Carrie Lam’s Legacy

As Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor prepares to leave office on June 30, 2022, as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s fourth chief executive, Hong Kong is left with an overwhelming sense of loss. Lam came into office in 2017 with the community’s high hopes that she could put an end to the bitter divisive politics that split society under her predecessor, Leung Chun-ying, and move Hong Kong forward. In the end, she disappointed big time.

Lam’s legacy is built on the back of a failed extradition bill that she pushed at all costs. In 2019, it triggered six months of increasingly violent, riotous anti-government protests that she was unable to manage. The authorities in Beijing acted. They imposed a new national security law (NSL) on June 30, 2020 and made fundamental changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system in the spring of 2021. Authorities used these tools and others (such as colonial-era sedition and public order laws) to remake Hong Kong.

The end result is that, as Lam’s five-year term draws to a close, Hong Kong has lost a substantial amount of its autonomy, sharply restricted the scope for citizen participation in government, and eroded both government accountability and capacity. Taken together, this has caused serious reputational damage to Hong Kong. Apparently, however, leaders in Beijing and Hong Kong were willing to pay the steep price to remake Hong Kong’s government into one that is more centralized – and more easily controlled.

Loss of Autonomy

Under Lam’s administration, Hong Kong lost significant autonomy to manage its political institutions, civil service, education, and the media. Using the NSL, authorities purged (arrested, jailed, and chased out) the pan-democratic opposition from the Legislative Council (LegCo) and Hong Kong’s 18 District Councils. Using a new election law, which empowered authorities to vet all candidates, officials re-constituted the expanded Election Committee and the LegCo with officially identified “patriots.” The Election Committee supplies 40 of the LegCo’s 90 members and endorses the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) selection to become chief executive.

On May 8, 2022, the 1,500 members of the Election Committee voted for a single nominee, John Lee Ka-chiu. The voter support for Lee was 99 percent compared to 66 percent for his predecessor, Carrie Lam. For a broader comparison, Election Committee support for the three chief executives prior to Lam – C.Y. Leung, Donald Tsang, and C.H. Tung – was 61 percent, 82 percent, and 80 percent, respectively. In essence, the Election Committee lost the autonomy to consider other candidates, an outcome the CCP heralded as “democracy with Hong Kong characteristics.”

Hong Kong also lost the autonomy to direct its local education system. Under the guidance of the central government, local authorities revised the school curriculum to require all students study Chinese history using recommended texts, removed a graduation course (liberal studies) that authorities said encouraged some to join the 2019 protests, and disciplined and/or removed teachers who allegedly advocated secession or joined the 2019 protests. In 2019, violent protests wracked university campuses. By June 2020, authorities had arrested 1,700 under the age of 18 (1,600 secondary and eight primary school students) for their part in the 2019 protests.

Authorities pressed the community, including universities, to remove symbols that commemorated the June 4, 1989, massacre of protesters who had gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square (including the Pillar of Shame at the University of Hong Kong, and replicas of the Goddess of Democracy at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Lingnan University). The central authorities criticized the Research Grants Council, Hong Kong’s university research funding body, for supporting academic research that allegedly supported Hong Kong independence. Most publicly funded universities cut ties with their autonomous students’ unions, refusing to collect fees on their behalf, and expelled them from campus. Six of the eight disbanded.

Hong Kong’s legal system has also seen its independence eroded. Using the NSL, authorities restricted the discretion of the courts in Hong Kong to grant bail and to hold jury trials, both well-established practices in the territory. Other established principles, such as presumption of innocence and not applying laws retroactively, apparently no longer apply in national security cases. Only specially designated judges may try national security cases.

The law serves the interests of those in power, and judges in Hong Kong are obliged to follow the law. One bellwether is telling: Two sitting foreign judges resigned from the Court of Final Appeal to protest a perceived reduction of political freedom in Hong Kong, but 10 others, all retired from their positions overseas, remain on the bench. Locally, foreign judges continue to serve in the judiciary.

Loss of Public Participation

Under Lam’s administration, residents of Hong Kong, who are mostly Chinese citizens, lost significant rights to participate in public affairs. The new electoral arrangements, which prioritize corporate not individual voting, severely restrict citizen participation in Election Committee subsector elections. Authorities drastically curtailed the already-limited citizen participation in the 2022 chief executive poll; as noted above, the end result was an uncontested victory for the sole candidate, John Lee.

Hong Kong citizens also lost a sizable portion of their ability to directly elect (and, presumably, influence) legislators. Previously voters directly elected 35 out of 70 LegCo members; electoral changes instituted by Beijing cut the number of directly elected LegCo members to 20 out of 90 seats in the 2021 poll. Under the new arrangements the central government vetted all the candidates and curated all the contests to ensure a desired outcome. As a result, nearly 70 percent of registered voters shunned the 2021 LegCo elections, which many perceived as unfair.

