Revision of HK law to prevent further chaos: China Daily editorial

The recent attempts by destabilizing forces and radical localists to get their hands on administrative power in Hong Kong have exposed loopholes and deficiencies in the special administrative region's electoral system that need to be remedied.

In particular, the so-called primaries they staged for the Legislative Council election — prior to its postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic — showed the methods by which the chief executive is selected and the Legislative Council is formed need to be improved. Since the return of Hong Kong to the motherland put the region once again under the overall governance system of the country, any reform of the SAR's electoral system must be done at the State level.

A report by the State Council on revising and improving the SAR's electoral system was thus submitted to the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, for deliberation at its 26th session held at the end of February.

After the report's endorsement, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee drew up the Draft Decision submitted to the just-concluded annual session of the NPC for deliberation.

On Thursday, an NPC vote gave the green light to the basic principles and core elements for improving the SAR's electoral system set out in the draft, paving the way for the overdue implementation of the principle of "patriots administering Hong Kong".

The hue and cry raised by destabilizing localists and their foreign patrons since the country's top legislature started deliberating on the draft last week speaks volumes about the pertinence of the impending changes, which will take effect once the SAR's local laws are amended in line with the NPC Standing Committee amendments to Annex I and Annex II of Hong Kong's Basic Law.

Remedying the loopholes and deficiencies in Hong Kong's electoral system is conducive to maintaining the long-term prosperity and stability of the SAR and thus the well-being of Hong Kong residents. Only those speculating on benefiting from these shortcomings for other ends will not support the changes.

Patriots administering Hong Kong is an essential and inherent requirement of "one country, two systems", and the modifications to the electoral system will prevent all kinds of anti-China elements from infiltrating the SAR's administrative, legislative and judicial departments as they had been doing. These infiltrators have turned public organs into stages for their ugly anti-government shows, and transformed public agencies serving communities into political tools to instigate unrest.

Those anti-China forces slinging mud on the move to refine Hong Kong's administrative system are simply pretending to be blind to the damage that has been done to Hong Kong's image and economy by those trying to undermine the SAR authorities. The shameless attacks on these necessary reforms are another example of their tricks of upholding "democracy" while in effect allowing only those they approve of to come under that banner.

Hong Kong residents should have identified from what has happened over the past one and a half years, including the SAR government's effective COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control efforts and the central government's contribution to them, which parties truly care for their well-being, and which parties are trying to grab and ruin "Asia's World City".