Businessman Chosen As Hong Kong’s Next Leader

VPM | By Louisa Lim

Published March 26, 2012 at 8:00 AM EDT

Updated October 23, 2024

DAVID GREEENE, HOST:

Now to Hong Kong, where there’s a new leader. Self-made businessman and longtime government adviser, Leung Chun-ying was chosen by a select committee of business leaders and elites over the weekend. Leung has vowed to defend the semi-autonomous territory’s freedoms.

But as NPR’s Louisa Lim reports, he’ll face big challenges dealing with Beijing when his term starts in July.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Foreign language spoken)

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

LOUISA LIM: The announcement was greeted with applause and jeers. Leung Chun-ying won 689 votes, or 60 percent, hardly a ringing endorsement given that the 1,000-plus voters were handpicked by Beijing. He was initially thought to be the underdog, but Beijing swung its support behind him after its favorite was discredited by scandal. Leung’s been dogged by accusations he’s a secret Communist Party member, something he denies. In his victory speech, punctuated with heckling, Leung Chun-ying sought to quell fears.

LEUNG CHUN-YING: To the seven million people, I solemnly pledge that after I take office, the freedoms and rights that they enjoy today will be maintained under my administration.

, BYLINE: But he will face problems due to his limited mandate. In a mock election, 200,000 people voted, more than half cast blank ballots in protest at the undemocratic election process. Leung is also unpopular with Hong Kong’s powerful tycoons.

JAMES TIEN: People who know CY for 10, 15, 20 years have a problem supporting him.

, BYLINE: Speaking before the vote, James Tien, a member of the pro-business Liberal Party, outlined his reservations to NPR.

TIEN: A lot of us who know him that well is skeptical about how come he changed the position from ultra-conservative to extremely running a populist mandate.

, BYLINE: There are also reports mainland officials from the liaison office tried to suppress newspaper articles criticizing Leung.

Eric Ho from the Civil Human Rights Front says that’s another reason this poll aroused strong feelings.

ERIC HO. CIVIL HUMAN RIGHTS FRONT: Because people are discontented, not just with CY Leung, but also with the intervention of Beijing by the liaison office.

(SOUNDBITE OF PROTEST)

, BYLINE: More than 2,000 protested outside the poll venue, shouting down with Leung Chun-ying. They’re organizing another march this weekend. The selection process may be over, but its polarizing effects will continue.

Louisa Lim, NPR News, Beijing. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Louisa Lim

Beijing Correspondent Louisa Lim is currently attending the University of Michigan as a Knight-Wallace Fellow. She will return to her regular role in 2014.

Based in Beijing, NPR foreign correspondent Louisa Lim finds China a hugely diverse, vibrant, fascinating place. "Everywhere you look and everyone you talk to has a fascinating story," she notes, adding that she's "spoiled with choices" of stories to cover. In her reports, Lim takes "NPR listeners to places they never knew existed. I want to give them an idea of how China is changing and what that might mean for them."

Lim opened NPR's Shanghai bureau in February 2006, but she's reported for NPR from up Tibetan glaciers and down the shaft of a Shaanxi coalmine. She made a very rare reporting trip to North Korea, covered illegal abortions in Guangxi province, and worked on the major multimedia series on religion in China "New Believers: A Religious Revolution in China." Lim has been part of NPR teams who multiple awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody and two Edward R. Murrow awards, for their coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. She's been honored in the Human Rights Press Awards, as well as winning prizes for her multimedia work.

In 1995, Lim moved to Hong Kong and worked at the Eastern Express newspaper until its demise six months later and then for TVB Pearl, the local television station. Eventually Lim joined the BBC, working first for five years at the World Service in London, and then as a correspondent at the BBC in Beijing for almost three years.

Lim found her path into journalism after graduating with a degree in Modern Chinese studies from Leeds University in England. She worked as an editor, polisher, and translator at a state-run publishing company in China, a job that helped her strengthen her Chinese. Simultaneously, she began writing for a magazine and soon realized her talents fit perfectly with journalism.

NPR London correspondent Rob Gifford, who previously spent six years reporting from China for NPR, thinks that Lim is uniquely suited for his former post. "Not only does Louisa have a sharp journalistic brain," Gifford says, "but she sees stories from more than one angle, and can often open up a whole new understanding of an issue through her reporting. By listening to Louisa's reports, NPR listeners will certainly get a feel for what 21st century China is like. It is no longer a country of black and white, and the complexity is important, a complexity that you always feel in Louisa's intelligent, nuanced reporting."

Out of all of her reporting, Lim says she most enjoys covering stories that are quirky or slightly offbeat. However, she gravitates towards reporting on arts stories with a deeper significance. For example, early in her tenure at NPR, Lim highlighted a musical on stage in Seoul, South Korea, based on a North Korean prison camp. The play, and Lim's piece, highlighted the ignorance of many South Koreans of the suffering of their northern neighbors.

Married with a son and a daughter, Lim recommends any NPR listeners travelling to Shanghai stop by a branch of her husband's Yunnan restaurant, Southern Barbarian, where they can snack on deep fried bumblebees, a specialty from that part of southwest China. In Beijing, her husband owns and runs what she calls "the first and best fish and chip shop in China", Fish Nation.

See stories by Louisa Lim