The starting point of discussion on Hong Kong's political development must be the Basic Law's stipulation that the SAR will ultimately have a chief executive and all members of its legislature elected by universal suffrage.
As the South China Morning Post pointed out in its editorial yesterday, the issue is not whether, but when, Hong Kong people should be allowed to choose their leaders through the ballot boxes.
Hong Kong already has a free press, an independent judiciary, the rule of law, and a largely clean and corruption-free civil service, i.e. all the elements of a liberal democracy. The only missing, and arguably most important, element is an electoral arrangement that allows the people to choose their favourite candidates to run the government.
In his interview with the Post, Vice-Premier Qian Qichen expressed the central Government's desire for Hong Kong to proceed slowly towards the goal of universal suffrage, hinting that the SAR should not go too far ahead of the mainland in terms of political development.
But we would argue that under the policy of 'one country, two systems', Beijing has already allowed Hong Kong to operate under a different set of social, political and economic systems, namely capitalism.
A liberal democracy with an electoral system based on universal suffrage is part and parcel of capitalism, and an essential element of its elaborate mechanism of checks and balances.
