both of those. In 2019 Lam proposed legislation that would have permitted Hong Kong people to be extradited to mainland China if wished by the authorities there. As security secretary, Lee lobbied prominently for the controversial invoice.

It proved to be a disastrous misreading of the community mood, sparking the largest professional-democracy motion on Chinese soil because the 1989 Tiananmen Sq. protests. Mass protests ensued — such as one particular attended by an estimated 2mn of Hong Kong’s 7.5mn population. The bill was reluctantly withdrawn by the govt.

Then, soon after Covid-19 erupted out of central China in January 2020, Lam’s administration unsuccessful to vaccinate more than enough of Hong Kong’s vulnerable elderly. When the territory’s previously successful defences ended up overcome by the Omicron variant before this calendar year, far more than 8,000 people today died in only 3 months. By this time Lee had been promoted to main secretary and performed a critical job in the bungled reaction.

In the end Lee has been rewarded for aiding to crush the pro-democracy movement, correcting, in Beijing’s eyes, Lam’s very first blunder. This was created less difficult by the national protection legislation bludgeon Xi handed him in June 2020. Lee has unapologetically deployed it versus professional-democracy legislators and activists, dozens of whom are now in prison or exile. His promotion is a sign that Beijing sights this method as considerably from about.

After the Trump administration sanctioned him, Lam and other senior officers for aiding and abetting Xi’s “degradation of Hong Kong’s autonomy”, Lee responded: “I do not care . . . I scoff at [the sanctions]. I despise them.”

“In the eyes of the central govt John Lee can be relied on to retain Hong Kong steady and protected from the troubles posed by foreign powers,” claims Lau, the election committee member.

While just one professional-Beijing business figure claims that “knowing the ins and outs of the economic climate is not what [Lee] is regarded for”, he and other supporters argue that the main govt-in-ready can delegate financial and fiscal conclusion-creating to men and women who do. That way, Lee can continue to focus on the stability and steadiness — Beijing model — that they feel is a prerequisite if Hong Kong is to arise from its zero-Covid coma.

“It is plain that economics is not John Lee’s energy,” agrees Ip Kwok-him, a cupboard member, who believes “he will guide the town well” irrespective. Abilities in economics and finance, soon after all, is not what China is seeking in Hong Kong’s subsequent main govt.

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