TNAG-2504-FCO40-3643-National-People-s-Congress-and-Chinese-People-s-Political-Co-1992 — Page 25

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and shall be presented by them to the entire body of deputies for thorough discussions and democratic consultations. A formal name list of the candidates shall be drawn up in accordance with the result of the discussions and with the opinion of the majority of the delegates. The formal election is then held in which the deputies at the particular congress can vote in favour, against, or abstain for each of the candidates. Those who have won more than half of the ballots are considered elected. If that number exceeds the number of seats available then those with the higher number of votes in their favour are considered elected.

3. In the present case, Hong Kong's delegates were elected at the First Session of the 7th Guangdong Provincial People's Congress in 1987. It is sometimes necessary to hold by-elections, for example following Xu Jiatun's recall as an NPC deputy representing Hong Kong, there was a vacancy in the Hong Kong delegation. This was filled by Zhou Nan following a by election held by the Standing Committee of Guangdong Provincial People's Congress. He was elected with 50 in favour and 3 against.

There is a further complication in that there are also Hong Kong delegates to the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress. These too would not need to be elected directly as elections of deputies to provincial level congresses are indirect. been unable to discover quite what happened.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Committee.

makse

But I have

5. 67 "compatriots from Hong Kong and Macao" made up one of the groups from various (mainland Chinese) political parties, occupational groups and so on elected to the 2081 member National Committee of the CPPCC in 1988. The method of selecting the membership of the National Committee is simplicity itself. Article 29 of the Constitution of the CPPCC states that:" The participating units, the number and choice of members of each national committee of the CPPCC shall be decided on by the standing committee of the previous national committee through consultation. When the national committee deems it necessary to increase or change the participating units or the number and the choice of members during its term of office, its standing committee shall make the choice through consultations." A similar procedure is used for CPPCC committees at lower levels such as the provincial level. There are no more specific provisions on the process that I have been able to discover, so it is unclear exactly what is meant by "consultation" and how the candidates are nominated. But there again seems plenty of room for the authorities to manipulate the procedure. In fact the CPPCC is purely a "consultative" body and has no powers either legislative or executive. It tends to be used by the Chinese as a means of pensioning off, with dignity, senior officials well past the age of retirement.

6.

Since there appears to be no need for direct Hong Kong involvement in these processes, I suspect the Chinese would start by telling us that elections to these bodies were an internal affair of China's and no business of ours or of the Hong Kong

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