Hong Kong leader offers talks with protesters

World Today

Hong Kong's Chief Executive Leung Chun-yingHong Kong’s Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (C) attends a press conference in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014. Activists massed outside Hong Kong’s government headquarters on September 28, vowing to keep up an increasingly tense civil disobedience campaign unless Beijing grants more political freedoms. AFP PHOTO / ALEX OGLE

Hong Kong’s top official offered Thursday to hold talks between his government and occupy-central protesters, but said he will not give in to their demand that he resign.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying told reporters that he has asked the territory’s top civil servant to arrange talks with the protesters, who have been demanding electoral reforms.

“I will not resign, because I need to continue to finish working on universal suffrage so that Hong Kong’s 5 million voters can go to the polling booth and elect the chief executive,” he said.

Leung made the comments at a news conference just minutes before a deadline set by the protesters for him to step down.

Standing beside him, Chief Secretary Carrie Lam said she would seek to arrange talks with student leaders of the protest as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong police warned protesters not to surround government buildings, saying authorities would impose “impartial and decisive enforcement” if public security is threatened.

The People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC), published a commentary Thursday on the continuing protests in Hong Kong, saying the actions by protesters are having a negative effect on life in the special administrative region. The editorial says the central government’s basic principle and policy towards Hong Kong has not changed and will not change.

The paper quoted Chinese President Xi Jinping, who met a business delegation from Hong Kong just over a week ago. President Xi said the Chinese central government will “unswervingly implement the policy of One Country, Two Systems and the Basic Law.” He said the central government will support the steady development of democracy in Hong Kong in accordance with the law. And Xi said the central government will firmly maintain Hong Kong’s long-term prosperity and stability. The editorial also said the decisions made by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing about universal suffrage in Hong Kong were made on the basis of the Basic Law and were in the best interests of all the people of Hong Kong.

China’s state news agency, Xinhua news agency, also published a commentary “China Voice: Cherish HK’s development, maintain long-term prosperity” Thursday, saying “the illegal gatherings of the Occupy Central movement instigated by some people in Hong Kong do not promote democratic and constitutional development in the special administrative region. Instead, they are ruining it.”

China Daily, the widest print circulation English-language newspaper in China, quoted an ex-official’s interview, who liaised with the British government before the 1997 handover, and he described the continuing protests paralyzing Hong Kong as a doomed attempt to seize power from the central government to rule the special administrative region. Chen Zuo’er, former deputy director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office and now president of the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies, said that the protesters want the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) to “overturn” a landmark decision on electoral reform, and Chen said the top legislature would  not rescind a unanimously adopted decision because of some illegal assemblies.

Story compiled from CCTV NEWS, Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, People’s Daily and Associated Press.