Field Notes from Hong Kong
Beijing’s message to HK: Get your act together
Sign up now: Get insights on Asia's fast-moving developments
The charred towers of Wang Fuk Court in Tai Po.
ST PHOTO: MAGDALENE FUNG
- Beijing is urging Hong Kong to improve governance and efficiency, as stated by Premier Li Qiang and other top officials during the Two Sessions.
- Hong Kong's "embarrassing lapses", such as scrapped policies and the Tai Po fire, alongside slow progress on key projects, frustrate Beijing.
- Officials including Xia Baolong are tasking Hong Kong to seize opportunities, enhance governance efficacy, and integrate with national development plans.
AI generated
HONG KONG – Beijing is turning up the heat on Hong Kong’s government to put its house in order.
Several top officials at China’s ongoing Two Sessions
“We will see that Hong Kong (is)… more effectively governed in accordance with the law,” Premier Li said on March 5, at the opening of the annual meetings of the National People’s Congress (NPC), or Parliament, held concurrently with those of top political advisers, which together are known as the Two Sessions.
On the same day, Mr Zhou Ji, director of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, urged the city to “focus its efforts on managing its own affairs well”.
The next day, Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang tasked Hong Kong’s legislature to “more proactively” help improve the city’s governance system “to yield more practical results that are in line with Hong Kong’s actual situation and the central government’s requirements”.
Even a day before the opening of the Two Sessions in Beijing, Mr Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, was already pressing the point.
“The stars are aligned” with Hong Kong and Macau enjoying “favourable timing, advantageous location and the unity of its people”, he told a closed-door meeting of delegates from the two cities on March 3.
Hong Kong must “seize the opportunities, with a focus on overall national development... uphold and improve its executive-led system (and) continuously enhance the efficacy of its governance”, read a statement later released by his office.
These officials may have put it in different words, but they essentially convey Beijing’s one key message for Hong Kong: Get your act together and meet your KPIs (key performance indicators), please.
Beijing’s message for Hong Kong to buck up comes after a string of embarrassing lapses
In February 2026, officials scrapped a seat-belt policy on all buses barely a week after the law kicked in
In August 2025, they cancelled signed deals for a firm to supply drinking water from mainland China
And in perhaps the worst recent example of possible government lapses Tai Po fire killed 168 people
Meanwhile, Hong Kong may appear to Beijing to be dragging its feet on the Northern Metropolis mega project it is leading to create a new driver of economic growth in the Greater Bay Area comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province.
The planned business, tech and housing hub bordering Shenzhen is closely aligned with China’s 15th Five-Year Plan from 2026, which was unveiled on March 5 and is heavily focused on technological innovation.
Hong Kong has been repeatedly urged to integrate its own development plans more deeply into those of the nation.
Yet five years since the project was announced in 2021, it remains today mired in endless red tape and infrastructure and land planning delays – a situation that the top-down authoritarian central government may not be so accustomed to.
All these separate issues – the multiple lapses and slow progress – together present a red flag for Beijing, suggesting a less-than-ideal state of governance in Hong Kong.
And the top Beijing officials’ successive remarks signal that the central government is growing weary of the territory’s lethargy in ironing out its issues effectively and efficiently.
That Beijing has grown impatient is not new.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee had already several times over the past year promised to fast-track the mega hub’s development by “exhausting all means” with “burning urgency”, presumably after having been pressed by his bosses in Beijing.
Even in his first blueprint for the city upon taking the top job in 2022, he had demonstrated a keen awareness of Beijing’s expectations of him, vowing to produce a “proactive”, “efficient” and “capable government that can deliver results” and setting out nearly 200 KPIs to measure that.
Of course, the work of governing a diverse city of 7.5 million people that is, in effect, subordinate to a higher, national authority, is far more complex than navigating the demands of one’s bosses at any regular workplace.
Vice-Premier Ding himself acknowledged on March 6 that it is “no easy task”, as he called on all three branches of Hong Kong’s government – the executive, legislative and judicial – as well as society as a whole to “share in the responsibility” to ensure that the system works.
Still, Beijing has made itself abundantly clear what it expects of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s leaders would do well to pay heed.
