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Hong Kong's chief executive has set out the course towards limited electoral reform in his report to Beijing, arguing that mainstream opinion opposes the direct nomination of leaders.
The report (pdf) from Leung Chun-ying said members of the public were eager to see the implementation of universal suffrage for the election of the next chief executive in 2017. Currently the leader is chosen by a 1,200-strong committee stacked with Beijing loyalists.
But pro-democracy campaigners say the move to one person, one vote is not meaningful if an elite nominating committee picks candidates in the first place.
"People are very worried that the nominating committee will be manipulated by the powers that be … It's an empty election if voters do not have genuine choice and a certain group of candidates are excluded," said the Democratic party chair, Emily Lau.
The political temperature has already risen in Hong Kong, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets for a pro-democracy march this month, and 800,000, more than a fifth of the city's electorate, having taken part in an unofficial referendum on how the next chief executive should be elected.
The activists who organised that vote, Occupy Central with Love and Peace, have pledged to occupy the financial district in a peaceful civil disobedience campaign unless reforms meet international standards.
The former British colony returned to China in 1997 and is run under the "one country, two systems" framework, granting it considerable autonomy. But Beijing's recent publication of a white paper on the region increased concerns that freedom of speech and judicial independence were being eroded.
Leung's report to China's NPC standing committee follows a five-month public consultation. The committee meets next month and must approve any reforms before another round of consultation in Hong Kong.
He said "mainstream opinion" was that under the Basic Law – the mini-constitution drawn up by China and Britain at the handover – only a nominating committee, not the public, had the power to put forward candidates. He said the community agreed that the chief executive should be someone who "loves the country and loves Hong Kong".
Lau noted that while she loved both, the authorities' definition of patriotism was unlikely to include people like her.
Steve Tsang, director of the China policy institute at Nottingham University, said: "The power of realpolitik is that no person elected chief executive in Hong Kong will want a confrontation with Beijing or challenge its authority or question its legitimacy. It simply will not happen. But the party does not want to have to accept that when it can guarantee that there won't be any change."
Some suggest the party is concerned about longer term political shifts and the risk of contagion if people on the mainland begin to wonder why they cannot choose their leader like compatriots in Hong Kong.
The paper avoids giving a clear indication of what outcome is favoured in terms of the make-up of the nominating committee, what proportion of it must support a candidate and whether the number of candidates will be capped. Those factors are likely to be key to determining the narrowness of the field.
"I would describe Beijing's policy on Hong Kong as flexibility within an extremely rigid framework of Chinese sovereignty, the pre-eminence of the Communist party and no one challenging its legitimacy and authority in China as a whole," said Tsang.
That meant, he suggested, conflict could yet be contained. "I'm seeing a very slow-motion train crash about to happen, but we have not yet got to the point where it can't be stopped."
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