Oh, and China gets to pick who’s on that committee. But in 2014, Beijing said, sure, you can have universal suffrage, but the candidates have to be chosen by a nominating committee. Beijing said in 2007 that it would grant universal suffrage in 2017. Kin Cheung/APīut Hong Kong’s Basic Law goes a bit further, and says that the “ultimate aim” is to elect the chief executive through “universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee.”įor pro-democracy activists, this means one person, one vote. Lam was Beijing’s preferred candidate in the race. Carrie Lam, at a chief executive election campaign event in Hong Kong, on March 23, 2017. The catch? The committee is stocked with Beijing loyalists, which means whoever wins is more or less the candidate Beijing wants to win. Here’s how that works in practice: An election committee, currently of about 1,200 people, votes and selects the chief executive, who serves a five-year term. But the arrangement also gives China the power to appoint Hong Kong’s chief executive, “on the basis of the results of elections or consultations to be held locally.” The Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law say that Hong Kong is supposed to administer itself. One expert I spoke to called aspects of Hong Kong’s government “hideously complicated,” but to understand some of the protesters’ demands, it’s worth going over the basics. And, as Thatcher put it at the time, it “preserves Hong Kong’s familiar legal system and the rights and freedoms enjoyed there.” That included freedom of the press, assembly, and religious beliefs, among other rights.ĭespite the Joint Declaration’s guarantee of autonomy, which is also codified in Hong Kong’s Basic Law (the closest thing it has to a constitution), in practice, the line between the two systems has become blurrier, with the Chinese government in Beijing attempting to exert more control. It gave Hong Kong its own judicial, executive, and legislative powers. Under this arrangement, Hong Kong could maintain its economic and trade policies, designed to protect Hong Kong’s status as an international financial capital. The setup became known as the “one country, two systems” rule. The deal: China wouldn’t impose its government on Hong Kong, and Hong Kong’s “previous capitalist system and life-styles” would remain unchanged for that 50-year period. Britain agreed to return the territory to China on July 1, 1997, on the promise that China would give Hong Kong a “high degree of autonomy” for 50 years, until 2047.įormally, Hong Kong became a “special administration region” of the People’s Republic of China. In 1984, after lengthy negotiations, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping signed a Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong. As that date started to move closer, both governments tried to work out a deal.
The British government, in 1898, signed what was basically a 99-year lease for the territory, set to expire in 1997.