The recent pondering of incumbent CY, plus Carrie, John Tsang, Regina and Tsang Yok-sing as possible next Chief Executive overlooked Antony Leung. He had dropped off the radar in recent months, in the manner of one who has better things to do. But, almost instantly, the former Financial Secretary reappears, heading up some sort of think-tank proposing education reforms.
The main impression is that the Hong Kong education system is so antiquated that unremarkable and obvious ideas come across as exciting and radical. Apparently, it has not yet occurred to local universities to interview prospective students…
When reporters ask, Antony naturally says this publicity-seeking is nothing to do with wanting to be CE. They should put the question differently: “Wouldn’t you agree that anyone wanting to be CE must be mentally deranged?” The answer would be far more telling.
Antony Leung’s presence in the list of possible-next-CEs makes little difference. He is a remote and not-very-popular reminder of the Regina-era under CH Tung. Beijing will choose whoever it wants regardless of how much or little they wave their arms and shout Me! Me! Me! For some reason, Tsang Yok-sing sees fit to deny this indisputable fact. But the alternative is that the Chinese Communist Party would delegate authority to any other entity – in this case a dolt-and-shoe-shiner-packed panel of 1,200.
The jockeying for attention in the meantime may not always be what it seems. It could be that some of the hopefuls are pretending to appear to want the job because Beijing’s officials have told them to. There are no limits to the self-absorbed and malevolent or simply pointless micro-management that can come out of the Liaison Office.
Could the Y-20 possibly look anymore like a Boeing C-17?? Apart from the Russian engines and vastly inferior payload, it is an exact copy.
‘When asked again yesterday if he will run for the post, Tsang told the public to “wait and see,” adding that no one will know the answer until the very last moment.’
Translation: “Look, guys, Beijing hasn’t even told anyone who’s ‘running’ yet, let alone who’s going to win, so we’re all hedging our bets and treading water until they tell us what we’re supposed to think.”
As to the “Wouldn’t you agree that anyone wanting to be CE must be mentally deranged?” question, that would probably yield the most interesting facial expressions, but I still doubt you’d get a straight answer from any of the sycophants until someone tells them what the right answer is.
@mjrelje
Yes, it would look much more like a C-17 if they hadn’t cut and pasted the nose of the IL-76 on to the front (presumably to avoid the IP case).
Unless the laws of physics are to be changed or there is some huge advance in some field of aeronautical engineering, all military transports will follow the same pattern: high wing, wing mounted engines, T tail.
Same applies to cars – any car designed with the aid of a wind tunnel will look like roughly like any other car designed in a wind tunnel.
C160, C130, C17, Il76, A400, Y20…
Tesla Model S, Audi A6, Jaguar XF…
@Jason90 — true enough, but the PRC does have quite a few other offences to be taken into consideration: J-11 (Su-27), J-15 (Su-33), J-20 (F-22), J-31 (F-35), Z-10 (AH-64) to name but a few.
Add to that rather damning record the 2011 case of Dongfan “Greg” Chung, a Boeing & Rockwell aerospace engineer from California, who was sentenced to 24 years for spying for the PRC and stealing more than 250,000 documents from Boeing and Rockwell, including designs for the C-17 Globemaster III, which he handed to the PRC in 2006. Which is — by a strange coincidence — the same year Xi’an Aircraft Industrial Corporation began building the Y-20…