Loyal lieutenant set to replace city’s first woman leader

HONG KONG: Hong Kong has emerged a more unequal city, its freedoms curtailed and international shine dulled after five years with Carrie Lam at the helm, analysts say, as her turbulent leadership draws to an end.

The term of Hong Kong’s first woman leader was dominated by huge democracy protests and Beijing’s subsequent crackdown, as well as a zero-covid pandemic strategy that kept the city isolated while rivals reopened.

She is on track to depart at the end of June with the lowest approval ratings of any leader since the city’s handover from Britain.

Her government survived the mass protest movement, but many say she failed to deliver on life improvement pledges. Last year, 1.65 million Hong Kongers - nearly one in four - were living below the government’s official poverty line. This was the highest level since records began 12 years ago.

The last two years of Lam’s term also witnessed a historic outflow of people - fleeing either the political crackdown or some of the world’s strictest pandemic controls.

Sole candidate

As a former beat cop who rose to become Hong Kong’s security chief, John Lee is the one person China’s leaders trust to run the city as their loyal lieutenant, analysts and insiders say. Lee, 64, is expected to be anointed Hong Kong’s next chief executive by a small committee on Sunday, the culmination of a choreographed, Beijing-blessed race with no other candidates.

His elevation caps a remarkable rise for a man whose police career lifted him from a working-class family to the upper echelons of Hong Kong’s political establishment. It also places a security official in the city’s top job for the first time.