1994 Hong Kong electoral reform

The bill secured a dramatic narrow passage after surviving Liberal Party Allen Lee's hostile amendment by one vote 29 to 28 and was eventually passed with the support of the pro-democracy camp.

Within these declarations, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be under the direct jurisdiction of the Central People's Government and shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except foreign and defense affairs.

[4] The British Government thus strengthened its resolve to quicken the pace of democratisation, in order to honour its obligation to the Hong Kong people and gracefully retreat from the colony.

To some observers, these personnel changes signaled that the British government was unhappy with its two prominent officials on Hong Kong affairs and how Sino-British relationship was proceeding.

[5] When Chris Patten arrived, the Legislative Council (LegCo) was composed of only 18 directly elected seats from the Geographical Constituencies (GCs), 21 Functional Constituencies (FCs) mostly selected by the powerful elite groups in Hong Kong, 17 members appointed by the governor, 3 ex officio members (namely the chief secretary, attorney general, and financial secretary) and the governor himself as the President of the LegCo.

The proposal included:[7] In this way, Patten extended the definition of functional constituencies and thus virtually every Hong Kong subject was able to vote for the so-called indirectly elected members of the Legislative Council.

[1][2][3] The Chinese government treated Patten's unanticipated top-down reforms as a tactic by Western countries to subvert its political system incrementally.

The Director of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, Lu Ping, labelled Patten as "Sinner of a Thousand Years" (Chinese: 千古罪人) at a press conference.

Zheng Guoxiong, Xinhua Hong Kong's deputy director said that: Patten insisted on confrontation by putting forward his reform proposals.

[10]Zhou Nan, the director of the Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong called the Patten proposal "triple violations": More and more Hong Kong people have realised that Patten's political reform package is in serious violation of the Joint Declaration, the Basic Law and the previous agreements reached by Chinese and Britain.

That control had already declined after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre in which pro-democracy activists won a historic landslide victory in the 1991 legislative first direct elections on a wave of "anti-China" sentiment.

[8] The three pro-democratic parties in the Legislative Council, the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK), Meeting Point (MP), and the Association for Democracy and People's Livelihood (ADPL) mostly supported the Patten proposals, even though the United Democrats complained that the reform was too timid to bring real democracy to the Hong Kong people when the proposals were first announced.

[14] Meeting Point later abstained in the amendment moved by Emily Lau as it thought any infringement of the Basic Law would enrage the PRC government and result in instability and the dismantling of the installed political structure.

The conservative Business and Professionals Federation of Hong Kong, led by tycoon Vincent Lo issued a statement in favour of "convergence" with the Basic Law and against the proposals.

[15] Cradock stood firmly against Patten and criticised him on many occasions, blaming him for damaging the planned road-map which had been endorsed by both the British and Chinese governments.

The two sides held seventeen rounds of talk on the electoral arrangements of the 1994 District Boards and 1995 Legislative Council but failed to reach agreement.

[20] The Sino-British negotiations effectively came to an end when Douglas Hurd wrote to Qian Qichen that Britain had decided to present the Patten proposals to the Hong Kong Legislative Council for scrutiny.

Although it was seen by some that such a body was necessary in order to prepare for the transition of sovereignty, the row over the Patten proposals enabled Beijing to issue a warning that unilateral action would result in the setting-up of a "second stove" and, when it was formed, to say it was an unfortunate product of British confrontation.