By: Josephine Chen
Baptist University of Hong Kong
Summer Intern 2001

Since the reversion of sovereignty to the People\u2019s Republic of China, Hong Kong has had a number of controversies surrounding its electoral arrangements. The second election of the post of Chief Executive (CE) to be held in March 2002 is the latest controversy. This paper will first provide a brief summary of the history of electoral arrangements in Hong Kong. It will then attempt to explore the CE election process by examining the nature and composition of the Election Committee, which elected 6 legislators for the 2000-2004 Legislative Council in September 2000, and which will elect the CE in 2002, to test a hypothesis that the 2002 CE election will not attract candidates unless the current CE does not run. The by-election in September 2001 for the vacated Election Committee seat seems to confirm the hypothesis. The paper ends with some observations.

Hong Kong will witness the second election of its Chief Executive (CE) in March 2002. The electorate is made up of the 800 members of the Election Committee (EC). The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region\u2019s first CE, Tung Chee-hwa, is expected to stand for election again and is widely tipped to win although up until August 2001, he has yet to announce his candidacy. However, it appears that he has already started his re-election campaign. Furthermore, the race next year may only have one horse since no other person has indicated that he or she would stand against Tung.

In the run up to the return of sovereignty to China, the last British colonial Governor, Christopher Pattern, initiated a series of electoral reforms in Hong Kong. For example, he lowered the voting age from 21 to18 and introduced a more representative legislature to Hong Kong in 1995. Out of a total of 60 seats, 20 were returned by direct, geographically based elections; and an electoral college made up of directly elected District Board members returned 10 legislators. Of the remaining 30 functional constituency seats, a key aspect of the Patten reforms was to turn 9 of them into large, general constituencies, making all adult members of the working population eligible to vote.

The Legislative Council (LegCo) returned in 1995 was regarded as the most democratically elected legislature in Hong Kong\u2019s history. However, the legislature elected in 1995, which should have served till 1999, straddling the transition in 1997, did not survive as China felt that the electoral reforms did not reflect Sino-British agreement. China then began to make its own arrangements for the transition.

It set up its own Preparatory Committee (PC) in December 1995 to oversee the transition in accordance to China\u2019s interpretation of the Sino-British agreement and the Basic Law. The PC had 150 members, among them 56 Mainland members, 94 businessmen on good terms with

China, and politicians from Hong Kong. Businessmen accounted for 64.9% of the Hong Kong representatives.1The PC established a 400-member Selection Committee (SC) (61.5% of them were businessmen)2 to \u201cselect\u201d the first CE as well as members of a Provisional Legislature (PL) to take over on 1 July 1997. The SC chose people to sit on the PL supportive of China\u2019s position, which served until April 19983. The PL again had an overwhelming number of business elites (61.7%).4 One of its key tasks was to pass electoral laws to elect the HKSAR\u2019s first elected legislature in 1998.

The emphasis China and Britain placed on economic rewards may be the major reason why businessmen were and still are always given much influence in the territory\u2019s political institutions. After all, Hong Kong is the quintessential business town. So it is not an exaggeration to say that there are vested interests between business elites and the Government.

From the British perspective, they wanted to maintain a stable and prosperous Hong Kong that could enable Britain to reap huge benefits. Throughout British rule, local business elites were appointed onto the Executive and Legislative Councils so that they could help to promote and defend government policy. As 1997 approached, Britain realised that China was a huge market, which she could not afford to lose. Britain was willing to adopt a conservative stance towards democratisation of Hong Kong. China, on the other hand, did not want to see a sudden acceleration of political liberalization in Hong Kong for fear that it may stimulate demand on the Mainland. China preferred to emphasize economic development and identified the business elites as those it needed to get on side in Hong Kong.

According to the Basic Law, the CE is the head of the HKSAR, who shall be elected by a \u201cbroadly representative\u201d EC and appointed by Beijing5, serving a five-year term and for not more than two consecutive terms. In 1997, the 400-member SC selected the first CE whose term ends in June 2002. An 800-member EC that \u201cbroadly represents\u201d the community is responsible for selecting the 2nd term CE in March 2002.

(1) 200 from the industrial, commercial and financial sectors;
(2) 200 from the professions;
(3) 200 from labour, social services, religious and other sectors;and

(4) 200 from members of the LegCo, representatives of district-based organizations, Hong Kong deputies to the National People\u2019s Congress (NPC), and representatives of Hong Kong members of the National Committee of the Chinese People\u2019s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

2Ibid.
3 Legislators in the democratic camp boycotted the PL.
4 Sing Ming, The Handover of Hong Kong and the Retrogression of its Democratic Developmentin

In 1998, the EC was \u201celected\u201d to \u201celect\u201d 10 members of LegCo. In the September 2000 election, a new 800-member EC \u201celected\u201d 6 members of LegCo.6The current EC has a 5-year term. With one of the 6 legislators, Ng Ching-fai, resigning in July 2001, a by-election is to be held in September 2001.7Thus, before the CE election in March 2002, there would be two occasions to observe how the EC works \u2013 once with the September 2000 election for LegCo, the other with the by-election in September 2001.

If one examined the composition of the EC in 1998, it can be seen that it is the political caucus representing the privileged few in Hong Kong \u2013 businessmen, professionals and people who are part of China\u2019s political institutions. Of the 800 seats, 137 were reserved for members of the PL and China\u2019s political institutions in 1998\u2019s EC. Businessmen, professionals, legislators and members of China\u2019s political institutions accounted for 75% of EC voters. The rest were made up of labour, social and religious groups. There were about 140,000 eligible voters in the EC election in 1998, in which 23.4% of them voted for the 800 member committee8. It should be noted that since some seats were ex-officio, such as legislators and members of China\u2019s political institutions, no voting was needed for them.

The Basic Law provides that reform for the method for selecting the CE shall be \u201cin accordance with the principle of gradual and orderly progress. The ultimate aim is the selection of the Chief Executive by universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee.\u201d9 The timing for change is uncertain.

In May 1998, Hong Kong witnessed its first post-transition LegCo election after reunification with the Mainland. Whilst the composition of the seats was the same as in 1995, the electoral method was changed substantially. Here below is a comparison of the two legislatures:

Functional constituencies (FC) returned half of the seats, but in 1998 the arrangement differed vastly from the one in 1995. The voting population was drastically reduced in the 9 widely based FCs and even with the other 21 FCs. It has been estimated that more than 2 million voters were removed from the electoral rolls.10The number of eligible voters was less than 200,000. In other words, the electoral base for the 1998 election was a lot narrower than the one in 1995. The FC system of election essentially provides business and the professions with disproportionate influence on the electoral process in Hong Kong.