[1] The chairman of the drafting committee was Ji Pengfei, the 8 vice-chairmen were Xu Jiatun, firector of the New China News Agency Hong Kong Branch; Wang Hanbin, secretary general of the NPC; Hu Sheng, director of the Party Research Centre of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party; Fei Xiaotong, prominent Chinese anthropologist and sociologist; T. K. Ann, Hong Kong industrialist and member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference; Y. K. Pao, Hong Kong shipping tycoon; Fei Yimin, publisher of Ta Kung Pao, member of the NPC and member of the Legal Commission under the NPC Standing Committee; and David K. P. Li, chairman of the Bank of East Asia.
[citation needed] Ann and Pao also represented the Shanghai and Li the Cantonese factions, the two most important business groups in Hong Kong.
Besides the pro-Beijing figures, there were also members from various sectors as part of the Chinese Communist Party's united front strategy and also to show the BLDC represented different interests in Hong Kong.
The inclusion of Lee and Szeto was in line with the united front practice of offering membership to a small number of vocal critics so they could be controlled through the rule of procedures.
[3] The groups were on the Relationship Between the Central Authorities and the HKSAR; Fundamental Rights and Duties of Residents; the Political Structure; the Economy; and Education Science, Technology, Culture, Sports and Religion.
[4] The conservative business sector preferred a combination of the functional constituency and electoral college while the liberals wanted all or substantial number of members elected directly through universal suffrage.
[4] Lo's proposals resulted in a dual system of voting in the Legislative Council which strengthened both the executive and functional members.
[5] In 1988, Louis Cha, an influential author and publisher of Ming Pao, and also the co-convenor of the BLDC panel on constitutional structure proposed his so-called mainstream model which was against the early introduction of direct elections for both Legislative Council and Chief Executive.
Some regarded Cha's maneuver as a conspiracy and front of the anti-direct election coalition of Beijing, business conservatives and leftist organs.
[6] The pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong held a month-long hunger strike protesting the passage of the mainstream model.
[8] The Hong Kong Journalists Association demanded Cha resign from the BLDC in order to avoid a conflict of interest.
[7] The competing models for political structure in the Basic Law are listed as follows:[9] The debate was intensified by the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, which reinforced the liberals' view of the imperative of democracy, while it gave additional ground to conservatives to oppose it, as provocative to the new sovereign.
[4] Little attention was paid to the views conveyed through the BLCC when the BLDC met to finalise its proposals, but focused on small number of largely conservative suggestions.
The Chinese legal experts resisted it as they claimed that the vesting of residual powers in Hong Kong was inconsistent with its status as a local administrative region within the unitary state.
Martin Lee argued that the power of interpretation should be vested in the Hong Kong courts, not the NPCSC as the original draft of the Basic Law had provided.
[13] The Hong Kong courts were also excluded from their purview any executive acts of the central government by a provision in the original drafts.
Two members of the Drafting Committee, Louis Cha and Peter Kwong resigned after the PRC government imposed martial law on 20 May 1989.