Hong Kong business elite demand 2017 universal suffrage in open letter

Dozens of the city's financial and banking high-fliers have issued an open letter to President Xi Jinping demanding universal suffrage and the protection of Hong Kong's core values.

Some have gone as far as pledging to join Occupy Central, the civil-disobedience movement that threatens to paralyse the business district where their offices are based, if the city does not get true democracy for the 2017 chief executive election.

The letter to Xi from members of the business elite - including hedge-fund managers and former Hong Kong Stock Exchange veterans - lists 10 requests including a level playing field for business, safeguarding the rule of law and universal suffrage.

"There are some of us who earn a few million bucks in US dollars per year," hedge fund manager and core group member Edward Chin Chi-kin said. "But there is much more [at stake] than money ... we hope Xi will remember the promise of one country, two systems."

The group has bought advertising space for the letter in the Financial Times, Apple Daily and Roman Catholic paper Kung Kao Po. It says: "Hong Kong's existing political system has become the stumbling block to the city's long-term social, political and economic growth, and is the root cause of social division and disharmony in Hong Kong."

The letter is addressed to Xi's office in Zhongnanhai, Beijing. Copies were also sent to the director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, Zhang Xiaoming , and Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor.