The Economist explains

How Hong Kong picks its chief executives

Carefully weighted committees do the work of choosing leaders for the people

By C.C.

CHINA’s communist government has little truck with democracy. One of the few places where it does tolerate elections is Hong Kong, the former British colony that was returned to its control 20 years ago. Under a policy called “one country, two systems” the territory of 7m mostly runs its own affairs, including some elections. In 2016 2.2m Hong Kongers cast votes for representatives in the city’s Legislative Council. On March 26th another election will be held, to choose Hong Kong’s next leader—the “chief executive”—but this time just 1,194 people will be given a ballot paper. Why do so few people get to vote?

It might be said that few is better than none at all. For more than 150 years, the men who ran Hong Kong were all appointed directly by offices in London. It was only during negotiations leading up to the handover of sovereignty in 1997 that Britain and China agreed to a democratic goal for Hong Kong: that its chief executive should eventually be chosen by “universal suffrage”. In 2007 the Chinese government announced that the election of 2017 would be the first to achieve it. On August 31st 2014 China’s Standing Committee suggested a system which stuck to the letter of that agreement, but not the spirit. They proposed that every citizen would get a vote, but with a catch: the candidates must be pre-approved by an appointed committee. Hong Kong’s democratic activists argued that this would fall short of genuine universal suffrage. In 2015, after protesters had shocked the government by occupying the city’s streets for 79 days, sympathetic lawmakers voted down the proposal. So this year’s election is being held using the same system as before; no one can claim it as universal suffrage.

Whoever is picked on Sunday will become the fourth person to hold the role of chief executive. Each has been selected by electoral colleges, known as election or selection committees, which have increased in size: from 400 in 1996, to 800 in 2007 and then 1,200 in 2012, when just 689 of them plumped for Leung Chun-ying, the current chief executive. These groups are meant to be “broadly representative” of Hong Kong society and include representatives from business and finance; professionals; labour, social services and civil society; and politicians. (Had the proposed semblance of universal suffrage been put in place, some very similar committee would have been convened to screen the candidates.) Earlier in March they nominated three candidates to go through to a final vote. One is a retired judge and two are former members of the current administration.

Preparations for the vote have the characteristics of a real election. Woo Kwok-hing, the judge (pictured, right), Carrie Lam (centre), the former chief secretary, and John Tsang (left), the former finance minister, are standing against one another. Each has a manifesto, campaign team and giant billboards. The three candidates take part in debates and newspapers conduct polls to identify whom the public prefers. But China’s central government, which gets the final say, will not let the contest be guided by mere popularity. Mr Tsang is better liked by Hong Kong people but lacks the support of the party. Envoys from the central government in Beijing have reportedly been asking members of the election committee to vote for Mrs Lam. If Beijing were unhappy with the result, it could in principle refuse to appoint the winner. But it is unlikely to come to that, as the election committee has already been carefully weighted in favour of pro-establishment figures, who are expected to vote in line with the party’s wishes. So Mrs Lam can expect to win at least the 601 votes she needs to prevail. Earning a mandate to govern might require something more; any evidence of meddling from Beijing can undermine a chief executive, as Mrs Lam herself has admitted.

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