The comparison with just a few years earlier is illustrative. Pan-democratic opposition politicians swept the District Council elections in 2019, amid the anti-extradition bill protests, taking control of 17 of the 18 councils. In the lead-up to the September 2020 LegCo poll, pan-democrats were upbeat: They scheduled an unofficial pan-democratic primary election held on July 11-12, 2020, to select candidates to run.

But, in short order, the elections were canceled – ostensibly due to the pandemic, but it’s widely believed Beijing wanted to be able to enact electoral changes before the polls. On January 6, 2021, authorities arrested 47 opposition figures who had organized the pan-democratic primary. Officials charged them with “conspiracy to commit subversion” and most remain in jail, denied bail, awaiting trial.

Today, the fate of the previously directly elected District Councils, which have already been purged of all opposition members, remains unknown.

Beyond the electoral changes, avenues for social participation have been tightly restricted as well. Hong Kong’s once vibrant NGO scene is no more. The Lam administration arrested the leaders and intimidated the members of many civil society organizations that allegedly supported opposition politicians.

Threatened with the NSL and other laws, from June 2020 to February 2022 at least 64 NGOs disbanded, including 12 unions, among them the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (around 100 affiliates and 145,000 members), the Professional Teachers’ Union (95,000 members), eight grassroots neighborhood organizations, seven professional groups, five student organizations, four political groups, four religious groups, and two political parties. These organizations had enabled citizens to participate in public affairs.

The mass protests of 2019 are a distant memory. From January 2020, under blanket pandemic-related social distancing regulations authorities banned all organized expressions of dissent, such as demonstrations, protests, and commemorations (with alleged suspected seditious intent), and arrested and jailed those that persisted without police approval.

Even Hong Kong’s once vibrant media scene, which served as a crucial if indirect check on government behavior, has been decimated. The authorities arrested owners, editors, and journalists, and froze the assets of a popular newspaper, Apple Daily, and an online news platform, Stand News, accusing them of NSL violations and sedition. Both outlets closed. Subsequently Citizen News and five other news platforms disbanded. Central and local officials intimidated the Hong Kong Journalists Association and the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, though as of writing, both organizations still exist. Nearly 1,000 journalists lost their jobs and 13 were jailed.

Loss of Accountability

Closely related to the curtailing of public participation is the perception that Hong Kong’s government is no longer accountable to its citizens. The Basic Law requires that the chief executive be accountable to both the central authorities and to the people of Hong Kong. Since 2019 the CCP has trumpeted only accountability to Beijing. Carrie Lam’s administration has further deepened the perception that Hong Kong has no place for accountable government.

Hong Kong’s system, absent democracy, allows officials to determine if, when, and with what consequences they hold themselves to account. Even in this weak position, Hong Kong has known locally accountable government. In 2003, for example, the people of Hong Kong, through LegCo and the media, held the government of C.H. Tung to account for mismanaging the SARS-1 outbreak. The CCP acquiesced and heads rolled. Times have changed; with LegCo stripped of opposition and the media defanged, Lam’s administration has degraded local accountability.

The Lam administration has thus avoided any responsibility for its role triggering the most serious anti-government protests since 1967. In 2019 the Hong Kong government decided when to introduce the extradition initiative, and it misjudged and dismissed opposition even from the government’s own supporters. Chaos ensued. Yet the government was never forced to respond to the public discontent; not a single Hong Kong official lost their post. The central government did, however, remove the CCP officials responsible for Hong Kong for their handling of the 2019 uprising, but that was not a move to assuage public grievances.

Nor have the police, to whom authorities turned to rule Hong Kong, been held to account for their actions (for example, stripping officers on the street of identification and excessive use of violence) and inactions (for example, standing aside while an organized mob beat protesters in the Yuen Long MTR station on July 21, 2019). On the contrary, John Lee, who was the head of the controversial security response to the protests, has now been rewarded with a stint of his own as chief executive.

The lack of accountability in the government starkly contrasts with the way authorities continue to punish the people of Hong Kong for their role in the protests.

As of February 2022, police had arrested 10,500 for national security and other offenses related to the protests. Authorities have prosecuted 2,944, convicted 870, acquitted 196, and jailed 620. Hundreds more are in jail, denied bail and awaiting trial. Hong Kong’s authorities preside over daily arrests, charges, trials, incarcerations, and “deradicalization,” of 2019 protesters in an entirely one-sided show.

