Lee spent about HK$9 million ($1.1 million) of donations on his campaign, the majority of which was shared on advertising, rallies, office rental and transportation. The majority of advertising expenditure, about HK$2 million, was allocated to social media advertising, while HK$710,000 of the funds allocated for office rent and transport was spent on security. Unused funds were donated to local charity, the Community Chest of Hong Kong, the filing said. Lee’s social media campaign before his election included Facebook and Instagram posts promoting his run for office. The posts included cartoon images with quotes and a detailed description of his proposed policies with the tagline “Brother Chiu can help you”, a reference to Lee Lee Ka-Chiu’s Chinese name. The donations came from 59 pro-Beijing business and community groups, according to local media reports. Li, who along with 11 other Hong Kong and Chinese officials are under US sanctions for his role in cracking down on dissidents in the former British colony, received the cash donations and bought three banknote counters and a safe for the cash registers. Beijing overhauled the city’s election procedures in early 2021, reducing direct representation and introducing a “patriots only” requirement, in a move critics say ensured no candidate could be elected without the support of central authorities . Under the new system, a committee of about 1,500, mostly pro-Beijing businesses and other stakeholders, chooses the city’s leader in a closed-circuit election from vetted candidates. Hong Kong’s pro-democracy political opposition has been crushed under a national security crackdown since the mid-2020s, with the vast majority behind bars pending trial, retired from public life or in self-imposed exile. Lee’s spending on social media ads was more than six times that of previous chief executive Carrie Lam’s election campaign in 2017. Lam spent about $300,000 to run her Facebook page during a closed-circuit election versus two other candidates. Lam in 2017 had raised about HK$18.7 million and spent HK$12.5 million. Under Hong Kong’s 2022 election laws, the maximum amount of spending a chief executive candidate can make during an election campaign is $17.6 million. Lee’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the donations. The former security chief, widely seen as a hardline and staunch Beijing loyalist, was sworn in as Hong Kong’s chief executive on Friday last week by Chinese President Xi Jinping on the 25th anniversary of the city’s handover from British rule to China.
