Hong Kong holds seminar on improving district governance system

HONG KONG - The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government held here Tuesday the "Improving district governance, Building a better community" seminar, attracting around 300 representatives from various sectors of the community, leaders of political groups with affection for the country and Hong Kong, and experts and scholars to attend.

John Lee, chief executive of the HKSAR, said at the seminar that the HKSAR government has been committed to improving district governance and building a better community.

The top priority of improving the district governance proposal is to reform the District Councils (DCs), improve the composition and election methods of the DCs, and ensure that the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong" can be fully implemented institutionally through the three requirements including nomination, qualification examination and oath taking, so that the DCs will firmly be in the hands of the patriots, Lee said.

Zheng Yanxiong, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the HKSAR, shared his views on improving district governance in his keynote speech, suggesting that it is important to grasp the political, historical, legal and practical logic of improving district governance.

Zheng said that it is necessary to firmly and deeply implement the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong," to completely remove the soil of the Hong Kong version of "color revolution," to continue to improve the governance system under "one country, two systems," and to promote good governance with a systemically integrated grassroots governance system.

Chan Kwok-ki, chief secretary for administration of the HKSAR government, and other top officials of the HKSAR government hosted a question-and-answer session at the seminar. Chan said that Hong Kong needs to comprehensively reform the DCs so that it can effectively contribute to people's well-being, do practical things for the districts and seek development for Hong Kong.