Thousands of people marched through Hong Kong yesterday to mark a decade under Chinese rule by demanding universal suffrage.

But President Hu Jintao, making his first visit to the former British colony, urged loyalty to the motherland and offered no timetable for democracy. It was left to Donald Tsang, the Chief Executive, wearing his trademark bow-tie, to repeat his promise to move towards giving each of Hong Kong’s seven million people a vote during his five-year term. “We will develop a system that is more democratic,” he said.

The thousands who joined what has become an annual demonstration on the July 1 anniversary of the handover left little doubt over what

they wanted. Crowds snaked through the city waving banners and chanting “One man, one vote”. Mr Hu did not witness the march; he had left for home after a visit timed to avoid any overlap.

Under Hong Kong’s Basic Law, its mini-constitution drawn up as part of negotiations between Britain and China for the handover, the territory is pledged to introduce universal suffrage in elections for its chief executive — although no timetable was specified. The chief executive is currently elected by an 800-member election committee that is pro-Beijing.

Hong Kong inched towards wider democracy in the first years after the handover. In a multiparty vote, pro-democracy parties swept elections for the 20 seats to be chosen by the public in the 60-member Legislative Council. Members for the other seats are selected by mostly pro-Beijing interest groups. Two years later the pro-democracy camp was returned as the largest single group in elections for the 24 seats open to public vote.

Beijing’s commitment to the Basic Law was dealt a severe blow in 2003 after it put pressure on Tung Chee-hwa, then Chief Executive, to introduce anti-subversion legislation. China’s Communist rulers were stunned when half a million people marched through the city on July 1 that year to protest against the proposed Bill. The legislation was shelved.

Beijing, anxious about its grip on the territory and similar ideas seeping into the mainland, ruled in March 2004 that it could veto any changes to Hong Kong election laws. The following month China’s legislature barred popular elections for the chief executive until after this year and put a stop to the gradual increase in the proportion of legislative seats chosen by the public.

Mr Tsang, who took office when Mr Tung resigned after a rebuke by President Hu for his administration’s performance, has promised to sort out the controversy. The pledge has led to expectations that the chief executive could be popularly elected by as early as 2017.

Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Oxford, said that Beijing would be in no hurry to bring in universal suffrage. He said: “They aren’t reassured that, in the chaos of democracy, there is a semblance of sanity.”

Then and now

— Hong Kong’s postboxes, once as red as those in any British city, have been replaced with the green ones used on the mainland

— Mandarin, of little use in British Hong Kong, is taking its place beside Cantonese and English as a common language

— Once barely able to enter across a tightly guarded border, ordinary Chinese citizens are now pouring into the territory in huge numbers

— Banks now accept the yuan

Source: Times research

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