Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - If the people of Hong Kong really want universal suffrage then Beijing will have to select the candidates for the office of the chief executive. "The sieve is a product of our ancestors' wisdom. There is nothing sinister about it," said Zhang Xiaoming, director of Beijing's liaison office (pictured) in the autonomous region. "Without the sieve, how can we pick the good seeds from the bad ones?" he added at the end of his opening speech at an unprecedented lunch with some 60 Hong Kong lawmakers at the Legislative Council seat in the Admiralty. In the past, Beijing had always criticised their work and tried in every way to tarnish their moral stature, accusing him of "betraying the motherland" by demanding democracy and respect for human rights.
Zhang spent almost half of his speech on the subject of universal suffrage, although at the beginning he said the issue was not the main item on the day's agenda.
The issue is a thorny one. According to Hong Kong's Basic Law, which will remain in force until 2047, the population has the right to elect its representatives by popular vote.
However, Beijing has always stonewalled the process in every way, so that the selection of the chief executive and of the members of the Legislative Council is done through a complicated system of "electors" who actually represent the interests of mainland China.
For their part, the democratic parties and the Catholic Church in Hong Kong have always been opposed to this. Every year, a great march is held on 1 July, anniversary of the territory's handover to Chinese sovereignty, with hundreds of thousands of people demanding full democracy.
Today's meeting had been seen as an "overture" by the Chinese government, but in fact, it showed Beijing's intention to screen candidates before the vote.
Labour Party chairman Lee Chuek-yan said Zhang's allusion sends a very bad message to Hong Kong people. "With a screening process, there will not be genuine universal suffrage," he said.
"The best screening process is a vote by several million registered voters in Hong Kong to screen out candidates they do not want," said Civic Party leader Alan Leong Kar-kit who hopes that Zhang's allusion is just casual chat made during a socialising event.