Hong Kong’s latest constitutional moment is a decisive clarification from Beijing on how the city is expected to be governed. Remarks from Xia Baolong, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, outlined at a recent forum the logic and operational direction of governance, legislation and public administration under the executive-led system within the framework of “one country, two systems”.
It aimed to reassure and guide policymakers, legislators, and the wider public, underscoring Hong Kong’s ability to maintain stable, predictable, transparent, and efficient governance despite an increasingly complex and challenging geopolitical environment.
Xia reiterated that the chief executive answers to both the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the Central People’s Government, and emphasized that the position carries responsibility for coordinating the executive, legislative and judicial domains to preserve the city’s constitutional order.
As the only official constitutionally accountable to both the central government and the SAR, the chief executive therefore depends on a constructive partnership between the executive and the legislature, which together play an essential role in channeling public opinion and community priorities into the policymaking process. This articulation of roles is intended as a clear response to years of contention, during which some actors sought to recast Hong Kong’s system as a conventional separation-of-powers model detached from its constitutional origins in the national Constitution.
By emphasizing the executive-led system as a distinct constitutional design — distinct from legislature-dominated parliamentary systems and classical separation-of-powers presidential systems — the central government has also signaled that it regards Hong Kong’s model as distinctive in comparative institutional terms. That governance architecture is not an improvised response to political turbulence, but a consolidated system with its own internal checks, balances and accountability mechanisms.
This constitutional arrangement enables the legislature and Judiciary to exercise their distinct constitutional roles while safeguarding judicial independence. It also enables the city to present a credible case to international investors, rating agencies and external partners that its governance framework is stable, predictable and capable of supporting long-term engagement.
In the United Kingdom, for example, Parliament is politically dominant because governments are formed by and depend on a parliamentary majority. In the United States, the executive branch and Congress are separately elected and operate under a strict separation of powers, a structure that can lead to prolonged institutional deadlock.
Through applied, forward-looking research that links the city’s development choices to national priorities — including high-quality growth, technological self-reliance and the green transition — think tanks can clarify where Hong Kong can add real value, moving beyond the familiar “superconnector” label
The spirit and intention of Hong Kong’s constitutional design are to support coordinated decision-making, reduce institutional friction, and provide continuity in governance, particularly during periods of economic or geopolitical uncertainty. In doing so, it seeks to combine effective leadership with constitutional order, enabling the SAR to function with stability and predictability in a more complex external environment.
The system will be judged by its ability to sustain competitiveness, improve people’s livelihoods amid intensifying geopolitical and economic headwinds, and protect national security. The central government’s narrative is that the system has already demonstrated resilience — from the implementation of the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance to the rapid policy responses to successive economic challenges and public health shocks.
Now, as Hong Kong enters a new phase, institutional resilience must be matched by policy ambition and administrative execution. Officials are called upon to advance the objectives of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), confront structural weaknesses at home, maintain Hong Kong’s international competitiveness, and deliver tangible results.
This will require a more strategic, data-driven approach to governance, spanning long-term land and housing supply, an aging population, social mobility, and economic diversification into innovation, green finance, and advanced services. It also points to the need for renewed investment in administrative capacity — streamlining decision-making, strengthening cross-departmental coordination, improving project management, and making fuller use of data and technology in policy delivery.
A central message from Xia is that the executive, legislative, and judicial organs should operate in harmony, with the legislature expected to actively contribute to and support the executive leadership rather than obstruct it. The era of filibusters, paralyzed committees and performative vetoes is explicitly identified as a cautionary tale of how institutional design can be hollowed out when political actors refuse to accept the system’s basic rules.
For the Legislative Council, constructive cooperation is a constitutional expectation. Major agendas — from economic restructuring and integration into national development strategies to social policy reform — will require close and critical examination, but the presumption should be to improve and facilitate progress.
At the same time, the oversight role is being redefined around outcomes, with an emphasis on whether policies are workable, adequately funded and consistent with both national objectives and the real needs of residents and businesses. This, in turn, calls on legislators to strengthen their policy capabilities, invest in research support, and maintain systematic engagement with districts, industries and professional groups.
Xia’s speech has broadened the scope for think tanks to serve as more proactive partners in top-level policy development and public communication. Hong Kong has a robust ecosystem of policy research institutions, university centers and professional bodies; the challenge is to knit these together into a more coherent advisory network that can support an executive-led system with rigorous analysis, scenario planning and cross-border insight.
This is where think tanks’ comparative strengths are particularly relevant. Their ability to gather, synthesize and interpret perspectives from across society positions them to help bridge top-down policy priorities and bottom-up concerns, translating societal needs into structured options that can inform executive decision-making.
As Hong Kong moves into its next phase of development, this contribution becomes increasingly practical. Through applied, forward-looking research that links the city’s development choices to national priorities — including high-quality growth, technological self-reliance and the green transition — think tanks can clarify where Hong Kong can add real value, moving beyond the familiar “superconnector” label.
Beyond this, closer attention to the design and testing of policy choices in areas such as housing, healthcare, social protection and human capital would help the administration move away from incremental change toward more decisive, evidence-based reform. Just as importantly, building channels to bring in the views of small and medium-sized enterprises, young people, communities, and industry bodies can turn fragmented public feedback into practical proposals that strengthen executive decision-making. In this way, research institutions and policy platforms act as an indispensable bridge between the formal institutions of governance and the wider community, complementing the legislature’s work in reflecting opinion and helping the chief executive govern with both authority and broad-based support.
Internationally, Hong Kong’s think tanks play an equally important role in explaining the logic and practice of the executive-led system to global audiences. Through sober, well-documented analyses and dialogue with peer institutions abroad, they can clarify how the “one country, two systems” principle and the Basic Law operate in practice, and why an executive-led model can coexist with the rule of law, a high degree of openness and a robust business environment.
As China enters the first year of the national 15th Five-Year Plan, the Hong Kong SAR has a clearer script for positioning itself within national development while retaining its international character. The task now is to turn that script into sustained performance — one in which an accountable executive, a constructive legislature, an independent judiciary and a confident policy community work together to ensure that Hong Kong’s next chapter is defined by effective governance, social cohesion and renewed international competitiveness.
The author is president of Our Hong Kong Foundation and a council member of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
