Word: chan
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...Chan has never shied from a challenge. Born in Shanghai, she was one of eight children. "I'm used to having crowds around me with everyone shouting at the top of their voices," she says. Her father, a textile merchant, died when she was a child; her widowed mother took over the family business before embarking on a successful career as an artist. (Chan's apartment is decorated with her mother's ink-brush paintings, and some of her mother's steely resolve seems to have rubbed off too.) Although she trained to become a social worker, Chan joined...
...While Chan has demonstrated plenty of political nous in the past, one thing she has never been is an actual politician - until now. In a second-act surprise, the 67-year-old former civil servant is running for Hong Kong's Legislative Council; if she wins, she will become the unquestioned leader of the legislature's democratic caucus. The Dec. 2 by-election - for a seat made vacant by the death of pro-Beijing lawmaker Ma Lik - is being billed as the most dramatic in Hong Kong's history because of its implications for democratic reform. Chan faces...
...Chan's opponents claim her conversion from bureaucrat to democrat is opportunistic. During a bruising primary debate on Sept. 24, a rival candidate accused her of being a "sudden democrat." Yet Chan says her decision to run for office was driven not by a change in principles, but by her growing disillusionment with the laggard pace of reform. Under the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the city is supposed to be granted universal suffrage eventually. But more than a decade after the law took effect, Beijing remains wary that full democracy in Hong Kong could spark an outcry...
...According to Ma Ngok, a political scientist at the City University of Hong Kong, Chan could become a dignified face for the territory's vocal but ineffective opposition. She is also helped by the fact that her opponent carries plenty of political baggage. Ip remains unpopular in many quarters for her support of a divisive, and ultimately failed, antisubversion bill. That controversy, which brought half a million Hong Kong people onto the streets in protest in July 2003, led to Ip's resignation as Secretary for Security. Ip recently made a public apology for her aggressive promotion of the bill...
...Chan says she's not looking for a showdown, either. "I have every confidence that if you give us universal suffrage, we will not make a mess of it," she says. "If we do it well, maybe it will convince the central government there's nothing to fear." That's unlikely in the immediate future. But with a popular moderate like Chan as the face of Hong Kong democracy, Beijing will have to work much harder to find objections...