Hong Kong, Divided Over Future, Gets a New Leader
The political and business elite of Hong Kong elected a real estate surveyor with close ties to Beijing and the Chinese Communist Party on Sunday to become the territory’s next chief executive.
Crowds of pro-democracy protesters tried to march into the convention center where the voting was held; when the police stopped them, some charged the police lines and were turned back with pepper spray.
The victor, Leung Chun-ying, 57, won 689 of the 1,132 votes cast by members of the city’s Election Committee. He quickly tried to allay fears that he would restrict civil liberties in the former British colony or interrupt its gradual progress toward greater democracy.
At a news conference soon after winning a five-year term that will start on July 1, Mr. Leung said that freedom of the press and freedom of assembly were “core values” of Hong Kong and that he would protect them. He promised to focus on giving the people of Hong Kong better access to housing, education and medical care and added that “the freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong people will not change.”
But in a measure of the concern and even fear that Mr. Leung’s ascension to the job has generated, his election was immediately denounced by the pro-business Liberal Party, which has been a staunch ally of the local government and Beijing until now.
“We must closely monitor the government’s actions, so that the government’s actions will not have negative effects on Hong Kong’s most treasured core values, Hong Kong’s economy and Hong Kong’s stability,” said Miriam Lau, a lawyer who is the party’s chairwoman, at a news conference immediately after Mr. Leung was certified as the winner of the election.
The Liberal Party is backed by many of the city’s wealthiest tycoons. The party has been worried about Mr. Leung’s calls for greater economic populism, including the stepped-up construction of public housing as an alternative to a residential real estate market dominated by two very large real estate companies, Cheung Kong and Sun Hung Kai Properties.
But Ms. Lau, business leaders and their favorite candidate in the campaign, Henry Tang, unexpectedly echoed in the past week the longstanding concerns of democracy activists about whether Mr. Leung is truly committed to Hong Kong’s traditions of vigorous political debate and growing public participation in the selection of the territory’s leaders.
The Liberal Party had supported Mr. Tang, the tall, genial scion of a wealthy garment manufacturing family from Shanghai. He served as Hong Kong’s chief secretary, the second-ranking job, until he stepped down last autumn to run for the top job. His family and other business leaders had groomed him since at least the mid-1990s to become chief executive, and he received the early but quiet support of the so-called Shanghai faction in Beijing, which includes former President Jiang Zemin.
But Mr. Tang’s campaign stumbled early and never recovered. Local news reports forced him to acknowledge in October that he had been unfaithful to his wife, and in February that he and his wife had built a capacious basement under one of their homes without proper permits or the payment of real estate taxes.
Mr. Tang eventually won 285 votes on Sunday. Albert Ho, the chairman of the opposition Democratic Party, finished a distant third with 76 votes.