English Quiz 172

(English Quiz 172)

1. Anywhere else, such setbacks would not harm someone's political reputation for long. But Hong Kong is such a can-do town of winners that just a couple of reversals can be magnified to give you a loser's image. Tsang's supporters say his retreats are a sign of pragmatism. "He is bold and determined," says Choy So-yuk, a Legislative Council member from the pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB). "In areas like West Kowloon, he knows when to give up when facing public opposition." Yet for an official who declared in his first policy address that his goal was "strong governance," giving up doesn't strike the right tone. "Politically, Donald is more compromising and accommodating than Tung, which is good," says Ma Ngok, a political scientist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "But that doesn't meet the public's idea of strong governance."
Q: 試翻 "Yet for an official ... strike the right tone."

2. To be fair, the blame for a lack of sparkle in Tsang's administration so far cannot be laid solely at his door. Hong Kong's system is intended to have a strong Chief Executive, but the top official cannot be a member of a political party, which means that he has to build support from parties with often competing agendas, like the pro-business Liberal Party and the DAB, which champions Hong Kong's working class. Some believe that limiting the Chief Executive election to just an elite 800, who in turn are selected by only about 200,000 voters in various sectors and industries, robs Hong Kong's leader of the mandate that would come from being chosen in a direct, Hong Kong-wide ballot. "It's very much the structure of the system," says Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution who is a student of Hong Kong. "This is what happens when you're stuck halfway."
Q: 試翻 "Some believe that ... wide ballot."

3. Tsang's boosters say that the best is yet to come, and point to his great strength: he's popular. With approval ratings consistently in the mid-60s, Tsang does not lack for support. "He's pretty good," says Johnny Lau, 35, an advertising worker taking a cigarette break beneath a campaign billboard for Alan Leong. In Mongkok, on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong harbor—and one of the most densely populated tracts of land on the planet—Rex Lau, 37, who is working in a bicycle-repair shop, echoes the sentiment. "Donald Tsang is doing okay," he allows. But then he adds a rider. "But he basically listens to what people in China want. It's like you have a say, but you don't really."
Q: 試翻 "Donald Tsang is doing okay ... you don't really."