Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang celebrates on the podium after winning the chief executive election at the polling centre in Hong Kong March 25, 2007. Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang widely won a second term as chief executive on Sunday following an election race.   Mar. 25 - Hong Kong's leader Donald Tsang was headed for another term in office on Sunday as the handful of city elites allowed to vote were casting their ballots in a brief election.

 

The 800 members of Hong Kong's election committee are the only people in this territory of nearly seven million people allowed to vote for chief executive, and most will support Tsang.

 

But for the first time since Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the race for leader is being contested -- and the challenger, Alan Leong.

 

The 62-year-old Tsang, a career civil servant rarely seen in public without his trademark bow tie, said he had the backing of 641 committee members.

 

His reappointment was expected to be announced soon after the two-hour vote, which was being held in a convention centre on the edge of the city near Hong Kong international airport.

 

"I am a serious, responsible, conscientious and even a stiff man," Tsang said in the last of his public rallies Friday night. "But I can promise you that I will do this job well."

 

Hong Kong, one of the world's main hubs of international finance, has been facing growing competition from cities in Chinese mainland and grappling with a serious pollution problem that has made it less attractive to business leaders.

 

Governed by the rule of law and driven by the freest of free markets, Hong Kong has unique status in China -- a policy former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping described as "one country, two systems" when the 1997 handover took place.