2006 Review: Hong Kong leader's re-election overshadowed by pollution

By Hazel Parry Dec 30, 2006, 17:43 GMT

Hong Kong - There should be no dark clouds on Donald Tsang's horizon. Hong Kong's economy is booming, he has Beijing's solid backing and he is fighting a virtually uncontested campaign for re-election in 2007.

He does have a rival - pro-democracy legislator Alan Leong - but the 800-member election committee is so heavily slanted in Tsang's favour, Leong is unlikely even to garner the 100 nominations needed to enter the race for chief executive.

However, with seven months to go before he claims the prize of leading the former British colony until 2012, the image of the bow-tied former civil servant who took over as Hong Kong leader in 2005 has been threatened by a row over pollution.

Thickening smog in the city of 6.8 million has been a worsening problem for a decade largely because of industrialization in neighboring southern China and is now so severe business leaders warn it is driving investors away.

No one seriously blames Tsang for the smog - but on a hazy winter morning in late November, he delivered a speech on the subject that left a stunned audience thinking he was more part of the problem than the solution.

Hong Kong should keep a sense of perspective, he argued. The city's air may not be as pristine as the North and South poles but it is on a par with cities like Barcelona and its life expectancy is among the highest in the world.

In fact, he concluded, Hong Kong is one of the most environmentally friendly places for people to live and do business - and whatever the doom merchants say, foreign investment is still pouring into the former British colony.

Tsang's 'crisis, what crisis?' speech came just days after Merrill Lynch downgraded two Hong Kong property companies because of the city's air quality and after the head of the stock exchange warned pollution is driving investment overseas.

Suddenly, the 61-year-old Hong Kong leader, chosen by China to succeed the deeply unpopular Tung Chee-hwa largely because of his easygoing charm and public appeal, found himself facing an unprecedented backlash.

Business leader and government ally Allan Zeman reacted by asking which city Tsang had been living in. Anthony Hedley, an academic behind extensive research on the effects of pollution, called Tsang's speech 'naïve, misleading and fallacious.'

The letters page in Hong Kong's newspapers overflowed with derision at the chief executive's rose-tinted view on pollution - including one from a Scandinavian executive whose family all fell ill after moving to the city.

'Why is he (Tsang) in denial of a fact everyone in Hong Kong and beyond recognizes?' he asked. 'The sun sets in the west, water is wet, the Pope is Catholic and the quality of air in Hong Kong is appalling,' the executive wrote.

Not only appalling but deadly, according to a study by three universities earlier this year which found an estimated four people a day now die of pollution-related illnesses in the city.

What began as an environmental issue has become a health issue, a business issue and increasingly a political issue - and even allies of the chief executive believe it may profoundly affect his standing as Hong Kong leader.

China chose Tsang because his popularity would, they believed, defuse the kind of political tension that led to 500,000-plus people marching to demand democracy under Tung Chee-hwa.

If his popularity fades, allies fear, the public anger and demonstrations that effectively forced Tung's early resignation may be lying in wait for Tsang just as soon as the current economic boom begins to peter out.

Liberal Party leader James Tien, a key supporter of most of the chief executive's policies, said he was 'gravely concerned' over air quality but felt Tsang was not taking the problem seriously enough.

'It is all very well for Mr Tsang to quote statistics on life expectancy in our prosperous, well-fed city but as we all know, it is only in the past 10 years that pollution levels have climbed to such alarming levels,' Mr Tien said.

'Can he really be confident that, if pollution continues to worsen, he will be able to promise the same life expectancy for our children and for our grandchildren?'

Ominously for Tsang, leadership challenger Alan Leong has called for new World Health Authority standards on air quality monitoring to be adopted while the chief executive has so far stayed silent on the matter.

Tsang has meanwhile given the impression of being unwilling to upset Chinese officials by seeking reductions in emissions from neighboring Guangdong province, which generates more than 80 per cent of Hong Kong's smog.

'Hong Kong's pollution crisis is worsening by the day. So is the clamour for more to be done about it,' Tien said. 'It isn't something that a stiff breeze or a few airy words about perspective, economic success and life expectancy is going to blow away.

'We want to see the chief executive seize the initiative, to treat our pollution issue as an absolute priority ... If he fails to do so, the smog that hovers over our city is certain to overshadow his re-election campaign.'