'HK To Come Up With Its Own Democratic System'

A leader of Beijing's top think tank on Hong Kong on Tuesday said the SAR will not adopt the mainland's democratic system or that of the West, but a new version that fits the territory's capitalist model.

Wang Zhenmin, vice-president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, told a forum in the capital that anti-China forces, backed by foreign countries, had led Hong Kong on a "deviated path" of democracy, but now Hong Kong is back on track and on the "correct path".

"The Hong Kong SAR's democracy is directed by the central government. But Hong Kong's democracy won't adopt the mainland's model, it won't be mainlandised. But of course I personally think there is a lot to learn from whole-process people's democracy," the Tsinghua University law professor said.

"Anyway, Hong Kong's democracy, under One Country Two Systems, won't be Western- or mainland-style, but it will be a new Hong Kong-style capitalistic democratic system."

Xu Ze, the think tank's chief, said the city would be in chaos if its democratic system could not ensure "patriots administering Hong Kong". He said problems in the past were down to society lacking a consensus on major political and legal issues, and some people even distorted the SAR's constitutional order to spread "fallacies".