Grace Zhou, a member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies
The dust has settled on Hong Kong’s 8th Legislative Council election, with voter turnout rising from 30.2% in 2021 to 31.9% this time. Hong Kong society and the new electoral system are gradually working out a new way of relating to each other. Rather than fixating on the numbers, a more meaningful question now is not whether people voted, but who did, on what basis they made their decisions, and how those evolving criteria might shape executive‑legislative relations over the next term.
The most notable part this time is how voters made their judgments. An increasing number of voters are no longer voting solely on the basis of party affiliation or political camp, but first examining a candidate’s résumé, professional competence and their actual performance in local districts or sectors before casting their vote—in other words, marking a “report card” with their ballots.
The 2021 poll was the first LegCo election after the reforms, and the public were unfamiliar with the new system. Four years on, the basic framework has stabilised, and voters have understood how the new system operates. As that sense of unfamiliarity recedes, attention naturally has shifted back to the candidates themselves.
If the previous era of high-intensity politics was driven by emotion and identity‑based voting, this election looks more like a cool-headed calculation. Voters care about who, within the existing system, can actually address concrete problems such as building safety, public housing maintenance, and medical and elderly care. Instead of being satisfied simply with a few slogans, they look for those who have put forward workable proposals and followed through over time. Many candidates who are not members of the main political parties emerged by specialised expertise and community service. Clearly, within the current political structure, voters are still using their ballots to reshape the internal balance of power. Emotions have cooled, but the bar has been raised – voters will remember who asks serious questions in the chamber and who merely shows up for the photo op.
Under the principle of “patriots governing Hong Kong” , executive leadership is the prerequisite, and the executive and legislature moving “in the same direction” is seen as a guarantee of stability. Lawmakers can and should, at the strategic level, support the move from governance to greater prosperity, economic development and safeguarding national security. But voters also want to see specific policies subjected to open debate and amendment, major incidents and governance failures be reasonably examined and institutionally reviewed; and budgets and bills be judiciously examined instead of a quick pass.
If the new LegCo is to respond to this pragmatic and rational public sentiment, it needs to position itself as a cooperative overseer.
Cooperation here means upholding executive primacy while leveraging the legislature’s professional expertise and public mandate to help refine and improve government policy. In practice, this could involve task forces, district networks and industry consultations to collate public input in the policy design phase and feed it into official deliberations at an early stage. When crises emerge, lawmakers and the executive should move in tandem — supporting speedy appropriations and measures while communicating feedback to policymakers in time. On long‑term issues such as the Northern Metropolis, transport infrastructure and elderly care, there should be sustained follow‑up through cross‑sector mechanisms — rather than disbanding committees upon the completion of a project and leaving it unattended.
Oversight is not about reflexive opposition at the eleventh hour but about targeted, constructive scrutiny throughout questioning and debate. Lawmakers should press for data and impact assessments, making full use of oral and written questions, and insist on disclosure of key figures and risk evaluations. They should also put forward alternative proposals, offering clear adjustments to procedures, supporting measures and timetables, so that debate becomes an instrument of refinement rather than mere rhetoric. Previous years of stagnation on the regulation of ride-hailing in Hong Kong was largely the result of simple opposition without substantive proposals. In terms of implementation and outcomes, follow-up committees, site visits and engagement with frontline stakeholders should be adopted to examine whether policies are being distorted in practice or resources misallocated. They should also help prompt timely adjustments where needed, rather than waiting until problems erupt and then vetoing everything in one go.
Overall, if the new LegCo is to respond to this rational, pragmatic public mandate, it must be a rigorous questioner on public safety and livelihood issues, a meticulous guardian over legislation and budgets, and an honest collaborator in executive interactions.
This election shows that there is still a group of voters willing to spend time finding out who the candidates are and what they have done before making up their minds. That conscientiousness is perhaps the most valuable seed of a new electoral culture. It is now up to the new LegCo and the HKSAR Government to answer that: they must demonstrate with visible reform outcomes that the system can not only maintain stability and properly manage elections, but also solve problems and improve people’s lives; and they must convince citizens that political confrontation has cooled and the system is more trustworthy. If they can respond to these expectations, there is a genuine opportunity for the principle of “patriots governing Hong Kong” to be gradually translated into good governance that people can benefit from in their daily lives.
InsightSpeak
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
Liang Yaqi, Chinese Association of Hong Kong & Macao Studies
Since the release of Hong Kong’s first five-year plan, one line of interpretation has grouped together its provisions on cooperation with the mainland and security governance, and from there concluded that a substantial part of the plan is not really about Hong Kong’s own development. With the latest Policy Address continuing to place strong emphasis on national security, the argument goes a step further: Hong Kong’s development agenda, it is said, is increasingly being crowded out by other priorities.
The central problem with this interpretation is that it artificially separates policy objectives that are, in reality, deeply intertwined.
