HONG KONG (AFP) — Pro-democrats Sunday condemned China's move to delay the direct election of Hong Kong's leader until at least 2017, while a Taiwanese official said the decision showed reunification remained impossible.
One of Hong Kong's leading democracy campaigners, Martin Lee, said the proposals were "full of blanks" and contained no concrete details.
"I do not see Hong Kong with genuine democracy in 10 years more or 20 years more. It is just a mirage," the founder of the Democratic Party, told AFP.
Albert Chan, a lawmaker with the League of Social Democrats, said the democracy movement needed to adopt a more radical approach and called for a campaign of non-cooperation, with a blanket vote against all government bills.
"We need to disrupt our administration and force them to rethink the consequences of depriving Hong Kong people's political rights," he said on local broadcaster RTHK's "Letter to Hong Kong."
"Without changes, in another 20 years, we will be still waiting for democracy, but this time, in our grave," he said.
Beijing's announcement Saturday to give a tentative green light to the election of the former British colony's chief executive in 2017 was the clearest indication yet of the city's political future.
But the move ignored chief executive Donald Tsang's admission in a report earlier this month that the public expected the leader to be elected by universal suffrage in 2012.
Currently, the chief executive is chosen by an 800-member committee of mainly pro-Beijing representatives of business and professional groups.
More than 1,000 protesters marched through the city Saturday to condemn the announcement, which sparked a rare reaction from Britain. Foreign Secretary David Miliband called the move "a disappointment."
The English-language Sunday Morning Post said some comfort should be taken from the move, but conceded there would be some frustration at the delay.
"But it is tempered by a silver lining in the decision, and should now be put aside in favour of following a clear path that has opened up towards democratic development," it added.
Timothy Wong, from the Chinese University's Institute of Asia-Pacific studies, said the move could act as a model for reform in mainland China.
"Compared with democratic elections in western countries, the election of a chief executive by universal suffrage would be a better reference for democratic reform on the mainland," he said, according to the Post.
Chinese state media praised the move.
"The Standing Committee's decision ... provides a systematic guarantee of Hong Kong's political stability and development," the People's Daily said in an editorial.
However, a senior Taiwanese official said Beijing's move underlined why the island could not accept reunification with mainland China.
Tung Chen-yuan, a deputy chief of Taiwan's China policy-making body, known as the Mainland Affairs Council, said the decision sent a clear signal "that the Chinese Communist Party does not allow genuine democracy."
China, which still sees Taiwan as part of its territory, has offered reunification under the same "one country, two systems" model that the mainland operates in Hong Kong.
Universal suffrage for both the chief executive and the legislature was guaranteed when Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, but no timetable was set.
Currently, only half of the 60 legislators are directly elected, while the remaining seats are held by representatives of business and professional groups mostly loyal to Beijing.
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