Illogical for foe of Beijing to be chief executive, Qiao Xiaoyang says

The Beijing official whose remarks at the weekend sparked fears that pan-democrats would be screened out of the chief executive election in 2017 cited a Hong Kong newspaper's commentary to illustrate his case.

National People's Congress Law Committee chairman Qiao Xiaoyang referred to an article in the which he said illustrated how it would be "illogical" for someone confrontational to the central government to take the top job under the "one country, two systems" principle.

This emerged when a full transcript of the remarks by Qiao on Sunday was published on the website of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong.

The article said that if Civic Party chairwoman Audrey Eu Yuet-mee were elected chief executive, she might face a dilemma on some occasions. For example, on National Day, she might have to decide whether to attend official celebrations as her predecessors did or express opposition to one-party rule along with other pan-democrats.

"By citing this article, I do not mean to judge and criticise Ms Eu's speech and actions," Qiao said. "This paragraph explicitly illustrates that under 'one country, two systems', it would be illogical for someone who confronts the central government to be the chief executive."

Responding in an online article on Yahoo!, Eu questioned why Qiao spent so much time reading commentaries and guessing the meaning behind them.