And then there is COVID-19. Authorities on the mainland routinely dismiss local officials for mismanaging COVID-19 outbreaks. Central authorities have not, however, held Lam accountable for her government’s lack of planning, investment, and action on COVID-19, which led to Hong Kong’s fifth wave from January to May 2022 and a skyrocketing death rate (from 213 to 9,359 in four months).

Chief Executive-elect John Lee has called for a review of the government’s performance in the fifth wave. This could be an opening for a return to accountable government, if carried through.

Given the lack of accountability, it’s unsurprising that under Carrie Lam, the administration and especially the police lost the trust of the people. In a random sample poll, conducted in mid-October 2019 during the anti-government protests, 49.3 percent and 51.5 percent of respondents expressed “no trust at all” in the Hong Kong government and the police, respectively. This was a staggering increase in distrust, which in June 2017, with Lam about to take over, stood at just 10.3 percent and 4.3 percent for the government and police, respectively. Those with tertiary education and aged 15 to 29, especially students, viewed the police particularly negatively.

By 2022, 22 percent of respondents reported that they trusted the government, an improvement, but still low. Satisfaction with the police, while improving, has yet to recover from its 2019 lows.

Loss of Governance Capacity

Under Lam’s tenure, Hong Kong lost governance capacity, a significant problem if the city expects to solve the “long-standing problems” Beijing often refers to. When she took office, Lam shuttered the Central Policy Unit, indicating the government’s lack of interest in either long-range, cross-government policy research or credible polling of public opinion (although she did consult think tanks).

Under Lam, the public sector shed public servants, a direct response to attempts to mandate pro-Beijing sentiments in the civil service. Central authorities demanded that all civil servants swear loyalty oaths, a reaction to some civil servants joining the anti-government protests in 2019. The central government also guided civil service training to focus on mainland affairs. Authorities trained 24,000 in national studies in 2021 and pledged expanded training in national studies and in national security. Officials redirected study of public administration away from U.S. and U.K. schools and toward mainland institutions.

The central government criticized Hong Kong’s elite civil servants for “lying flat” during the 2019 protests, permitting those allegedly advocating for secession (a crime under the NSL) to participate in elections, lacking patriotism, and insufficiently understanding mainland affairs.

By mid-2021 teachers, medical workers, police officers, and elite administrative officers resigned from the government at much higher rates than before the NSL. Officials reported difficulties filling vacancies and widened their searches. For the first time in 12 years authorities looked inside government to select elite administrative officers. Government continues with many posts unfilled.

The extent of the damage to Hong Kong’s governance capacity soon became apparent. The pandemic, especially the fifth wave in early 2022, brought Hong Kong’s public health system to its knees and revealed huge gaps in capacity to coordinate across government and between government and civil society (e.g., between the Hospital Authority and the Social Welfare Department, which manages elderly care homes).

Capacity suffered outside government, too. Hong Kong delivers many public services via NGOs, especially social services. The Hong Kong Social Workers General Union (so far not disbanded, although they have supported opposition causes) surveyed their members, 28 percent of whom had left the profession, many to emigrate. In the survey 45 percent of respondents considered quitting. Turnover is 12 percent in a normal year but reached 20 percent in 2021. Many of those who left were middle managers, which can only have impacted the operational capacity of Hong Kong’s social services.

Reputational Damage

As we have seen, the Lam administration restricted participation, debased accountability, and undermined trust in government. Taken together, this reveals the government’s reduced political capacity to design and implement policy. Because most policy is co-produced, how citizens perceive government authority is important. The state needs the active cooperation of the people. A government that marginalizes, distrusts, and ignores citizens cannot command respect, nor the people’s enthusiastic implementation of public policy.

Under Carrie Lam, Hong Kong suffered significant reputational damage. In the V-Dem Institute’s academic freedom index, based on expert evaluations, Hong Kong slid from a score of 0.55 in 2018 to 0.21 in 2021 under Lam. (V-Dem measures five different aspects of democracy, ranking polities with a score ranging from 0, not democratic, to 1, fully democratic.) Still, in 2022 three of Hong Kong’s eight publicly funded universities ranked in the top 50 globally.

After years of being ranked 73rd globally in press freedom, in 2021 Hong Kong slid to 80th place, and then 148th place in 2022, behind Singapore, Cambodia, and the Philippines. In 2022, only 28 percent of respondents to a HKPORI survey in Hong Kong said they were satisfied with the level of press freedom, the lowest level since records began in 1997. Nevertheless, Hong Kong’s press scene, which accommodates for-profit, non-profit, and state-owned news outlets, is still relatively diversified.

