Top advisers to Beijing ramp up calls for overhaul of Hong Kong’s political system

Beijing’s top advisers on Hong Kong affairs have ramped up calls for an overhaul of the city’s political system, citing loopholes posing threats to national security and amplifying the official line that only patriots should be put in public office.

A day after it ran extensive comments from former liaison office legal affairs director Wang Zhenmin, state news agency Xinhua on Friday published an interview with Basic Law Committee member Han Dayuan, a law professor at Renmin University in Beijing, who said that social unrest had erupted in Hong Kong over the past two years because authorities had failed to ensure the city was governed by patriots.

“In considering whether an electoral system needs improvement, we need to examine whether it has provided an effective safeguard for the nation’s security,” Han was quoted as saying. “If an election was insecure, it would not only affect the operation of the country’s political system, but also pose a risk to the country’s overall security.”

Also on Friday, Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole delegate on the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, wrote in an article that the city’s political system had to be reformed, and that China’s top legislative body was responsible for resolving new problems that the city could not tackle on its own.

The principle of “patriots governing Hong Kong” originated with a 1984 declaration by late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who described the precept of loyalists making up the bulk of the city’s administrators as a bottom line of its postcolonial governance.