For Hong Kong today, can “integration with the mainland,” “security” and “economic development” really be treated as three distinct agendas?
The answer is more complicated than it may appear.
On the one hand, the five-year plan explicitly calls for Hong Kong to align itself proactively with national development strategies. On the other, it also defines Hong Kong as a “super connector” between the mainland and global markets.
The provisions concerning the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, or CEPA, go further still, calling for wider access to the mainland market for Hong Kong service providers. In finance, the plan proposes deeper links with both mainland and overseas markets, enabling international capital to participate through Hong Kong in the growth of China and Asia while helping mainland companies and capital expand globally.
To classify all of this simply as “supporting mainland policy” is already to assume something that should instead be examined: that anything connected with national development is, by definition, separate from Hong Kong’s own development.
Yet Hong Kong’s economic structure makes that distinction increasingly difficult to sustain.
Hong Kong’s most distinctive economic value lies in its ability to connect two economic spheres vastly larger than itself. On one side is mainland China; on the other are global capital, trade, professional services and institutional networks. Much of Hong Kong’s competitive advantage has long rested on precisely this intermediary role.
That is why, in many cases, there is no clear line separating policies that “serve the country” from policies that “develop Hong Kong.”
Rather than asking how much of the plan is devoted to the mainland, the more meaningful question is whether those connections ultimately make Hong Kong more difficult to replace.
If closer access to China’s vast market generates greater demand for international financing, asset management, legal and arbitration services, RMB business and corporate globalization in Hong Kong, then deeper integration with the mainland and a stronger international role can advance at the same time.
Security should be understood within the same framework.
A common intuition is that policy attention is finite: the more emphasis placed on security, the less attention remains for economic growth and social welfare. But for a highly open international financial centre such as Hong Kong, security and development do not exist in a simple zero-sum relationship.
Capital does not merely chase the highest nominal return. It seeks the best risk-adjusted return.
For a highly open international financial centre, security is not separate from development. It is part of the economic environment that businesses and investors assess when deciding where to place capital, establish regional headquarters or manage wealth. They look not only at taxes and growth prospects, but also at financial stability, reliable infrastructure, cybersecurity and regulatory predictability.
In other words, companies choosing Hong Kong are not simply choosing lower taxes or office space. They are choosing an institutional environment that reduces uncertainty.
The International Monetary Fund’s 2026 assessment of Hong Kong illustrates this relationship well. On the one hand, the IMF recognised the financial system’s strong capital and liquidity buffers and its sound regulatory foundations. On the other, it noted that Hong Kong’s highly open and interconnected economy leaves it exposed to geopolitical and trade tensions, volatility in global financial markets, and disruptions to trade and capital flows. It also highlighted risks associated with commercial real estate, cybersecurity and operational resilience.[1]
The more open Hong Kong is, the more important strong risk management becomes.
This is also why the five-year plan’s emphasis on “coordinating development and security” should not be understood solely through a narrow conception of security. The plan also calls for stronger economic and urban resilience, better risk-warning mechanisms, closer cross-departmental coordination, improved cybersecurity and emergency governance, and greater use of technology to enhance the efficiency of public administration.
These priorities reflect a broader shift in global economic governance in recent years: economic competition is moving away from a singular pursuit of maximum efficiency towards a balance between efficiency and resilience.
The earlier phase of globalisation prized the lowest possible costs, minimal inventories and ever-longer cross-border supply chains. After the pandemic, geopolitical conflict, financial volatility and repeated supply-chain disruptions, however, governments and companies have become increasingly concerned with a different question: when a system is hit by a shock, can it continue to function?
For Hong Kong, that resilience is itself part of what an international financial centre offers. Clear rules, predictable enforcement and reliable institutions allow businesses to price risk with greater confidence; uncertainty, by contrast, raises risk premiums and discourages long-term investment.
The proper measure of Hong Kong’s future security governance, therefore, is not how often security appears in the five-year plan or the Policy Address. The more important question is whether that governance ultimately makes Hong Kong more predictable.
Over the next five years, several developments will be worth watching.
As Hong Kong deepens its links with the mainland, will demand increase for international capital to use the city as a platform for allocating assets in China and across Asia? As mainland companies expand globally, will they rely more heavily on Hong Kong’s financial, legal and professional services? Will Hong Kong’s ties with Europe, the United States, ASEAN and the Middle East deepen at the same time? And will security governance reduce the uncertainty costs inherent in operating an open economy?
If these functions become stronger, then “integrating into national development,” “safeguarding security” and “remaining international” are not competing objectives.
They may, in fact, be three dimensions of the same question:
In an increasingly fragmented and uncertain world, how can Hong Kong remain an interface that both China and the rest of the world want to use—and one that neither can easily replace?
[1]https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/002/2026/114/002.2026.issue-114-en.xml?cid=576398-com-dsp-crossref
