If the Chinese Communist Party stuck to a deal it made thirty years ago, there would be no Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong today.
The student and citizen pro-democracy protesters have occupied parts of Hong Kong central business district area and government compounds because they are tired of the Chinese regime backtracking on promises to hold elections based on universal suffrage for the top political office in Hong Kong.
The Article 45 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, holds that the Chief Executive of Hong Kong should ultimately be elected in a “one man, one vote” system, and not by an Election Committee whose 1,200 members to be approved by Beijing.
The very idea that a “democratic” process in autonomous Hong Kong is still being controlled by the Communist government on the mainland goes against the spirit of the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement agreed by the signatories of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984.
Then, Britain only agreed to return the Crown Colony of Hong Kong back to China if the territories were to retain its autonomy and way of life for fifty years after the handover in 1997.
The British even sought to push through democratic reform in Hong Kong after the signing of the agreement so that the citizens of Hong Kong would be comfortable taking over the reins of their political destiny.
However, the CCP has been undermining the democratization of Hong Kong since its inception.
Learn the key events in Hong Kong’s path to democracy and Beijing’s attempts to halt it in the infographic above.
