Hong Kong Liaison Office

Based on Wikipedia: Hong Kong Liaison Office

In 2012, an unusual phrase began appearing on protest signs in Hong Kong: "No to Sai Wan ruling Hong Kong." To outsiders, it sounded like a complaint about a neighborhood. But everyone in the city understood the real target—a nondescript government building in the Sai Ying Pun district that had become, in the eyes of many Hong Kongers, a shadow government pulling strings behind the scenes.

That building houses the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government, Beijing's official representative body in Hong Kong. On paper, its functions sound bureaucratic: coordinate exchanges between Hong Kong and mainland China, facilitate communication, handle Taiwan-related issues. In practice, critics allege it operates as something far more consequential—a parallel power structure that reviews political candidates, orchestrates elections, and shapes what appears in Hong Kong's newspapers.

The story of the Liaison Office is really the story of Hong Kong's gradual transformation since the 1997 handover from British to Chinese rule—a transformation that accelerated dramatically in recent years and now appears essentially complete.

The Xinhua Cover Story

The Liaison Office didn't spring into existence in the year 2000, when it officially opened. Its roots stretch back more than half a century, to 1947, when the Chinese Communist Party established the Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch.

Xinhua is China's official state news agency—think of it as roughly equivalent to a government-run wire service. But the Hong Kong branch served a dual purpose from the start. While it did produce news, it also functioned as Beijing's unofficial diplomatic mission to British-controlled Hong Kong. China and Britain had no formal arrangement for a Chinese government presence in the colony, so the news agency provided convenient cover.

For fifty years, this arrangement persisted. The Xinhua Hong Kong Branch was everyone's open secret—nominally a media outlet, functionally an embassy without the title. Its staff liaised with local politicians, coordinated with Beijing loyalists, and kept the central government informed about developments in a city that was technically foreign territory but culturally, ethnically, and geographically part of China.

Then came 1997. Britain's ninety-nine-year lease on the New Territories expired, and through negotiations, the entire colony reverted to Chinese sovereignty. Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, operating under the "One Country, Two Systems" framework that promised fifty years of autonomy.

With Hong Kong now officially Chinese territory, the pretense of a news agency serving as a diplomatic mission no longer made sense. In January 2000, Beijing formally separated the functions. The news operations stayed with Xinhua. Everything else—the political liaison work, the coordination with local allies, the reporting back to Beijing—transferred to a new body with an unwieldy official name: the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The Four Pillars of Beijing's Presence

Understanding the Liaison Office requires understanding its place in a broader structure. Beijing maintains four official agencies in Hong Kong, each with a distinct mandate.

The Office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs handles Hong Kong's external relations—anything involving other countries flows through this channel. The People's Liberation Army Hong Kong Garrison provides military defense, maintaining troops in the city though they rarely interact with civilian life. The Office for Safeguarding National Security, established in 2020, handles the enforcement of the controversial national security law that criminalized much of Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement.

And then there's the Liaison Office, whose official functions sound almost mundane by comparison: facilitating economic, educational, scientific, and cultural exchanges; helping mainland departments manage Chinese investments; liaising with Hong Kong residents and reporting their views to Beijing.

But these anodyne descriptions mask what critics describe as a far more interventionist reality.

The "Second Government" Concept

In the years after the 2003 protests—when half a million Hong Kongers marched against a proposed national security law, shocking Beijing with the scale of public discontent—the Liaison Office's role expanded significantly. It established new departments focused on police affairs and community organizations. It adopted what observers described as a harder line toward pro-democracy politicians.

The most revealing articulation of this expanded role came from an unlikely source: one of the Liaison Office's own senior officials. Cao Erbao, director of the office's Research Department, wrote that Hong Kong had transitioned from being ruled by one entity to being ruled by two—the Hong Kong government and what he called "a team of Central and Mainland authorities carrying out Hong Kong work."

This "second government" concept caused considerable alarm when it became public. Here was a Beijing official essentially confirming what critics had long alleged: that the Liaison Office didn't just communicate with Hong Kong—it governed alongside the ostensibly autonomous local administration.

The same Cao Erbao would later become embroiled in controversy himself. During the contentious 2012 Chief Executive election, he reportedly telephoned Gabriel Leung, the Director of the Office of the Chief Executive, to pressure him to slow an investigation into a conflict of interest involving the Beijing-favored candidate, Leung Chun-ying. The allegation sparked outrage among both pro-democracy activists and the business community, who saw it as blatant interference in Hong Kong's internal affairs.

Election Engineering

The Liaison Office's electoral involvement has been its most controversial function. Critics allege it operates as a sophisticated political machine, vetting candidates, mobilizing voters, and coordinating campaigns—all while officially having no role in Hong Kong's domestic politics.

The pattern established itself early. In late 2001, the office coordinated support among pro-Beijing elites for Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's reelection bid. Jiang Enzhu, then director of the Liaison Office, openly backed Tung. A member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference—a mainland advisory body—later said he felt pressured to join the campaign, fearing that any non-cooperation would be reported to the Liaison Office.

