A senior Chinese law expert has said Hong Kong isn't ready for full democracy partly because the community lacks a consensus on the issue and people need better patriotic education, local media reported yesterday.
The comments were widely reported in the media because leading Chinese legal academics are believed to serve as the spokesmen for the communist leadership.
The remarks were made on Thursday at a conference in Beijing about Hong Kong's mini Constitution, or "Basic Law." by legal scholar Wang Zhenmin (
"I believe Hong Kong can achieve universal suffrage one day. But we need to conduct research and measure carefully how to approach it," the South China Morning Post quoted Wang as saying.
Wang, deputy dean of Tsinghua University's law school in Beijing, also said Hong Kong needs an anti-subversion law. The measure originally drew intense opposition when officials tried to initiate it in 2003, reported Ming Pao Daily News.
He said there was a lack of civic education that inspires patriotism, the Post reported.
Wang also said Hong Kong's political culture needed to be more mature, the pro-Beijing Wen Wei Po reported.
He said the legislature's defeat of the government's political reform package last year was a sign that Hong Kong wasn't ready for greater reform.
Pro-democracy lawmakers defeated the bill because it didn't include a timeline for when Hong Kong would become democratic.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS