HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement protesters have been demanding that the city’s top official, CY Leung, step down for weeks now. They may soon be joined by many more of the city’s 7 million residents, after a controversial interview last night in which Leung suggested that election reforms sought by the protestors would invite undue influence from the city’s poor.
Speaking at his official residence, a colonial-era mansion set above the city—it’s furnished with crystal chandeliers and guarded by massive stone lions—Leung addressed three foreign newspapers that target Hong Kong’s wealthy international community. Allowing the entire voting population of Hong Kong, some 5 million people, to directly nominate candidates for the city’s top official position would be a mistake, Leung said:
“If it’s entirely a numbers game—numeric representation—then obviously you’d be talking to half the people in Hong Kong [that] earn less than US$1,800 a month. You would end up with that kind of politics and policies.”
Leung gave the interview to the Financial Times, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. The three publications frequently keep their content behind a paywall, but their write-ups of the interview were quickly circulated on social media, where information about Hong Kong’s protests has spread quickly:
Not sure who breached paywalls of WSJ/FT/NYT (
Hong Kong has too many poor people to allow direct elections, leader says
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