The interference became more overt in subsequent years. Before elections for Hong Kong's deputies to the National People's Congress—China's legislature—the Liaison Office allegedly circulated "recommendation lists" to voters. James Tien of the Liberal Party criticized this practice publicly. Martin Lee of the Democratic Party went further, calling the office a "shadow government" that meddled in elections at every level.

The 2012 Chief Executive election marked a particularly aggressive intervention. The office, operating from its Sai Ying Pun headquarters, lobbied Election Committee members to support Leung Chun-ying. It allegedly pressured the sixty members of the Agriculture and Fisheries Subsector to nominate Leung, ensuring he could enter the race. When Leung won, he drew criticism for making a high-profile visit to the Liaison Office the very next day—a gesture many interpreted as acknowledging who really determined the outcome.

This is when the phrase "Sai Wan Party" entered Hong Kong's political vocabulary. It referred not to an actual political party but to a loose grouping of politicians perceived as backed by the Liaison Office—candidates like Priscilla Leung, Paul Tse, Regina Ip, Junius Ho, and Eunice Yung, all of whom won their elections with what observers described as coordinated support.

Vote Allocation

Perhaps the most remarkable allegation concerns vote allocation. In Hong Kong's proportional representation system, where multiple candidates from the same political camp compete for seats, splitting votes inefficiently can mean the difference between winning several seats and winning none.

During the 2016 Legislative Council election, reports emerged that the Liaison Office had been actively "allocating" votes—directing supporters to specific candidates to optimize the pro-Beijing camp's seat count. Elizabeth Quat, Gary Chan, and Eunice Yung were reportedly beneficiaries of this coordination. The office also allegedly directed votes to Christine Fong in hopes of defeating Leung Kwok-hung, a prominent pro-democracy figure competing for marginal seats.

This kind of coordination requires extraordinary organizational capacity. It means not just endorsing candidates but actually directing thousands of individual voters to cast ballots for specific people based on complex calculations about vote distribution. Whether the Liaison Office truly possessed this capability—and whether such vote allocation actually occurred—remained matters of dispute. But the allegations themselves revealed the extent of distrust toward the office among democracy advocates.

The Media Empire

Beyond elections, the Liaison Office extended its influence through Hong Kong's media landscape. Through a subsidiary company called Guangdong New Culture Development, it controlled three pro-Beijing newspapers: Ta Kung Pao in Wan Chai, Wen Wei Po in Aberdeen, and Commercial Daily in Kowloon.

But newspapers were just the beginning. In 2015, Hong Kong's Next Magazine revealed that the office had taken control of Sino United Publishing, a company that dominates over eighty percent of Hong Kong's Chinese-language book publishing market. This single entity operates fifty-one retail bookstore outlets across the territory through familiar chains—Commercial Press, Joint Publishing, Chung Hwa Book Company, and Cosmos Books. It owns nearly thirty publishing houses.

The implications were staggering. When one entity controls what gets published, distributed, and sold in a city's bookstores, it shapes the boundaries of acceptable thought without needing to ban anything outright. Books that might embarrass Beijing simply don't get shelf space. Authors who might cause problems don't find publishers.

In January 2021, reports emerged that the Liaison Office planned to go further still—creating a state-owned cultural enterprise spanning publishing, news, film, television, arts, and culture. The venture would reportedly be managed by the office's secretary general, Wen Hongwu. This represented nothing less than an attempt to consolidate control over Hong Kong's entire cultural output.

Intelligence Failures and Internal Turmoil

For all its influence, the Liaison Office has not been immune to embarrassment. Its most spectacular failure came in 2003, when it completely misjudged Hong Kong's mood.

The office had backed Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's push to implement national security legislation under Article 23 of Hong Kong's Basic Law. This was the same legislation that would eventually pass in 2020 under far more draconian conditions—but in 2003, it was supposed to be enacted through Hong Kong's own legislative process.

The Liaison Office reportedly assured Beijing that the bill would pass without significant opposition. This assessment proved catastrophically wrong. On July 1, 2003, approximately five hundred thousand people took to the streets in the largest protest Hong Kong had seen since the 1989 demonstrations following the Tiananmen Square massacre. The government was forced to shelve the legislation indefinitely.

Critics attributed the intelligence failure to the office's insularity. Its staff spent most of their time with pro-Beijing elites, business leaders, and loyalist politicians—people who told them what they wanted to hear. The office naturally produced "over-positive reports" on the situation in Hong Kong because its sources were themselves disconnected from popular sentiment.

Beijing's response was swift. Multiple deputy directors were removed and replaced. Then came an even more damaging revelation: a spy scandal involving the leaking of confidential Liaison Office information to British intelligence agents. The exact details remain murky, but the episode suggested serious internal security failures at an organization meant to safeguard Beijing's interests.

