{"id":30318,"date":"2025-09-22T04:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T04:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/30318\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T04:00:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T04:00:06","slug":"opinion-john-lees-policy-address-leaves-some-big-questions-unanswered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/30318\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | John Lee\u2019s policy address leaves some big questions unanswered"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was good to hear Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu say in last week\u2019s policy address<\/a> that his \u201cultimate objective in governance is to improve people\u2019s livelihood\u201d and recognising that the government must prioritise the well-being of the people to improve the health of the economy. It\u2019s good because we are finally recognising that people are behind the success of Hong Kong and those good stories he wants everyone to tell.Reactions to the latest policy address have been generally positive. Lee covered a lot of ground and hit the right notes by addressing the public confidence crisis, aggravated by recent scandals that shed light on the administrative flaws and failures for something as simple as the procurement of drinking water<\/a> for government premises. He went straight into establishing an accountability system for the heads of departments in his efforts to push further civil service reforms.The scandal revealed that well-established systems from the past are no longer sufficient in 2025. Given how long it took for the government to respond, it seems that Lee may not have been running a tight ship, if you will, given that he has likened his role<\/a> to the captain of a ship.<\/p>\n

Lee has had his sights set on the Northern Metropolis, but he has not had the wind at his back. As a result, he will now personally head a committee created for the project\u2019s development.<\/p>\n

He said his government had been accelerating development for the past three years, and he was right to open his address by pointing out that the country is concluding the national 14th five-year plan and is already preparing for the 15th five-year plan<\/a>.Leaders in Beijing have pushed for the Northern Metropolis development to be speeded up. Lee told lawmakers back in May that he felt a \u201cburning urgency<\/a>\u201d to expedite the project. So why didn\u2019t he set up the committee then?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was good to hear Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu say in last week\u2019s policy address that his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[25938,114,25939,25942,184,3448,85,46,20201,25941,15568,6120,25940],"class_list":{"0":"post-30318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-15th-five-year-plan","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-civil-service-reforms","11":"tag-direct-subsidy-scheme","12":"tag-economy","13":"tag-hong-kong","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-john-lee","17":"tag-national-14th-five-year-plan","18":"tag-northern-metropolis","19":"tag-policy-address","20":"tag-scandals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}