U.S. Republican Representative Chris Smith of New Jersey speaks to VOA after a U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing in Washington, April 30, 2015. (M. Lipin/VOA)
Michael Lipin
May 09, 2015 6:36 PM
A U.S. lawmaker is encouraging Hong Kong legislators to veto electoral rules proposed by Beijing.
In a recent interview with VOA, New Jersey Republican Representative Chris Smith said he supports a threat by Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers to block the Beijing-backed reforms, which would allow all voters in the autonomous Chinese territory to choose their chief executive for the first time in 2017, but only from a limited pool of candidates.
The 27 pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong’s 70-seat Legislative Council, or Legco, have said the reforms do not give voters a “genuine” choice of leaders and have vowed to prevent the package from securing two-thirds Legco approval, a threshold required for it to become law.
Hong Kong’s No. 2 official, Carrie Lam, said last week that the city’s election system could be reformed further, but only if Legco first allowed the current proposals to take effect for the 2017 chief executive race.
Smith encouraged the pro-democracy lawmakers to remain steadfast.
“The history of pro-democracy movements, whether in Eastern Europe or in Asia, has shown that you can’t accept a bad deal in the hopes that someday a better deal will emerge,” he said. “It’s not going to happen. The Hong Kong people have got to be very wary of that kind of offer.”
Certifying autonomy
Smith said the bill that he authored last November and reintroduced in February is designed to help Hong Kong people get a “better deal” in terms of their electoral system.
The Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act calls for the U.S. secretary of state to prove that Hong Kong is “sufficiently autonomous” from Beijing to deserve ongoing special ties to the United States, separate from U.S.-China relations as a whole.
Smith and other U.S. lawmakers see Beijing’s proposed restrictions on Hong Kong elections as a violation of its pledge to Britain to grant Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy after 1997.
Without annual U.S. reviews of that pledge, Smith said, Hong Kong’s human rights will deteriorate in the same way as those of mainland China after the United States stopped annual reviews of Beijing’s most-favored-nation trade status in 2001.