How Hong Kong’s policy address history explains the city’s present struggles

The changes in the number of references to democracy, consensus, youth and inequality in policy addresses since the handover reveal that our leaders have abysmal political reflexes, are elitist and have failed to translate talk into action

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam (right) clinks her glass with former chief executives Leung Chun-ying (left) and Tung Chee-hwa at the reception for the 23rd anniversary of the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai on July 1, 2020. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

David Dodwell is a journalist focused on Hong Kong and China since the 1970s.

Published: 6:45am, 9 Jan 2021Updated: 7:11am, 9 Jan 2021

It was over the Christmas break five years ago that, with little better to do, I set myself a mind-numbing challenge. I ploughed through all the policy addresses from 1998 to 2015, and counted the number of times chief executives Tung Chee-hwa, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen and Leung Chun-ying had used four words: democracy, consensus, inequality and youth.

Over this year’s holiday break, as a diversion from democratic chaos in the US and arrests of “political subversives” here in Hong Kong, I decided to repeat the exercise with Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s four policy addresses since she became chief executive on July 1, 2017. The findings were fascinating.

But first, a reprise of what I found back in 2015. All three of the chief executives paid lip service to “democracy” – Tsang in particular, who on average used the words “democracy” or “democratic” around six times in each policy address.

Tung mainly ignored democracy in his policy addresses, but made up for it in 2005 with three references to it as he continued to focus on “people-based governance”. It was clear even then how much political lip service could be given to commitments that so often came to nothing.