The Pulse：Policy Address 2017

On Wednesday, the Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying delivered his final policy address. It was the longest so far and took Leung two and a half hours to deliver it. He claimed that all the promises of his election platform had “basically been implemented”. That claim was met in some quarters by polite, or maybe not so polite, scepticism.
In part one, we focused on sections of the Policy Address dealing with livelihood issues such as a soon-to-be-announced voluntary health insurance scheme, universal pensions, and the Mandatory Provident Fund offsetting mechanism. With us in the studio to look at other areas of the Address are Stephen Wong of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Paul Zimmerman, District Councillor and CEO of Designing Hong Kong.
Finally this week, on Monday, the State Council in Beijing approved the resignations of Chief Secretary Carrie Lam and Financial Secretary John Tsang. It took just four for Carrie Lam to get the official nod from Beijing, after announcing her resignation last Thursday. She made it clear that she was doing so to run in for Chief Executive election. Sticking more closely to civil service rules of procedure John Tsang, who tendered his resignation five weeks ago, only announced his candidacy this week, joining the other declared contenders Regina Ip, former judge Woo Kwok-hing and former DAB member, Wu Sai-chuen.