Exclusive: The Chief Executive ‘has to serve two masters’, says Hong
Kong leader Carrie Lam – full transcript
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[September 12, 2019]
HONG KONG (Reuters) - This is a
transcript of a talk given in late August by Hong Kong Chief Executive
Carrie Lam to a group of businesspeople in the city. The transcript is
taken from an audio recording of Lam's remarks that was obtained by
Reuters. Last week, Reuters published most of Lam's remarks and is now
able to publish them in full.
People who attended the talk say she spoke for about a half hour. The
recording, which runs 24 minutes, captures the bulk of the event.
Reuters has redacted the transcript in a few spots to remove names
mentioned by Lam and questions asked by the audience.
CARRIE LAM:
In the last two years, one of the policy areas that I have spent most
time in is innovation and technology. Now, I actually personally chair
the steering committee.
In less than three months' time, Hong Kong has been turned upside down,
and my life has been turned upside down. But this is not the moment for
self-pitifulness, although I shared with [name redacted] that nowadays
it’s extremely difficult for me to go out. I have not been on the
streets, not in the shopping malls, can’t go to a hair salon, can’t do
anything because my whereabouts will be spread around the social media,
the Telegram, the LIHKG, and you could expect a big crowd of black
T-shirts and black-masked young people waiting for me.
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I’m still brave enough to go and this afternoon, I’m still planning to
go if my security guards tell me later on that I can still go. But it’s
really, I don’t want to cause disruption, inconvenience to the
organisers. But as I said, this is not the time for me to self-pity
myself. This is a time I come here, and I do other closed-door sessions
from time to time with people from all walks of life, and the two things
I said is, it’s not about self-pityness, it’s about making a plea for
forgiveness and then appeal for love.
I don’t want to spend your time, or waste your time, for you to ask me
what went wrong, and why it went wrong. But for a chief executive to
have caused this huge havoc to Hong Kong is unforgivable. It’s just
unforgivable. If I have a choice, the first thing is to quit, having
made a deep apology, is to step down. So I make a plea to you for your
forgiveness.
This is something that no matter how well intended, I just want to put
this message across. This is not something malicious. This is not
something instructed, coerced by the central government. This is out of
a good intention, myself and some of my key colleagues to try to plug
legal loopholes in Hong Kong’s system, very much prompted by our
compassion for a single case, and this has proven to be very unwise
given the circumstances. And this huge degree of fear and anxiety
amongst people of Hong Kong vis-a-vis the mainland of China, which we
were not sensitive enough to feel and grasp. And, of course, it has been
exaggerated and misrepresented through very effective propaganda, if I
may say so.
Now I want to make an appeal for love. It’s not to pity me, or to
sympathise with me, but love for Hong Kong. And I’m sure [name redacted]
have that strong passion and love for Hong Kong.
Then the question we need to ask, each one of us, is how to fix it, how
to fix it? I have to say that I have no sort of ready solutions, because
the scene changes so quickly. A week ago, we thought - ‘we’ means the
core group within the government with some of our advisers – we thought
that we have a relatively peaceful weekend, perhaps that’s the time to
start a dialogue with sincerity, with humility, and trying to get some
of Hong Kong’s fundamental issues resolved. But, unfortunately, the last
two days have again totally thrown that away and we are seeing escalated
violence to the degree of being insane. If you look at some of these TV
footage and videos of how policemen have been attacked and so on.
But, of course, I’m sure in your hearts you will feel, and I’m sure a
large number of people feel that I do have a solution, that is a
political one. But I have to tell you that this is where the crux of the
matter lies. Once an issue has been elevated to the situation – I’m sure
[name redacted] has a better feel of that – to a national level, to a
sort of sovereignty and security level, let alone in the midst of this
sort of unprecedented tension between the two big economies in the
world. The room, the political room for the chief executive who,
unfortunately, has to serve two masters by constitution, that is the
central people’s government and the people of Hong Kong, that political
room for maneuvering is very, very, very limited. Because we were not
trained to have that sort of national perspectives, and I could only
keep on putting in what I feel is the Hong Kong situation and the Hong
Kong sentiments. But whether those Hong Kong sentiments could override
the national perspective and the national sentiments? I’m sure you know
that now 1.4 billion mainland people already have formed a view about
what is happening in Hong Kong. So, without going into a lot more
details, I can only share with you discreetly that the room for me to
offer a political situation in order to relieve the tension, nor to
reduce the pressure on my frontline police officers in order to at least
respond, or pacify the large number of peaceful protesters who are so
angry with the government, with me in particular, of absolutely dead
silence despite repeated participation in the protests, is what causes
me the biggest sadness.