For civil society generally Hong Kong’s reputation also suffered. The V-Dem Institute tracked the impact on civil society of Lam’s administration – a fall from 0.61 in 2017 to 0.24 in 2021. The Lam government’s management of COVID-19, aligning Hong Kong with the mainland’s “dynamic zero COVID” strategy, also damaged Hong Kong’s reputation as a global financial and transportation hub.

Finally, under Lam, Hong Kong lost people in numbers not seen since the 1990s in anticipation of China’s resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong. Some emigrated, some self-exiled. Indicators of the exodus, numbering tens of thousands since 2020, included school place vacancies, numbers of early exit students, British National Overseas passport applications, early withdrawals from the Mandatory Provident Fund (on grounds of permanent departure from Hong Kong), and census and statistics data.

Foreign governments, especially Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. offered pathways to work, study, permanent residence, and citizenship in their countries for Hong Kong residents in response to the new national security environment in Hong Kong. Foreign governments also granted political asylum to some opposition activists. Some Hong Kongers self-exiled, moving to Taiwan, or further afield. Unable to deny it, pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong recognized the extent of the exit but shrugged it off, essentially saying, “they’ll be back.”

Some of Hong Kong’s losses are irreversible, such as autonomy and participation, which are gone forever, short of regime change. Other values, though easily lost, can be reversed with great difficulty: accountability, trust, capacity, and reputation. People watch and may return.

Reversing the losses is a hard slog, particularly if Hong Kong’s political leaders do not value them. Unfortunately, the authorities seem to believe that what they gained outweighs the significant losses.

What Did Authorities Gain?

Politicians traded away Hong Kong’s autonomy, dynamic civil society, and reputation in favor of “executive-led” government, security, and national identity.

In 2020 and 2021, Beijing retooled Hong Kong’s electoral system and used the NSL to effectively criminalize political dissent. We have already seen what Hong Kong lost through these changes, but what was gained?

Using the national security law, authorities created in Hong Kong an executive-led government – a “Hong Kong administered by patriots” – that the central government apparently intended all along. These changes unfolded in two stages.

In the first stage, on November 11, 2020, the government removed four opposition politicians from LegCo. In the following days a further 15 resigned, leaving the then 69-member body with 43 members. It continued to function, with a reported “high degree of efficiency.”

The second stage, in 2021, saw Beijing institutionalize its control over LegCo through electoral changes. Authorities vetted all candidates for the new 90-seat LegCo. The central government-controlled Election Committee selected 40 members. Of the remaining 50, voters chose 20 in party-curated contests, and 30 were chosen by various groups in Hong Kong in a party-managed process.

The end result is that the 2022 LegCo is less autonomous from and more dependent on the central government. To give an example of the body in action, the current LegCo approved the HKSAR budget on May 4, 2022, after three days of discussion by a vote of 87 to 0, with three abstentions. Previously LegCo budget debates took weeks and approval was contested. By restricting participation and centralizing control, authorities have achieved executive-led government.

Another gain, in Beijing’s eyes, has been the ability to ensure security. The centrally imposed NSL brought a new national security office to Hong Kong (the Office of Safeguarding National Security) and set up a new national security department within the police. They have been busy – arresting over 10,500 people for national security and other offenses related to the 2019 protests.

Hong Kong is also attempting to outsource part of its enforcement duties to the public. On April 15 each year Hong Kong now celebrates National Security Education Day. Authorities ordered national security education classes and courses in all schools and universities. Residents are now urged to call a police hotline to report suspicions of possible national security violations.

With public protest banned (under the guise of social distancing during the pandemic) and a new enforcement regime, the government has achieved security compliance and an uneasy stability.

In a final part of the bargain, the state is pressing citizens to enthusiastically accept that Hong Kong is a part of China. Authorities hope to achieve this via regular, weekly, and formal flag raising ceremonies required at all schools and universities, national anthem singing required at all public events, loyalty oaths for all civil servants, patriotic education required in all schools and universities, and propaganda now delivered on TV and traditional and social media.

This change, too, was only made possibly by further limiting Hong Kong’s autonomy. It is the flip side of the coin to the restrictions on independent media and academic freedom. Under the new regime, Radio Television Hong Kong, a government department, fired producers, editors, and journalists, and aligned its programing with official messaging. Patriotic education now starts young, in primary school.

But so far there is no evidence that the patriotic tide has turned. Changing political culture in a still relatively open society like Hong Kong is a long term, non-linear process; its gradual and takes generations.

Carrie Lam leaves the city with a sense of loss. Her legacy is a new Hong Kong, less free, less capable, and more dependent on the mainland. Still, as of writing, Hong Kong has more autonomy to manage religion, education, the media, the internet, the civil service, and the legal system than other mainland cities.