The View | Fight against universal suffrage is all about money

With cruelty and irony, our city's media accurately reflects the gaping divide between the oligarchs who own Hong Kong and the citizen serfs who must dwell within the walls of this city.

Every local paper either features or vilifies the Occupy insurgency and the apparent counter-insurgency being mounted against it. Then, one of our local society magazines parades a mainland family's vulgar display of wealth through a wedding in the French Riviera or a million-dollar party celebrating the first 100 days of a newborn child.

Hong Kong faces its equivalent of a constitutional crisis that will define its future. The only contributions from our government and business elites are either stern and condescending admonitions or a taunting look inside the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

At last, someone influential explained that Hong Kong and Beijing's struggle was not for democratic principles or process, but for who had the right to control Hong Kong's economy and industry. It was always about money.

Speaking in Hong Kong last week, Wang Zhenmin, a dean of Tsinghua University Law School and a former member of the Basic Law Committee who acts as an adviser to the central government, defended the plan, saying: "Less-than-perfect universal suffrage is better than no universal suffrage."

He emphasised it was important to protect the interests of the business community in the city. "They control the destiny of the economy of Hong Kong. If we ignore their interest, Hong Kong capitalism will stop."