shall be applied to Hong Kong elections after 2007. The options are 2012 , 2017 or
after 2017 for the election of the chief executive, and 2012 , 2016 or after 2016 for the
Legislative Council. The Green Paper also gives a list of options to change
the ‘functional-constituency’ system. The chief executive submitted another report
to the Standing Committee of the NPC to seek a decision. Upon receiving the
report from the chief executive, the Standing Committee of the NPC decided that
the method of the 2012 election of the Hong Kong Legislative Council shall not be
altered at that moment, but the Standing Committee accepted that in 2017 the
chief executive could be elected through universal suffrage.^30 The Standing Com-
mittee of the NPC has also allowed for a change in the method of election of the
Chief Executive and the formation of the Legislative Council, on condition that
the number of members of functional constituencies and of the geographical
constituencies must be the same.
Another constitutional issue is the implementation of Article 23 of the Hong
Kong Basic Law. This issue derives from the Chinese leadership’s concern.
Chinese former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping famously opposed the idea that
Hong Kong may allow people to attack the Party by deeds, especially to ‘convert
Hong Kong into a base’ to oppose the mainland or to overthrow the socialist state.
31
Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law prescribes:
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its
own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion
against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to
Table 6. 1 Composition of the Legislative Council of the HKSAR
The Legislative
Council
Functional
constituencies
Geographical
constituencies Others
Term 1 ( 1998 – 2000 ) 30 20 10
Term 2 ( 2000 – 4 ) 30 24 6
Term 3 ( 2004 – 8 ) 30 30 0
Term 4 ( 2008 – 12 ) 30 30 0
Term 5 ( 2012 – 16 ) 35 nominally/ 30
substantially
35 nominally/ 40
substantially
0
(^30) Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress on Issues Relating to
the Methods for Selecting the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region and for Forming the Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region in the Year 2012.
(^31) Deng Xiaoping, ‘Speech at a meeting with the members of the Committee for Drafting the
Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’, inSelected Works of Deng
Xiaoping(Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1995 ).