ABSTRACT
Introduction Hong Kong is a rather unique case in the discussion of democracy/democratization in East Asia. In the first place, it is not a sovereign state, but a special administrative region under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC, HKSAR), which has pledged to maintain a high degree of autonomy in the territory in the SinoBritish Joint Declaration of 1984. It has an ‘executive-led’ system of government meaning that power is highly concentrated in the Chief Executive, and the selection process is tightly controlled by the Chinese leadership, as well demonstrated in the election in 2012. The legislature, to a certain extent, plays an effective checks and balances role, as new legislation and financial appropriations must be approved by the Legislative Council. However, the electoral system was designed so that the pro-democracy camp cannot secure a majority of seats, despite the fact that it often manages to secure about 60 per cent of the votes in the direct elections to the legislature. Most academics categorize Hong Kong’s political system as a hybrid regime with varying levels of democracy in various political institutions. At the same time, there is a common understanding inside and outside the territory that unless there is genuine democracy in China, there can be no real democracy in Hong Kong. Theoretically, Hong Kong therefore offers an interesting example of how soft authoritarianism works, and what are the general challenges ahead. This chapter traces the political development in Hong Kong and, in the next section, identifies its salient features. The third section attempts to explain the apparent theoretical contradictions, and the last section considers the challenges ahead in the context of the demands for change.