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So without that, what other means we have is Hong Kong’s core value,
that is the rule of law. The rule of law takes several forms, of course
law enforcement, our police officers who have been suffering
tremendously this time, especially on an occasion when they are supposed
to celebrate 175 years of police establishment, and especially at a time
when they were so proud of the crime figures which are still coming
down. In fact, the first half year we still saw a drop of four percent
in total crimes in Hong Kong, and that was the best seen in Hong Kong
since 1972. And also they have commissioned a survey to commemorate this
occasion done not by a pro-establishment group but by [name redacted],
which indicated that confidence in the police after Occupy Central has
rebounced to a historic high. That was the sort of background to how
much the police have suffered.
So the rule of law requires law enforcement, so we have to tackle this
escalating violence by arresting those offenders and then put them
through the justice system, whether it’s prosecution by the Department
of Justice in an impartial manner without any interference from myself
or from the Central People’s government, and then finally in the courts.
With a little bit of hope that may help because we are seeing the
numbers reducing. We started off by an estimate of about one to two
thousand protesters who are very violent. Or put it that way, they are
very willing to resort to violence. They may not be violent by nature
but they are very willing to resort to violence, so, as described by one
expert, this is the, sort of, early signs of anarchism, that they don’t
trust the establishment, they don’t mind destroying things even if they
don’t know what destruction will bring.
And if you look at yesterday’s various protests, it’s not only in the
Tsuen Wan, Kwai Chung area, but then it spread to Tsim Sha Tsui, Sham
Shui Po, Wong Tai Sin. Every spot of confrontations, we’re talking about
50 to 300 at least, and they, actually because they were flowing so
there could be some duplicates, so we might be seeing a smaller number.
Whether it’s because of the 700-plus arrests that we have made has a bit
of deterrent effect, or removed some of these factions, we have not had
a full analysis, but we hope that with those efforts we may be able, as
I said, I’ll be very honest with you, it would be naïve for me to paint
you a rosy picture, that things will be fine or I have a deadline. But I
can assure you that Beijing does not have a deadline. They know this
will ripple on. So we have made special arrangements and there will be a
1st of October National Day celebrations but still having a lot of
disruptions. So we are going for a modest, but solemn type of
celebrations on the 1st of October, which means that they and ourselves
have no expectations that we could clear up this thing before the 1st of
October.
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![](../images/091219pics/news_o27.jpg)
Hong Kong's Chief Executive Carrie Lam addresses a news conference
in Hong Kong, China September 5, 2019. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
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Another thing I want to assure you, that is my own feeling the pulse
and through discussions, CPG (Central People’s Government) has
absolutely no plan to send in the PLA. They are now doing, sort of,
acts which I’m sure you’re quite aware of amongst the Communist
Party, they’re just quite scared now. Because they know that the
price would be too huge to pay. Maybe they don’t care about Hong
Kong, but they care about ‘one country, two systems.’ They care
about the country’s international profile. It has taken China a long
time to build up to that sort of international profile and to have
some say, not only being a big economy but a responsible big
economy, so to forsake all those positive developments is clearly
not on their agenda. But they’re willing to play long, they are
willing to play long, so you have no short-term solution, Hong Kong
suffers, you lose tourism, economy, you lose your IPOs and so, but
you can’t do much about it. But after everything has been settled
the country will be there to help with maybe positive measures
especially in the Greater Bay Area. So our work on the Greater Bay
Area has actually not stopped. We are still putting in proposals to
the Greater Bay Area, especially something markets would love to
hear, is a major ecological conservation plan which was drawn up by
[name redacted]. She has left the government, I have brought her in
on a part-time basis to draw up this ecological conservation plan
for the entire Greater Bay Area in terms of biodiversity, air
standards, water and so on.
So what could [name redacted] help us. Of course, every one of you
has your own circle, you have your own friends, you have your own
connections, you have your business contacts, so try to impress upon
them that we really need to put an end to the violence, this is
totally alien to Hong Kong and try to, as I said, appeal for
understanding and love. We love this place, we love the people here.
