Chief Executive candidates must 'back one-party system'

Advocates of an end to one-party rule and separation of powers in China are regarded by Beijing as confrontationists, a Hong Kong lawmaker on Wednesday quoted an unspecified mainland official as saying.

Michael Tien Puk-sun said he learnt these details from a mainland official who met with Hong Kong pro-government politicians in a seminar on Sunday, where Beijing’s criteria for candidates wishing to run for Hong Kong’s chief executive in 2017 were discussed.

Tien, a member of the Legislative Council and vice-chairman of the pro-government New People’s Party, did not identify the official. He said he telephoned the official after Sunday’s meeting, which Tien participated in.

In Sunday’s closed-door seminar in Shenzhen, Qiao Xiaoyang, chairman of the Law Committee under the National People’s Congress, told about 40 Hong Kong legislators that people who insist on confronting the central government are ineligible candidates for the position of chief executive.

Qiao’s remarks appeared to be an attempt to set the tone for an increasingly intense debate on how Hong Kong will introduce universal suffrage as the method for electing the chief executive in 2017. In previous elections the chief executive was elected by a chief executive election committee dominated by pro-Beijing politicians and business people.