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Message within CPPCC chairman's remarks bears a reminder

CPPCC chief's diplomatic words about city's cross-border problems aren't purely empathy

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Yu Zhensheng. Photo: Simon Song

Reading between the lines was a technique Western analysts used to find out what the Soviet Union was really up to during the Cold War when there was a dearth of reliable information.

The analysts paid attention to the tiniest and most obscure of indications - such as the positions of Communist Party officials at parades in Moscow's Red Square and the arrangement of stories on the party newspaper's pages - to understand what was going on in Soviet politics.

Although it has been more than 20 years since the Cold War ended, reading between the lines can still help us shed light on what senior mainland officials truly think, as it may be too simplistic to take their public comments at face value.

In a closed-door meeting with Hong Kong delegates to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on March 6, Yu Zhengsheng shared his views on the parallel-goods trade in infant formula and on mainland women giving birth in Hong Kong.

Yu, who was elected CPPCC chairman last week, said these issues were not very serious problems and that he believed the Hong Kong government would handle them properly.

Yu, who served as Shanghai party secretary until last year, spoke of his experience handling tensions in that city created by people who came from other parts of the country to give birth in that city.

After the session, some Hong Kong delegates praised the state leader for his empathy for Hongkongers' grievances over similar issues the city faces.

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