China's National People's Congress decides on Hong Kong leadership election

According to a VNA correspondent in China, on August 31, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) of China passed a decision on the election of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and the method of electing the Hong Kong Legislative Committee in 2016.

Since 2017, the post of Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has been open to election. Candidates for election to this post are limited to two to three people, recommended by a broadly representative Nomination Committee, each candidate must be approved by at least half of the total number of members of the Nomination Committee.

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However, the method of electing the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region must comply with the Hong Kong Basic Law and relevant decisions of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China.

At a press conference on August 31, Mr. Li Fei, Deputy Secretary-General of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China, said that whether the election of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be carried out or not depends on whether the next three steps out of the five proposed steps will proceed smoothly, in which the most important is whether the election plan proposed by the Special Administrative Region government will be approved by the Legislative Committee of this Special Administrative Region.

These five steps include the Chief Executive reporting to the National Assembly to propose amendments to the method of appointing or electing the Chief Executive; the National Assembly deciding to amend the method of appointing or electing the Chief Executive; If the National Assembly decides to amend, the Special Zone government submits the bill to the Legislative Committee, and it must be passed by more than two-thirds of the votes of the total number of members of this Committee; the Chief Executive agrees to the bill passed by the Legislative Committee; the Chief Executive submits the bill to the National Assembly Standing Committee, the National Assembly Standing Committee approves and files the bill./.

According to VNA