Politburo put seal on HK political reform deal

The Politburo Standing Committee, the Communist Party's highest body, endorsed the Democratic Party's plan to allow three million-plus Hong Kong voters to elect candidates for five new functional constituency seats in 2012 at a special meeting in the early hours of June 19.

A person familiar with the central government's handling of the talks with the Democrats confirmed the Politburo's involvement and said Peng Qinghua , director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, played an active role in convincing state leaders to concede to Democrats' demands.

Confirmation of the Politburo's participation shows that managing political change in Hong Kong is a top priority for the central government.

While the debate about political reform in Hong Kong is largely ignored in national media and rarely captures international attention, it is the only forum where Beijing is drawn into a discussion about democracy and representative government. Beijing now finds itself in a challenging position where it must accommodate pressure for political liberalisation in the nation's most affluent and open city while continuing to harshly suppress demand for similar reform in the rest of the country.

The fact that key decisions about Hong Kong's political development are taken at the highest level is also a reminder that Beijing is determined to avoid a repeat of the unexpected mass protest of July 1, 2003, that effectively unseated then chief executive Tung Chee-hwa.

The person familiar with the talks said that during a meeting with Peng on June 15, Chief Executive Donald Tsang Yam-kuen gave his analysis of the repercussions if the political reform package was vetoed by the Legislative Council.