Launching the coalition alongside 12 pro-Beijing figures introduced as its core members, Tung said part of the group’s remit would be to protect Hong Kong from protest chaos.

“The opposition has resorted to all means to seek mutual destruction, such as attacking the police with petrol bombs, and making remote bombs,” he said.

“They damaged mutual interests of Hong Kong, and pushed the city to the edge of a cliff. If they want to destroy the future of Hong Kong, we won’t let them succeed.”

Tung also accused opposition lawmakers of abusing their power, obstructing the government’s work by filibustering in the legislature, and allowing external forces to undermine China’s progress on the pretext of democracy and human rights.

“It’s most outrageous to see some opposition figures begging the United States to intervene in the affairs of Hong Kong and China, and to impose sanctions on the city,” he said.

“Such acts have seriously violated the Basic Law and touched the bottom line of the principle of ‘one country, two systems’,” said Tung, the city’s first postcolonial chief executive from 1997 to 2005.

Among the 1,545 members of the coalition are six of the 10 richest Hongkongers as listed by Forbes earlier this year and some of the city’s best-known business leaders.

They include Li Ka-shing, founder of CK Asset Holdings and CK Hutchison Holdings; Li’s sons Victor Li Tzar-kuoi and Richard Li Tzar-kai; Sun Hung Kai Properties chairman and managing director Raymond Kwok Ping-luen, as well as New World Development chairman Henry Cheng Kar-shun.

Also signed up are former officials Andy Tsang Wai-hung, the ex-police chief, former secretary for justice Yuen and Gabriel Leung, who was undersecretary for food and health before becoming HKU’s dean of medicine and an adviser to the government on handling the epidemic.

City University’s Way Kuo was the only one of Hong Kong’s 11 university chiefs not to join.

Leung Chun-ying, who was Hong Kong’s chief executive from 2012 to 2017, said the coalition would make use of its network to help university graduates find jobs, internships and volunteer work so they would not “stay idle”.

“Some employers said they should not hire university graduates this year because some were involved in illegal protests. But I do not agree. I believe most youngsters are against violence and mutual destruction,” he said.

But Leung shunned the question on whether the coalition would help supporters of anti-government protests last year.

The coalition planned to mobilise its membership to deliver 10 million masks, made in Guangdong province, to the community in the coming weekend, Leung said.

Under the article, the city must enact national security legislation focused on treason, secession, sedition and subversion, but a bill stalled in 2003 after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in opposition.

“It’s not our task to introduce any particular legislation to resolve any particular law and order issue, but we work for the common good of Hong Kong as a whole,” the pro-Beijing veteran Tam said.