Pro-democracy forces swept Hong Kong district council elections over the
weekend, boosting pressure on the city's Beijing-backed government to
listen to protesters' demands for greater freedoms.To get more
chinanews, you can visit shine news official website.
China responded sternly to the landslide in the vote widely seen as a
referendum on public support for the anti-government movement. Foreign
Minister Wang Yi said that no matter how the situation in Hong Kong
changes, the semiautonomous region is part of China.
"Any attempt to disrupt Hong Kong and damage [its] stability and
prosperity will not succeed," he told reporters in Japan, where he was
attending a G-20 foreign ministers meeting.
Ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang added Monday that Hong Kong's most
urgent task is to restore order as protesters continue to clash with
police.Geng also stressed that tensions in Hong Kong are purely China's
internal affairs.
“The determination of the Chinese government to safeguard the
interests of national sovereign security and development is unshakable,”
he was quoted as saying by Global Times, a hawkish newspaper owned by
the Chinese Communist Party.
China has blamed Western governments for fomenting the unrest in the
former British colony.For months, Hong Kong protesters have been
demanding that China loosen its grip.
Beijing has steered clear of interfering directly, saying that it
trusts Hong Kong’s embattled leader Carrie Lam to handle the situation.
However, the protests have presented Chinese leader Xi Jinping with one
of the biggest popular challenges since he came to power in 2012.
Although district councils have little power and the election is
normally a low-key race, over 2.9 million cast their votes in Hong Kong
on Sunday in a 71 percent turnout, exceeding the 2015 participation
levels by almost 25 percent.
The pro-democracy camp had won a commanding majority of the 452
district council seats at stake, taking control of at least 17 of the
city’s 18 district councils in a rebuke to Beijing-backed Lam and her
handling of the protests.
Hong Kong's so-called "pan-democrats" are a group of pro-democratic
political parties who have been calling for preservation and expansion
of existing freedoms enshrined in law after the former British colony
was handed over to China in 1997.
“The electoral results are a huge embarrassment to the entire
pro-Beijing camp,” associate professor Kenneth Chan with the department
of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University
told NBC News.
“I have talked to a few of them and they’re struggling to come up
with an answer. The verdict has been passed and the government cannot
ignore the public opinion," he said, adding that Lam is waiting for
Beijing’s order for her next move.
“She doesn’t know what to do. The whole country has no idea about the scale and importance of this election."
The Wall