Hong Kong’s public officers including government permanent secretaries and the head of the electoral commission should go through scrutiny by a new panel to ensure they are loyal to Beijing and have no right of abode overseas, a Beijing loyalist has proposed.Maggie Chan, a Hong Kong deputy to the National People’s Congress, is planning to table her proposal to the national rubber-stamp legislature during its annual meeting in Beijing starting Thursday.

The NPC and mainland China’s top advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, will gather from Thursday till March 11 to discuss a range of issues including economic recovery from COVID-19, China’s relations with the United States, as well as Taiwan and Hong Kong.

As part of a major overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system to ensure that “patriots” rule Hong Kong, Beijing is expected to drastically cut or even remove 117 seats held by Hong Kong district councilors from a 1,200-strong panel that selects the city’s chief executive. The councilors have been elected by popular vote and are predominantly pro-democracy.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam will leave Hong Kong for Beijing via Shenzhen this Thursday to attend the opening ceremony of the NPC meeting the following day, the government announced on Tuesday.

Lam will stay in Beijing until returning to Hong Kong on Sunday, and be accompanied by Eric Chan, her office’s director and secretary-general of the committee for safeguarding national security. The government however did not give further details about whether Lam would meet any mainland officials during her trip.

A group of Hong Kong delegates to the national legislature and top advisory body on Tuesday arrived in Shenzhen for COVID-19 tests, before boarding a charter flight for Beijing on Wednesday.

One of the delegates, Ip Kwok-him, appeared to be supportive of Chan’s proposal. Even though district councilors would be required to take oaths to pledge their allegiance to the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, there needed to be further measures to ensure that they “love China,” he said before leaving for Shenzhen.

They should undergo scrutiny of any speeches and acts they had made in the past to determine whether they had been hostile against Beijing, Ip said.

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