Hong Kong's pro-democracy financiers sent a flagrant message to China by bringing out an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal's Asia edition on Thursday, in which they cited '10 requests' that they also plan to mail to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Finance group HK Finance Monitor 2047 brought out the 'political advertisement' a month after the pro-democracy protests ended with police hauling away 'Occupy Central' protesters.
Pro-democracy activists have been demanding that Hong Kong's chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, begin talks of electoral reform after China announced last August that all candidates for the 2017 Hong Kong elections should be approved by a special committee, which protestors claim comprises only pro-Beijing members.
Some of the requests that the finance group made in the advert include asking China to "refrain from interfering in the administrative affairs of Hong Kong" and to "establish a system of genuine universal suffrage".
"Three years ago, I was just like any other trader in Hong Kong. I didn't care about politics... but things have changed so much it is important for finance people to speak up and to stand together to fight for true democracy," hedge fund manager Edward Chin of new group HK Finance Monitor 2047, told AFP.
The group's name hints at the Sino-British declaration that proposes to protect Hong Kong's economy and freedom up to 2047, 50 years after the British handed over the colony to China in 1997.