People used to be very peaceful and inclusive and so on. Instead of
taking a position on every issue, either your friend or your foe,
and so on.
When the time comes, now Hong Kong has survived the death pronounced
by some people before 1997. At this point in time, although I’m
actually pessimistic, but Hong Kong is not dead yet. Maybe she is
very, very sick but she is not dead yet. We still have fundamentals
here, we still have the nation behind us. So Hong Kong will have to
go through several stages. The first is stamping out the violence,
maybe doing other things in time to come which at the moment are not
very available. Having gone through this stage, the next stage will
be, in accordance with the bible, would be resurrection. We will
need to come back to life, some life. So thereafter we want a reborn
Hong Kong and a relaunching of this Hong Kong brand. [name redacted]
After her talk, Lam answered questions.
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In answer to a question about the impact of the protests on schools
and universities, Lam said:
Well, thank you very much [name redacted]. We will continue to help
the schools. I am meeting a group of school principals within this
week together with the secretary for education. Let me just answer
your question in a very general way. I know certain factions in
society have the feeling that we are not firm and strong enough
vis-a-vis these protesters. But the difficulty is, of course, is
always coming up with an argument that in the light of the majority
of the public views and the people’s sentiments, this anger and this
fear and so on, too strong a position of the government could be
counterproductive. Although our research into overseas experiences
in combating riots did require that sort of forcefulness. For
example, in 2011, in Tottenham riots 15,000 rioters involved, 2,000
were arrested, 1,000 put to prison following a very quick process.
From start to finish is 5-6 weeks, through special courts, night
courts, 24 hours. What would you imagine to be the Chief Justice’s
reaction if I were to tell him, ‘could you have special courts,
night courts, in order to clear all these cases?’ We have arrested
700-plus now. So there are solutions that will be readily deployed
in other countries that cannot be used in Hong Kong.
The second factor is apart from the 30,000 men and women in the
force we have nothing. Really. We have nothing. I have nothing.
That’s something, is something we avoid. So that means that whatever
we do we have to take into full account the police assessment and
reactions, so to give them some powers which they could not enforce
because they’re outnumbered. They’re outnumbered not necessarily
just by the violent protesters, they’re outnumbered just by people,
which makes enforcement extremely difficult in terms of crowd
management and crowd dispersal. So I’m not saying that we are not
thinking about some of those firmer measures but just to explain to
you that in the Hong Kong situation it’s very difficult, especially
with the media. And this is perhaps one of Hong Kong’s weakest
links, or the government’s weakest links, that we don’t have a
strong enough, sort of, I wouldn’t say propaganda, I dare not say
government carries out propaganda, but at least in terms of
dissemination of factual information we are very, very weak. If we
survive this crisis, well there will be a large number of revamping
that I need to do in order to leave behind a better situation for my
successor because there are so many weak parts in the government,
which we have not fully realized. We did realize a bit, but we did
not fully realize that it could be that bad, when we are going into,
or right into, a crisis.
In answer to a suggestion from the audience related to the
government’s public relations efforts:
I’m not aware of that 120-page document [name redacted]. But what I
have asked for, but that is a little bit overtaken by events, that
was almost a month ago, when we optimistically thought that we would
have some sort of peaceful moments, that we could start to think
about relaunching Hong Kong. So we sent out something by the
information services department and invited eight such global PR
companies, but unfortunately four immediately declined because that
would be a detriment to their reputation to support the Hong Kong
SAR government now, and two subsequently also turned away a request
for meetings. So we’re left with two. I’m happy to meet with these
two remaining personally, to see what advice they have, but their
advice will only be more relevant after we have gone through this
period.
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This is also a very difficult moment for us because people take
sides, and people are very worried about what they call this ‘white
terror,’ this harassment on them. The revealing of details [in
Cantonese]. And so it’s not even very difficult for us to get a
production house, a design studio to do things for us, so things
have to be done in-house or in the mainland. In the mainland then
this causes problems. The smart lamp posts, somebody discovered that
the raw parts came from a Shanghai factory and then they made a big
story out of it again. But when the time comes, I certainly take up
your advice that we should remove some of this bureaucracy and start
talking to the people who could help, if they are willing to help.
(Transcript by James Pomfret and Greg Torode in Hong Kong. Edited by
Peter Hirschberg.)
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