China law scholar gives Hong Kong conditions for democracy

An influential Chinese legal expert has listed six reasons why Hong Kong isn't ready for universal suffrage, including insufficient patriotic education, the South China Morning Post reported on Friday.
Wang Zhenmin - known as one of the "guardians" of Hong Kong's post-handover constitution, the Basic Law - also said the territory's lack of national security legislation, as required by Article 23 of the Basic Law, also showed it was not ready.
Three years ago, the Hong Kong government was forced to shelve proposed security laws after over half a million people in a city of less than 7 million took to the streets in opposition.
The Basic Law, which took effect when Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, says the territory will ultimately have universal suffrage for the chief executive and the legislature, but does not lay out a timetable or specific conditions.
Although many - some say most - people in Hong Kong want universal suffrage as soon as possible, the Communist leadership in Beijing has refused to allow Hong Kongers or the city government to decide on the timetable or conditions.
The views of Wang, a deputy dean of the Tsinghua University law school, have in the past generally reflected the official line. However, Beijing so far has been less explicit about the conditions for Hong Kong to have full democracy.
He said the defeat of an electoral reform package proposed by Chief Executive Donald Tsang late last year showed that Hong Kong was not prepared for full democracy.
Pro-democracy legislators said the reforms did little to advance the political system toward democracy. Wang said it showed a lack of necessary consensus over democratisation. "The failure [of the reform plan] is not a healthy indicator of the city's political and democratic development," the newspaper quoted him as telling a conference in Beijing.
Xu Chongde, another legal expert from the mainland, said universal suffrage could be implemented only when it could guarantee a "patriotic" winner.
"If anyone today could ensure that the [chief executive] selected through universal suffrage is a patriot, then I would suggest introducing universal suffrage today," he said.
Xu lumped Taiwan's independent-leaning President Chen Shui-bian in with Hitler and Italian dictator Mussolini as "experts at inciting people's emotions" in elections, and said most US presidents have been lacklustre.