Saturday, November 24, 2007

Duly Noted

The Donald paid his annual visit to Beijing this week.

Donald Tsang, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region gave a status report to both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao separately.

The Chief Executive of Macau, Edmond Ho, also briefed the two senior leaders.

Tsang outlined his plans for Hong Kong in the next five years, told them the outcome of the recent district council election (the Pro-Beijing camp won), and the progress on constitutional reform.

In front of the cameras, Hu praised the bow-tied leader for developing the city's economy, improving people's livelihoods and raising the level of democracy. It's not clear exactly what kind of democracy he's referring to.

An interesting observation is I have never seen a senior leader whip out a notepad and pen to take notes until Tsang did yesterday. Most people would think his assistants would do the dictation for him. Or have an MP3 player recording the conversation.

But from the news footage, it looks like Tsang wants to make sure he's got the leader's words down correctly for his own records.

Or maybe he's writing down a shopping list of things to get at the Silk Market?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

in all fairness donald tsang has done an admirable job in hong kong in comparison to tung che wah. i have lived in hong kong under british rule. i am impressed by the amount of freedom hong kong people are enjoying. in the old days there is a lot of control of political thinking ,activities and civil liberties. strikes and demonstrations are shunned. offenders are extradicted out of the territory. hong kong people were political zombies. in the middle school where i was studying our headmaster was sacked for allowing a left leaning teacher taught in my class. chinese students from hong kong are famous for their politcal naiivite, subdue quietness in class. donald's note taking may be just a ploy to impresss his boss in beijing to show off his attentiveness that he does not leave important details to his secretary. may be this is the way it should be in order to be successful. a point well taken for us who are being employed.