Skip to footer

China's rocky relationship with Hong Kong: 10 key moments

To help understand how China's relationship with Hong Kong has changed through its evolution from British rule to special administrative region, here are 10 key moments:

China says no to popular elections in Hong Kong - 2004

  • By Meredith Bennett-Smith Contributor

In a controversial announcement quickly denounced by the governments of both the United States and Britain, Chinese leaders said they would not permit popular elections of the next chief executive for the island in 2007. They also said the general public would not be allowed to select more than half of the available seats in the Legislative Council in elections slated for 2008.

Beijing’s decision seemed to contradict Basic Law, which would allow for such wide enfranchisement; party leaders cite the island’s youthful electoral history as reasoning behind the decision. Democratic advocated groups in Hong Kong promise widespread protests.

After a large July demonstration held on the seventh anniversary of the transition draws hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters, Chief Executive Tung confirmed that according to Basic Law, universal suffrage is a long-term goal.

In September elections, 30 members of the council were directly elected using geographical constituencies, with another 30 elected though functional constituencies, some of which were unopposed races.  

8 of 10
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.