A Building Under Siege

Since 2010, the Liaison Office building itself has become a focal point for protest. Its Sai Ying Pun headquarters transformed into a symbolic target—the physical manifestation of Beijing's influence that demonstrators could actually march to and confront.

The most dramatic confrontation came on July 21, 2019, during Hong Kong's massive anti-extradition bill protests. Protesters surrounded the building and defaced the Chinese national emblem mounted on its facade—an act that drew sharp condemnation from the government and Beijing. The image of that vandalized emblem became one of the defining visuals of the 2019 uprising.

The building also made news for more mundane reasons in October 2020, when an employee tested positive for COVID-19. The case highlighted an unusual privilege: Liaison Office staff were exempt from Hong Kong's quarantine requirements for arrivals from mainland China, being classified as government officials. The infected employee had arrived from Shenzhen and gone about his business for weeks before testing positive, potentially exposing both his coworkers and residents of his apartment building—itself owned by the Liaison Office—to the virus.

The New Normal

Following the 2019 protests and Beijing's subsequent imposition of the National Security Law in 2020, the Liaison Office's public posture shifted. Where it once operated through behind-the-scenes coordination, it now issued open directives.

When four pro-democracy lawmakers were expelled from the Legislative Council in November 2020, the office released a statement declaring that "the political rule that Hong Kong must be governed by patriots shall be firmly guarded." This "patriots only" principle would soon be enshrined in law, with Beijing restructuring Hong Kong's electoral system to ensure that only candidates it deemed sufficiently loyal could even run for office.

The office condemned the pro-democracy camp's 2020 primary elections—an attempt by opposition candidates to coordinate their campaigns—as potentially illegal. It singled out legal scholar Benny Tai, one of the primary organizers, accusing him of "evil intentions" and causing harm to Hong Kong society. Tai would later be arrested under the National Security Law and sentenced to ten years in prison for "subversion."

In February 2021, reports emerged that the office had instituted a point system for members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, awarding points for writing pro-government opinion pieces and social media posts. The gamification of political loyalty might have seemed absurd in another context. In the new Hong Kong, it was simply how things worked.

By April 2022, the transformation was complete. When Election Committee members gathered to choose Hong Kong's next Chief Executive, the Liaison Office met with them directly and informed them that Beijing had approved only one candidate: John Lee, a former security official who had overseen the crackdown on pro-democracy protests. The pretense of competition was abandoned. Lee ran unopposed and won.

The Double Name

There's one final detail worth noting about the Liaison Office, something that appears in official documents but rarely gets discussed: under China's system of "one institution with two names," the Liaison Office also operates as the Hong Kong Work Committee of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

This dual identity reveals something important. The Liaison Office isn't merely a government agency—it's simultaneously an organ of the Chinese Communist Party itself. The distinction matters because the Party and the state, while deeply intertwined in China's system, are theoretically separate structures. Government officials answer to government superiors; Party members answer to Party superiors.

By maintaining both identities, the Liaison Office can operate through either channel as circumstances require. When it needs to present itself as a government body engaged in legitimate intergovernmental coordination, it can do so. When it needs to exercise Party discipline over Communist Party members in Hong Kong—including many of the city's most prominent pro-Beijing figures—it can do that too.

The arrangement also explains why the office's influence extends so far beyond its official functions. It's not just liaising on behalf of a government. It's advancing the interests of a political party that claims total authority over Chinese society—a party that, since 1949, has never tolerated meaningful political competition.

What the Office Reveals

The Liaison Office matters not because it's uniquely powerful, but because it embodies a particular approach to governance. It operates in the space between official authority and informal influence, between public statements and private pressure, between what rules technically permit and what power actually allows.

In the early years after the handover, this ambiguity served a purpose. Beijing could influence Hong Kong's direction while maintaining plausible deniability about interference. The "One Country, Two Systems" formula could be nominally preserved even as its substance eroded. Hong Kong's freedoms could be gradually circumscribed without any single dramatic rupture.

The Liaison Office was perfectly designed for this gradual approach. It was present but unofficial. Influential but deniable. Everywhere and nowhere.

That era is now over. The National Security Law, the restructured electoral system, the imprisonment of opposition leaders—these represent an overt assertion of control that no longer requires the Liaison Office's characteristic subtlety. When Beijing can simply disqualify candidates it dislikes and arrest those who organize against it, the elaborate machinery of vote allocation and behind-the-scenes lobbying becomes almost quaint.

Yet the Liaison Office remains, its staff reportedly reshuffled so that half the employees at headquarters have no previous connection to Hong Kong. What role it plays in this new dispensation—whether it becomes less important now that overt control has replaced covert influence, or whether it adapts to serve new functions—remains to be seen.

What seems certain is that the building in Sai Ying Pun will continue to loom large in Hong Kong's political imagination. For many residents, it represents the moment their city changed—not when the National Security Law passed or when the protesters were arrested, but earlier, gradually, through years of quiet interference from an office that officially existed only to facilitate communication and exchange.