ina's 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, the city's Beijing-backed leader Donald Tsang said on Friday. Speaking on Hong Kong's RTHK radio, Tsang warned that democratic reforms, if taken to the extreme, could compromise social stability and the government's ability to govern.
"If we go to the extreme, you have the cultural revolution for instance in China, where people take everything into their hands, then you cannot govern the place," Tsang said.
The chaotic Cultural Revolution instigated by China's late paramount leader Mao Zedong, mobilized radical youth in political campaigns marked by purges, jailings, killings and suicides.
"But the Cultural Revolution wasn't really an extreme example of democracy was it?," the radio presenter asked Tsang, to which he replied:
"(It) was the people taking power into their own hands. Now this is what you mean by democracy if you take it to the full swing," he added.
Hong Kong's pro-democratic camp has agitated for direct elections by 2012, but recent signs have suggested Beijing is cold on such swift progress, preferring 2017 at the earliest.
Tsang vowed in his March re-election campaign to resolve the problem of universal suffrage within his term, using consistently positive, upbeat language. This is the first time however, that Tsang has issued such a stark warning of the risks involved.
His controversial comments on democracy echoed those of a former government official, ex-security chief Regina Ip several years ago. Ip sparked outrage by saying democracy wasn't a panacea because Adolf Hitler was returned by universal suffrage.
