After returning to academia earlier this year, Professor Anthony Cheung Bing-leung, Research Chair Professor of Public Administration at The Education University of Hong Kong, launched two books under the title 《不能迴避的現實》 (The Inevitable Reality), inspired by the movie An Inconvenient Truth, on 10 July 2018. The books review and reflect on major housing and transport policies, respectively, during his five-year tenure (2012-17) as Secretary for Transport and Housing of the HKSAR Government.

Apart from providing an open record of his personal experience and observations as a policymaker, Professor Cheung also hopes that his narration will help society better understand the complexities of public policy in the real world. In practice, policy choice is always constrained by legacies and path dependence, rational and irrational factors, partisan and local community politics, administrative considerations, as well as other paradoxical situations.

Professor Cheung covers various controversial topics in his books, such as the affordable housing crisis, demand-management measures imposed on the property market, the 2015 excess-lead-in-water incident in public housing estates, the delay and cost overrun of the Express Rail Link Hong Kong section, the three-runway system for the Hong Kong International Airport, the MTR Corporation’s performance, and taxi reform and Uber, among others.

To learn more about the books, please visit:

• 《不能迴避的現實──回顧任局長五年的房屋政策》: https://www.chunghwabook.com.hk/Index/book_detail.html?id=2319
• 《不能迴避的現實──回顧任局長五年的運輸政策》: https://www.chunghwabook.com.hk/Index/book_detail.html?id=2318