South China Morning Post published this video item, entitled “Two sessions: China’s parliament plans an overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system” – below is their description.
Delegates of China’s parliament, the National People’s Congress, are preparing for their annual meetings in Beijing. Among the topics up for discussion at the “two sessions” are proposals to shake up Hong Kong’s political system. The changes will be comprehensive. They cover the membership of the committee that selects Hong Kong’s top leader; how lawmakers are elected to the city’s legislature and tighter vetting of potential candidates. Opposition activists say the proposed changes will quash dissent and snuff out democracy in the former British colony, but supporters say they are vital for Hong Kong’s long-term stability.
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In This Story: Hong Kong
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta of the South China Sea. With over 7.5 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated places in the world.
Hong Kong became a colony of the British Empire after the Qing Empire ceded Hong Kong Island at the end of the First Opium War in 1842. The colony expanded to the Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 after the Second Opium War and was further extended when Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As a special administrative region, Hong Kong maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.