Two Fridays ago, the annual National People’s Congress convened in Beijing to rubber-stamp the Chinese Communist Party’s policies. Unfortunately for Hong Kong, restructuring the city’s electoral process topped the agenda.
Clues had come in a recent speech by Xia Baolong, the head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office. Xia stressed that all three branches of the Hong Kong government – executive, legislative, and judicial – must be run by “patriots.” He also called for implementing “patriotism” in Hong Kong’s official requirement for public servants, so that it can be better enforced in the future.
Last week, China’s rubber-stamp parliament approved those changes, as expected. (The Hong Kong government is now debating them, though this process is expected to be a formality.)
