Hong Kong’s legislature reserved half its seats for corporate interest groups under British rule

Evidence

As the 2010s started in Hong Kong, and digitally coordinated explosions spread around so much of the world, its governance mechanisms had not evolved very much. Half of the seats on the LegCo were handed out directly to special interest groups: “real estate and construction” and the accounting group got one each, for example, while financial interest groups got two. This system of “functional constituencies” was set up in 1984 under British rule, and it is the kind of blatant crony capitalist system that most rich democracies have to at least hide behind the scenes. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 573

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Hong Kong’s business elites feared mainland anti-corruption exposure — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 742; Hong Kong’s hybrid system combined material wealth with the worst of political representation — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 574