For a city as sophisticated as Hong Kong, to be discussing the merits of indirect elections and functional constituencies (FCs) as an alternative to universal suffrage seems absurd. No other community as prosperous and pluralistic as Hong Kong in today’s world is burdened with such a relic of 19th century imperialism as a substitute for a directly elected legislature. For Hong Kong’s post-colonial government to engage at Beijing’s behest in public consultations on reforming rather than abolishing FCs has all the intellectual attractions of a discussion of the merits of the abacus over the computer in modern banking.

Hong Kong...

Since 1979, when China began its economic reform, Hong Kong has had a key role in the reintroduction of capitalism to the Mainland by providing investment and management. The ‘one country, two systems’ policy was devised to enable the post-1997 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to keep its ‘previous capitalist system and way of life’ for 50 years.¹

The capitalist system that operates in Hong Kong, understood by the central authorities² to be ‘the original capitalist system’³ that must be maintained, is the colonial model which evolved from that reflecting the interests and objectives of the 19th century colonialists....

Functional constituencies have had a long and controversial history in Hong Kong. Even after the British had conceded the right to democracy and directly-elected legislatures throughout the rest of their Asian empire,¹ they were not ready to extend universal suffrage to Hong Kong, a reluctance that was to be shared by China’s leaders. The British preference was for indirectly-elected functional constituencies, which were introduced originally during the first decade of colonial rule. They were still proving politically convenient to both London and Beijing in the final decades of the 20th century and remained a major feature of the political system...

The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (LegCo) uses an electoral system known as functional constituencies (FCs) to elect half of its members. The system confers a right to vote on a small percentage of the adult population based on membership or registration in a recognised social, economic, industrial, commercial, political advisory, or professional body or sector. Geographical affinity within the region plays no role in determining the electorate of an FC. A unique feature of the system is the conferral of voting rights on incorporated and unincorporated bodies alongside individual voters. The system of FCs runs...

This chapter¹ explores the functional constituency (FC) system from the perspective of its legislators and elections. FC legislators are a rare breed because of their origins in a unique electoral system. Candidates must satisfy many eligibility preconditions in order to qualify for FC election. One of the most important preconditions, which applies to all but 12 of the FCs, is the requirement that the candidate be of exclusively Chinese nationality. An analysis of legislators’ backgrounds since 1985 provides fruitful insights into the nature of the FC system. FC legislators are predominantly well-educated, middle-aged Chinese men who have established themselves in...

From a legal and constitutional standpoint, the system of functional constituencies (FCs) in the Legislative Council (LegCo) as presently established is inconsistent with provisions of the Basic Law which expressly import the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or ICCPR. As such, the governments of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are under existing legal and constitutional obligations to rectify this inconsistency as soon as possible. One route towards satisfying these obligations would be to broaden substantially the franchise of the LegCo FCs, while at the same time...

In a first in Hong Kong political studies, the Hong Kong Transition Project (HKTP) and Civic Exchange have compiled a comprehensive picture of functional constituency voters.¹

The key findings of this comparative voting sector research are that Hong Kong’s increasingly contentious politics appear to be strongly connected to feelings of unfair influence stemming from the grossly inequitable voting power between functional constituency (FC) seats and geographical constituency (GC) seats, as well as extremely disproportional power, franchises, and election processes among FC seats. At the same time, and in seeming contradiction, many support special influence for the educated and well-off, though...

In October 2004, Civic Exchange commissioned the authors to conduct a study of the roles of functional constituency representatives (FRs¹) in social policy making in Hong Kong between 1998 and 2004. This chapter reports on the findings of the study.

As a two-pronged approach has been adopted to understand and capture the dynamics in social policy making, this report is organised accordingly. Part I reports on a quantitative study which assesses the degree of participation (taken to be proxy for degree of interest and concern) of functional representatives in social policy deliberations and decision making. Part II reports on the...

This chapter examines the influence of the 30 Legislative Councillors elected by functional constituencies on key elements of economic policy during the 2000–2004 session, as evidenced, mainly, by their stances taken in debates within the Legislative Council (LegCo) chamber.¹

On balance, functional constituency (FC) members are found to have pressed, first and foremost, their constituency interests, and secondarily, in the case of those who were members of political parties, their party’s line, which was in many cases, especially in respect of the Liberal Party, close to the constituency position. Only a third of FC members appeared to express, to...

It is not the first time this sort of thing has been heard from Hong Kong’s tycoons. They say that Hong Kong is different from other places because it is an ‘economic city’² and, therefore, political models used elsewhere do not apply to Hong Kong. Those arguing this point of view insist that in Hong Kong, business must have an appropriate representation and any attempt to unseat the business constituency through universal suffrage is a dangerous distortion of the local political reality.

Hong Kong is about business, but this does not make it different from any other city. Every city...

We, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, view certain developments in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China (HKSAR) with great concern, in particular, the regressive interpretations of the Basic Law by the central government of China in April 2004 by which it pre-empted the question of whether there is a ‘need to amend’ the Basic Law regarding the election of the chief executive in 2007 and the Legislative Council in 2008, the manner in which such interpretations were delivered, and the barrage of intimidating personal attacks by the central government against the pro-democracy...

Governments are indispensable for all societies. They form an important framework within which we all live and work. The quality of government affects the quality of our lives and well-being. Governments have power to make laws, collect taxes, issue money, defend the territory, conduct foreign relations, keep public order, punish crime, arbitrate, allocate resources, provide public services, and regulate all kinds of social and economic activities. It is often said that a government has the monopoly on coercive power. However, no government could operate effectively if coercion was needed to conduct daily public affairs. Stable governments require a solid foundation...