As Hong Kong Chooses Its Next Leader, China Still Pulls the Strings<br />By ALAN WONGMARCH 23, 2017<br />HONG KONG — For the fifth time in the two decades since this former British colony’s return to Chinese rule, Hong Kong’s next chief executive<br />will be selected on Sunday by a committee stacked with supporters of the Chinese government rather than by a free election.<br />Hong Kong said that There’s absolutely no regret.<br />Ms. Lam is loyal to the Chinese Communist Party "but more skillful" politically than Leung Chun-ying, the deeply unpopular incumbent chief executive,<br />said Chan Kin-man, an associate professor of sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who helped organize the 2014 protests.<br />Nathan Law said that The proposal would have given the election false legitimacy, and the chief executive a false mandate,<br />Hong Kong news outlets reported that Beijing conveyed its backing for Ms. Lam to dozens of Hong Kong electors in February when Zhang Dejiang, the chairman of China’s Parliament<br />and the head of a group overseeing Hong Kong affairs, met with the electors in the neighboring mainland city of Shenzhen.<br />Mr. Law, the student protester who went on to become the youngest legislator in Hong Kong history, began his speech by saying<br />that he would never be loyal to a "regime that murders its own people," presumably referring to China.<br />As paradoxical as it may sound, the pro-democracy activists insist they were right to oppose Beijing’s offer to allow for a direct popular vote<br />for the chief executive, Hong Kong’s top official, saying it would have been a sham anyway, with a pool of candidates approved by Beijing.
