In 1984, after more than two years of wrestling, China and the UK finally issued a joint statement deciding that China would reclaim sovereignty over Hong Kong on July 1, 1997.

In Cao Guangbiao's view, with the end of British rule in Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific, as the core enterprise of the British-owned chaebol Swire Group, will definitely be excluded after 97, and he can take this opportunity to set up an airline to seize power.

Therefore, under the active instigation and planning of Cao Guangbiao, Dragonair was officially established in July 1985. From the composition of the shareholders of Dragonair, it can be seen that Cao Guangbiao's abacus is very loud.

Since its establishment, Dragonair has vigorously advocated the revitalization of the national aviation industry. Cao Guangbiao not only brought 30 well-known Chinese businessmen from all over Hong Kong to participate in the grand event, but also invited Chinese-funded enterprises in Hong Kong such as Bank of China Hong Kong and China Merchants to enter the bureau.

His original idea was to use the "political card" to deal with the British, but instead of succeeding, this plan was self-defeating, attracting a fierce counterattack from the British authorities in Hong Kong.

Less than a week after Dragonair's official establishment, the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department suddenly promulgated the Aviation Supplement. Under the new Ordinance, Hong Kong-based airlines are required to obtain prior permission from the Civil Aviation Department (CAD) before negotiating air transport services with foreign civil aviation authorities.

Dragonair had already leased a Boeing 737 and had already agreed with a Chinese civil aviation company for charter flights in advance, and only needed to apply to the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department for a route before it could open for business.

However, the targeted patches of the Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department directly disrupted the established arrangements between Cao Guangbiao and Dragonair. Subsequently, the Civil Aviation Department of the Hong Kong Government successively rejected the application of Dragonair to open two charter flights from Hong Kong to Beijing and Hong Kong to Shanghai.

And because Cao Guangbiao played the political card from the beginning, the Hong Kong and British authorities also began to use the Sino-British aviation agreement to fight back. They believe that China not only enjoys its own rights and interests exclusively through domestic airlines, but also wants to encroach on the rights and interests that originally belonged to the British side through the Chinese-funded component of Dragonair's share capital.

As a result, under the pressure of the British Civil Aviation Department of Hong Kong, Dragonair was forced to carry out a large-scale recapitalization. All the Chinese-funded enterprises that had originally invested in the company withdrew, and Bao Yugang, who had obtained British household registration for many years, was responsible for taking over. And Cao Guangbiao himself also transferred all the shares of Ganglong held to the name of his eldest son Cao Qiyong, who has obtained British household registration.

Dragonair, which opened under the banner of the national aviation industry, has transformed into a British-funded airline in less than half a year, which is funny enough!

After the completion of the asset restructuring, Dragonair finally obtained the same qualification as Cathay Pacific Airways to operate scheduled flights. But instead of getting on track, it continues to struggle.

Because Peng Lizhi, who was the financial secretary of Hong Kong at the time, submitted a new aviation bill to the Hong Kong Legislative Council. It stipulates that a route can only be operated by one airline, and the airline that obtains the route approval first will have the exclusive right to operate.

Dragonair has just been established, and even a single route has not yet been approved. Cathay Pacific has operated more than 60 golden routes from Hong Kong to major cities around the world through more than 30 years of operation.

According to the provisions of the new aviation law, Dragonair directly lost the right to operate these golden routes, and could only apply for those remote routes that Cathay Pacific did not look at!

According to the statistics of the balance of payments of international civil aviation, a route can only be profitable if it has a load factor of more than 50%. Dragonair, on the other hand, has a load factor of only 36%, so it has been losing money since its establishment.

It can be said that the new aviation bill created by Peng Lizhi is more appropriate to call it the "Cathay Pacific Special Protection Law"!

Hong Kong's financial secretary is equivalent to China's finance minister, so why does he have the legislative qualifications? And what kind of blood feud does he have with Ganglong and Cao Guangbiao?

In colonial Hong Kong, in addition to the British authorities under the leadership of the Governor, there were two deliberative bodies, the Executive Council and the Legislative Council. Theoretically, the Legislative Council is the highest legislature in Hong Kong.

It is important to know that the legislative power is a very important right in the Western democratic-sovereign system. Only the majority party in the British Parliament is eligible to elect the prime minister and form a government. Although the president of the United States is directly elected by the voters, the parliament has the right to impeach the president.

But this is not the case at all in Hong Kong, where the Legislative Council is nothing more than a rubber stamp in name. First, both official and unofficial Members of the Legislative Council are appointed by the Governor.

In other words, if a member of the Legislative Council is disobedient, the Governor can be replaced by a more obedient person. What is even more incredible is that even if all members of the Legislative Council are unanimously opposed, His Excellency the Governor can still make and enact bills as he wishes.

The Legislative Council is not even qualified to scrutinize bills, as all bills are submitted to the Legislative Council for a vote only after they have been reviewed and approved by the Executive Council. In other words, the only role of the members of the Legislative Council is to raise their hands!

Clear-sighted people must have seen that it is the Executive Council, not the Legislative Council, that really has some legislative functions in Hong Kong. The Legislative Council was just a pretense thrown by the British, so the Governor of Hong Kong was willing to appoint celebrities from all walks of life in Hong Kong to serve as legislators, so as to give them a cloak of democracy and sovereignty for their colonial rule in Hong Kong.

In the more important Executive Council, the majority of the seats are held directly by senior executives of the British authorities in Hong Kong. Therefore, the legislative power of Hong Kong has long been firmly in the hands of a handful of high-ranking Hong Kong and British bureaucrats headed by the Governor of Hong Kong.

As the financial secretary of Hong Kong, Pang Lizhi is the third most powerful person in Hong Kong after the Governor of Hong Kong and the Chief Secretary of the Governor. At the same time, he is also an ex-officio member of the Hong Kong Executive Council, so it is natural to come up with a new aviation law.

And if you look at Peng Lizhi's past resume, you won't be surprised at all why he wants to die on Dragonair!

He joined the Swire group in 1950 and has been promoted several times since then. In 1973, he finally became Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cathay Pacific, the most important subsidiary of the Swire Group.

Prior to his appointment as Hong Kong's Financial Secretary by the Governor in 1981, Mr Pang spent 30 years with the Swire Group, seven of which were directly Chairman of Cathay Pacific.

When the Iron Lady Thatcher visited Beijing in '82, she said eloquently at a press conference: Since the opening of Hong Kong, the British government has never taken a penny from abroad.

The British Government did not take it out of its own pocket, but they only did everything possible to create the most favorable conditions for the plundering of British capital!

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