British government originally planned to give Hong Kong’s Legco a choice of reform proposals if talks with China broke down, archives show
- Frustration at the pace of negotiations with Beijing led John Major’s government to consider offering a second option more amenable to China
- The plan was scrapped in November 1993 after China became more receptive to reforms
The British government once planned to let the legislature of Hong Kong choose from both the more democratic electoral reform proposals put forward by the city’s last governor in 1992 and a revised version tabled during negotiations with China in 1993 if those talks failed, newly declassified files from London have revealed.
The plan was concluded at a British cabinet meeting on July 1, 1993, amid frustratingly slow negotiations with the Beijing government.
“If it proves impossible to reach an agreement with the Chinese, we should table the revised proposals and invite the Legislative Council to decide whether they or the governor’s original proposals should form the basis for legislation, or without offering our own amendments, leave it to Legco to decide how far the governor’s original proposals should be revised,” the minutes of the meeting quoted an unspecified official as saying.
Under governor Chris Patten’s electoral reform package, 2.7 million electors were to be given a vote in nine new functional constituencies in the 1995 Legco election. Ten lawmakers were to be drawn from elected representatives of district boards, which were renamed as district councils after 1997.
But the revised proposal put to China would have reduced the electorates for the nine new functional constituencies by two-thirds to 900,000, as six seats would have been based on Beijing’s ideas. And the 10 lawmakers would have been elected not only by district representatives, but also by functional constituency legislators, municipal council members, and rural leaders.