Henry Ford is supposed to have said that his customers could choose any colour of car they wanted “so long as it’s black”. On Sunday night, the Chinese government ended months of speculation about elections for Hong Kong’s chief executive, the city’s equivalent of mayor, by declaring that Hongkongers could vote for anyone they liked – so long as they are red.

In more prosaic language, what the National People’s Congress actually said was that candidates for the 2017 election must be backed by at least 50 per cent of a 1,200-member nominating committee. That committee, which is elected by some 250,000 individual and corporate voters, is largely pro-Beijing in make-up. The ruling thus guarantees that candidates deemed antagonistic to Beijing or the Chinese Communist party will fall at the first hurdle. Only those that “love China” need apply. Candidates who make it through the nominating committee will then go on to an election determined by universal suffrage, or one person, one vote.

Theoretically, at least, Beijing could have given more ground. It might, for example, have said that candidates with 30 per cent approval from the nominating committee could stand. It could also have ruled that the composition of the nominating committee itself be widened so as better to reflect the make-up of Hong Kong’s people. It chose neither.