Hong Kong protests won’t force China’s hand over allowing city to become ‘sovereign democracy’, former city leader CY Leung says
- In a speech at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, former chief executive accuses ‘dark forces’ of being behind anti-government movement
- Hitting out at the West, he says Hong Kong has been an easy proxy and soft target to be used against China
Mass protests even by hundreds of thousands of people will not force China’s hand to grant Hong Kong full autonomy to become a “sovereign democracy”, the city’s former leader said on Thursday.
“I think it’s extremely senseless and irresponsible … to think that by bringing hundreds of thousands of people onto the streets of Hong Kong, somehow China’s hand can be forced, so that we can have full autonomy without China’s involvement, that we can have a local democracy that has all the hallmarks of a sovereign democracy,” former chief executive Leung Chun-ying said.
Beijing has “reserved powers” under the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, to be involved in the process of selecting Hong Kong’s leader, whatever the method of election, Leung added during a talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. The city could be led by a mayor, he said, but a mayor would then enjoy very limited powers, or the jurisdiction could exist under the current arrangement of a high degree of autonomy. But that power was derived from the additional mandate of the central government, he stressed.
“If we want to have our cake and eat it, by changing to universal suffrage as the method of selecting the chief executive without Beijing’s approval, or electing and then installing the chief executive without giving Beijing the right [to reject], that for all intents and purposes is secession. “The ‘umbrella movement’ in 2014 wanted exactly that. Now, the last of the five demands of the black-clad movement is a repeat of the same,” he said.