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increasingly well-educated middle class whose wish for greater involvement in government needed to be accommodated; and feelings in both Whitehall and Westminster that Hong Kong's system of government ought to be more democratic. But Sir Alexander Grantham's three constraints (paragraph 7 above), and particularly the knowledge that China was intensely suspicious of any development in elected government, remained a constant limiting factor.
11.
In 1980, the Government conducted a review of district administration, in particular the question of introducing elections at district level. Part of the impetus for this came from Parliamentary pressure at Westminster. In October 1979, 150 Members of Parliament had signed an early day motion in support of proposals put forward by Urban Councillors for a fully elected Urban Council, again with an extended jurisdiction over the whole territory, and for direct elections to the Legislative Council. There was no real public pressure in Hong Kong for electoral reform; and the vast majority of people regarded the Urban Council with indifference. Nevertheless, both the British and the Hong Kong Governments saw a strong argument for a move to forestall any such pressure before it developed. Direct elections to the Legislative Council were assumed to be out of the question, at least in the short term, both because of Chinese fears that they might be a move towards independence (in early 1980 China complained publicly about proposals to reform the Legislature in Macao) and also because of the possibility that they might be seen in Hong Kong as a move towards British withdrawal. The thinking at that time was that a system of direct elections should be developed on an extended franchise at district and regional levels, and that some of those thus elected would in due course be appointed to the Legislative Council. Such a system might counter criticism that the Council was unrepresentative and reduce the likelihood of real pressure for direct elections to it.
12. Accordingly, the 1981 White Paper established a system of District Boards, part of whose membership was directly elected. These replaced the existing District Advisory Boards in the New Territories and extended also to the urban areas. The electoral franchise was made virtually universal, and the Urban Council was enlarged to thirty members, half of them still being elected directly.
The 1984 Review
13.
The beginning of negotiations with the Chinese over Hong Kong's future, and with it the realisation that Britain was unlikely to be administering Hong Kong
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/after 1997,
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