Hong Kong is 'ready for democracy', says top US scholar
Top scholar says universal suffrage is a generic model that Hong Kong is ready to adopt due to rule of law, civil society and election experience
One of the world's leading academics on democracy has poured scorn on a top mainland official's warning that Hong Kong should not copy Western models of universal suffrage.
Professor Larry Diamond, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University in the US, said: "It is ridiculous to argue that the generic system of democracy - in which the people can choose their leaders and replace their leaders in free and fair elections - is a Western model.
"Every country that adopted democracy for the first time was adopting a 'foreign' model."
Diamond was mentor to Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee when the lawmaker and executive councillor did her master's degree thesis at Stanford several years ago.
He was responding to remarks last week by Zhang Dejiang , head of the National People's Congress and the top official in charge of Hong Kong affairs, amid the city's consultation on the election method for choosing the chief executive in 2017.
The No 3 on the Politburo was quoted by a local NPC deputy as saying Hong Kong should not import an electoral system from abroad because the city would not "adapt" to it and it might become a "democracy trap" that causes a "disastrous result".
Diamond said: "Beijing has the power to impose constraints on the election process in Hong Kong. But it does not have the right to redefine what democracy is and is not."