These are low level positions like city Councillors, they handle local issues like where bus stops are located and such, but Beijing is NOT happy. Pro-Democracy candidates won 347 out of 452 seats and they now have majorities in 17 out of 18 Districts. Before the election the pro-Beijing camp held 298 seats and had majorites in all 18 districts to give an idea of how bad this went for them.
This is important for 3 reasons
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These district council positions are elected via universal suffrage, unlike 50% of the legislature or the Chief Executive and the people have spoken. Beijing's narrative that the protesters and their supporters were a small vocal minority has been blown out of the water.
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There are Legislative Council elections next year (this body has actual political power in Hong Kong) 50% of the 70 member body are elected and 50% are appointed. Of the 35 appointments, 5 come from members of the District councils! This means that if the pro-Democracy camp can ride this wave of popularity they have a chance of controlling the legislature next year
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Members of the District Council and and Legislative Council are part of the 1200 member "electoral college" for selective the next Chief Executive - though Business interests dominate the Election Committee and they lean pro-Beijing, and Beijing must approve any candidate so it's unlikely a non pro-Beijing candidate will be Chief Executive any time soon
Anyway, I thought this was interesting news, and we'll see how Xinnie the Pooh reacts
Thanks OP! I was curious about this. The MSM was mostly silent from what I saw.
Yeah, it's strange how quiet the western media had been on this. Especially considering the protests were covered quite widely and congress just recently passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. You would think the only Hong Kong elections that are 100% universal suffrage and the pro-Beijing camp gets completely wrecked would be huge news.
It's not strange at all -- not if one's real goal is to set up a communistic NWO, with the CCP as the one-size-fits-all global-governance role model, complete with it's, "All for me, none for thee; Communism for the slaves, untold wealth for us elites" political ideology. SHHHHHHH! We're not supposed to know this, though!
This occurred to me, it's very embarrassing news for Beijing and counter to the narrative they have been pushing. Yet western media has been happy to run story after story about the protests.
Thank you, OP.
China should listen to the HKers. China is ruled harshly by the CCP, and the country has not fared as well as HK. The Chinese government clearly has something to learn.