'HK to play its part as China-US ties evolve'
Chief Executive John Lee said Hong Kong will leverage its distinct advantages under One Country, Two Systems, regardless of how China-US relations evolve in future. Lee was speaking ahead of the weekly Executive Council meeting, one day after talks in Beijing between President Xi Jinping and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. "I hope there will be a positive development in the relationship between our country and the US," he said. "But in this process, I will be, of course, ensuring that all the advantages and opportunities that Hong Kong faces and enjoys will be capitalised fully.  "And I wish everyone of us in Hong Kong will do the same as when we go out to different parts of the world to tell the good Hong Kong stories, to create extra opportunities for our economic development and growth, and bring all opportunities to reality." In his meeting with Blinken on Monday, Xi said Beijing and Washington have made progress and reached agreement on certain issues. The president said China always hopes to see a sound and steady relationship with the US, and that the two countries should remain committed to the understandings he and his US counterpart Joe Biden reached in Bali last year. Josef Gregory Mahoney, a professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University in Shanghai, told RTHK he's hopeful that bilateral ties would improve further. "We did see one concrete agreement on returning to cooperation over fentanyl... we hope this is going to set a model for a series of meetings between high-level officials over the summer, other key cabinet members coming to meet their counterparts perhaps in Beijing or meeting them elsewhere, and that we might see actual progress on more substantive issues between the two countries," he said. Mahoney also said less US provocation towards China is key to better ties. "The problem has never been so much about what the US says, but what it actually does," he said. "And China made it clear during this meeting that Beijing believes that the US is the responsible party for the unstable relations."