Article 46 of the Hong Kong Basic Law states:

The term of office of the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be five years. He or she may serve for not more than two consecutive terms.

This became part of a legal dispute after the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa. It came into question was whether his successor would serve a full five year term or would only serve the remainder of Tung's term. Those that supported him for a full five year term, which include much of the Hong Kong legal community, argue that this is the straightforward reading of the article. But those who argued for a partial term argue that a partial term was clearly the legislative intent of the article as filling a partial term is the practice within the People's Republic of China. This created dispute among how the laws were written.

The difference was in part created different legal traditions. In practice of the British Westminister systems is that elections are not run according to fixed schedules, whereas the People's Republic of China tends to have terms and elections according to fixed schedules which is similar to the practice of the United States.