has to be a municipal plan approved by the respective people’s congresses. In this
sense, human rights are more protected in society by administrations.
Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan
After the sovereign handover of Hong Kong and Macau, constitutional develop-
ment in the ‘special administrative regions’ has been a new part of China’s consti-
tutional scholarship.^27 The relationship between the Chinese mainland and
Taiwan also concerns many Chinese constitutionalists.^28
Hong Kong
In the past ten years, the major constitutional contestation in Hong Kong has
centred on the issue of ‘universal suffrage’. Fortunately, the relationship between
Hong Kong and Beijing has not been damaged by potential divergences. So far,
both the Chief Executive and the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (HKSAR) have been elected in accordance with two annexes
of the Basic Law of the HKSAR and the decisions of the Standing Committee of the
NPC. The Chief Executive is elected by an 800 -member election committee
that shall be composed of four groups: 200 from industrial, commercial and
financial sectors; 200 from the professions; 200 from labour, social services, religious
and other sectors; and the last 200 members of the Legislative Council, representa-
tives of district-based organisations, Hong Kong deputies to the National People’s
Congress, and representatives of Hong Kong members of the National Committee
of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.^29 The ‘functional-
constituency’ system also applies to the Hong Kong Legislative Council.
The sixty-member legislature of Hong Kong consists of around one-half members
from functional constituencies, the other half returned by geographical constitu-
encies through direct elections (seeTable 6. 1 ).
On 11 July 2007 , the HKSAR government published a governmental Green
Paper to call for open consultation, especially concerning when universal suffrage
(^27) There are a number of works dedicated to studying Hong Kong’s constitutional law:
Michael Davis,Constitutional Confrontation in Hong Kong(New York: St Martin’s Press,
1990 ); Peter Wesley-Smith,An Introduction to the Hong Kong Legal System(Oxford:
Oxford Unviersity Press, 1998 ); Yash Ghai,Hong Kong’s New Constitutional Order: The
Resumption of Chinese Sovereignty and the Basic Law(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, 1999 ); Hualing Fu et al.,Interpreting Hong Kong’s Basic Law: The Struggle for
Coherence(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 ).
(^28) The question apparently has attracted international concern. See Stephen Allen, ‘Recreat-
ing “one China”: internal self-determination, autonomy and the future of Taiwan’ ( 2003 ) 4
Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law 21. Bruce Gilley, ‘Not so dire straits’
( 2010 ) 89 Foreign Affairs 44.
(^29) The Hong Kong Basic Law, Annexi.