Transcript of remarks by CS at media session (with photo)

The Chief Secretary for Administration, Mrs Carrie Lam, and the Mayor of Shenzhen, Mr Xu Qin, co-chaired the Hong Kong/Shenzhen Co-operation Meeting at the Central Government Offices, Tamar, this morning (February 29) and met the media afterwards. Following is the transcript of remarks by Mrs Lam at the media session:

Reporter: Mrs Carrie Lam, I actually have two questions for you. The first one is regarding the Express Rail Link. It's now at the bottleneck, so is it out of the Government's expectation, and what is the impact of such on the co-operation with Shenzhen? And the second one is, currently Mr Michael Tien is planning to raise Lee Bo's case in next month's National People's Congress. So what is the role of Government in such progress? Is the Government still working to secure Mr Lee's safety as well as his rights? Thank you.

Chief Secretary for Administration: Well, on the two issues, on the Express Rail Link, the Hong Kong section, as you will know, we are still trying to seek funding support from the Legislative Council Finance Committee. We did not manage to get a vote last Saturday, but the Secretary for Transport and Housing will continue to pursue this with Legislative Council, and I do appeal to our pan-democratic members in the Legislative Council that this is such an important piece of infrastructure that we need their co-operation in order to meet the economic and livelihood benefits that I have just mentioned in response to the first question. It does not have sort of any adverse impact on our co-operation with the Shenzhen Government. I think the Mayor fully understands the difficulties that the Hong Kong SAR Government is facing in getting this funding application through the Legislative Council, but we of course will try our very best to adhere to the latest schedule that we have committed to.

As far as the Honourable Michael Tien's suggestion or his own agenda that he will put to the National People's Congress, of course I cannot speak on his behalf, except to say that the Government remains concerned about the incident involving the booksellers, and our enforcement authorities, notably the Police Force, will continue to communicate with the relevant authorities in the Mainland.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)

Monday, February 29, 2016