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Editors’ Note Chinese President Sends Signal Against Political Change in Hong Kong
(about 11 hours later)
An article was posted on this page before it was ready for publication. HONG KONG — President Xi Jinping of China has used a meeting with some of Hong Kong’s leading industrialists to reinforce Beijing’s unyielding position against political change in the former British colony, lending his personal authority to the government’s efforts to undermine the pro-democracy movement here and to signal to the city’s business elite that it should toe the official line.
Details of the closed-door meeting, which took place Monday in Beijing with a group of Asia’s wealthiest men, emerged as attendees returned to Hong Kong in recent days. Three participants said in interviews that Mr. Xi stressed that any political change in Hong Kong must be in strict accordance with the existing legal code, called the Basic Law. In effect, Mr. Xi ruled out demands by pro-democracy supporters that would open up the nomination system for Hong Kong’s top position, the chief executive, they said.
China regained sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 in an agreement that guaranteed the territory would enjoy considerable freedom to run its own affairs for a half-century, and the ruling Communist Party has promised to allow Hong Kong citizens to vote for the territory’s top post in 2017. But last month Beijing set down rules that ensured that only candidates acceptable to the central government would be allowed to run for election. In response, an increasingly assertive pro-democracy movement here vowed to stage sit-in protests in Central, the city’s financial district.
The meeting with Hong Kong’s tycoons, who enjoy a combined net worth of tens of billions of dollars, took place the same day that thousands of students in Hong Kong gathered on a university campus to begin a weeklong boycott of classes to protest Beijing’s position. Many plan to take part in the mass sit-in, known as Occupy Central, which is expected to start next month.
Maggie Chan Man-ki, a lawyer who is a member of a pro-Beijing political party in Hong Kong and attended the meeting with Mr. Xi, said that the Chinese president specifically mentioned the Occupy Central movement and “stressed that the political reform and development in Hong Kong should be in accordance with law and within the framework of the law, so everything that goes beyond that is prohibited and should not be encouraged.”
Ambrose Lam, the former head of the Law Society of Hong Kong, who also attended the meeting, said that Mr. Xi said political reform in the territory “should be in the format suitable to Hong Kong,” which he interpreted as a signal that Hong Kong could not adopt a Western-style democratic system because of its status as part of China.
A third participant, Patrick Lau Sau-shing, a former lawmaker, said Mr. Xi emphasized the importance of adhering to the Basic Law. Beijing considers the planned Occupy Central protests illegal and says that open nominations for chief executive would violate the Basic Law.
The meeting on Monday came as trust in the central government in Beijing among the territory’s 7.2 million people has fallen to its lowest point since February 1997, months before the transfer of sovereignty, according to a new poll. The poll, released Tuesday by Hong Kong University and conducted by telephone from Sept. 4 to 11, also showed that trust in Hong Kong’s own, pro-Beijing government had fallen to the lowest point in more than a decade.
Mr. Xi’s decision to meet with the business elite appeared to reflect a recognition of Hong Kong’s financial importance to China, as well as to signal that China’s Communist leadership was allied with business. In the official group photograph of the meeting, Mr. Xi was placed next to Li Ka-shing, head of Cheung Kong Holdings and Asia’s wealthiest man, with a fortune of $30.7 billion, according to Bloomberg.
Other Hong Kong executives attending the meeting included the Henderson Land Development chairman, Lee Shau-kee, and the Wharf Holdings chairman, Peter Woo Kwong-ching. Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong’s first chief executive after the 1997 handover, also attended.
Mr. Xi directly urged the business leaders to “resolutely oppose words and actions that would violate the Basic Law and harm rule of law in Hong Kong,” one participant, Chan Wing-kee, president of the Chinese Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong, told the pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao.
The meeting highlighted a transformation in the Communist Party’s relationship with Hong Kong. Where once its supporters helped organize workers and strikes, it now openly courts the city’s business elite. Last month Wang Zhenmin, a top Chinese academic who works closely with the government to create policy on Hong Kong, went as far as to say that democracy in Hong Kong had to be limited to protect the interests of the wealthy.
“One of the reasons people say they’re fighting for democracy is because they really feel that Hong Kong politics is run in the interest of the tycoons and the wealthy people,” said David Zweig, the director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “Here the students are out there fighting for democracy, and here is the mainland reinforcing the perception that this is rich man’s politics.”
Both Ms. Chan and Mr. Lam said that Mr. Xi emphasized to the Hong Kong business leaders that the “one country, two systems” principle that allows Hong Kong to enjoy civil liberties unheard of in the mainland was a two-way street, and that Hong Kong’s people had to formulate policies that took into account the fact that Hong Kong was part of China.
“The two systems derive from one country,” Ms. Chan said. “We have to face the reality that Hong Kong is part of China.”