PAPER WITHDRAWN--The HKSAR Basic Law and Universal Suffrage for the Legislative Council.

After Hong Kong returns to China in 1997, the Basic Law, as Hong Kong mini-constitution, provides a set of new constitutional frameworks for this territory. The 10 years' constitutional practice witnesses Hong Kong people's increasing demand for democratization—universal suffrage, which is definitely stipulated in the Basic Law. The crux of realizing universal suffrage lies in the paradox between current institutional designs and local political development. Current partial institutions circumscribe the further development of local politics, while a stunted local politics makes it more difficult to amend current institutions. This crux leads to three problematics of realizing universal suffrage, that is, Beijing's initiative and final say on this issue, the "executive-led" political structure, and Functional Constituencies system in the legislature. These institutions make it very difficult that Hong Kong transforms from a semi-democratic polity into a democratic one. However, universal suffrage is definitely not an impossible mission. It is argued in this paper that to escape from the impasse of constitutional development, all actors in the political arena of must properly deal with two kinds of relationships—vertical (the central-local relationship) and horizontal (dynamics among various local political forces). I shall point out that Beijing, as a sovereignty state, mainly emphasize on the political aspect of democratization, while the vested interests mainly stress on the economic aspect of universal suffrage. And then I shall suggest there is a possible scheme to satisfy both Beijing and the vested interests under the context of the Basic Law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]