Flying 6,000 miles to vote: Hong Kong sees record turnout for key election

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

Hong Kongers flew in from around the world, lined up until the early hours and turned out in record numbers to vote in elections for the city's parliament Sunday.

Now, they're on tenterhooks as the ballots are counted. Preliminary results suggest that a younger generation of more radical, pro-democracy politicians won a larger-than-expected share of votes, potentially rattling nerves in Beijing.

People were still voting at some polling stations at 2 a.m. local time Monday morning, three and half hours after the 10:30 p.m. deadline.

...snip...

More than 2.2 million people voted, according to the Electoral Affairs Commission, with a turnout of 58% -- up from 53% in 2012. Hong Kong does not permit postal voting or early voting.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/04/asia/hong-kong-legco-election/index.html

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

1. The next thirty years are going to be very interesting

The Chinese knew the Colonial era bureaucracy and bourgeoisie we're going to be a problem after the hand-over of Hong Kong but it was a problem that would largely expatriate itself or failing that eventually die off.

They were not counting on the youth with no memory or affinity for the Colonial era mobilizing against them and the end of Democracy in Hong Kong in 2047 would be a non-issue when the time comes.

We have a few younger people from Hong Kong working for us, they would have been less than ten years old in 1997 but they are militantly anti-China, they refuse to speak or write in Mandarin and they used marker to scribble over "People's Republic of China" on the cover of their passports.

One of these young women very thoughtfully compares Chinese in Hong Kong to the Japanese in Hawaii during World War Two. The Japanese in Hawaii were loyal to the US because they just didn't give a fuck any more. Japan had changed enormously pre-war and the Japanese in Hawaii had to some extent assimilated and as such Japanese militarism and nationalism had little sway on them. Japan in 1941 was as foreign to them as France.

And she says China is more foreign to her than France and merely teaching Maoist nonsense and Mandarin in Hong Kong schools isn't going to change the fact that Hong Kong and China have no modern shared history, language (Cantonese and English vs. Mandarin), institutions or culture and that to many people the Chinese are merely occupiers.

[ansible]

2. Some people there even want to return Hong Kong back to Britain

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Hong Kong elections: anti-Beijing activists gain foothold in power

At least four radical young activists who support greater political autonomy or outright independence from China claimed seats in Hong Kong’s 70-member Legislative Council, or Legco, after a record 2.2 million people went to the polls on Sunday.

Those elected include Nathan Law, a 23-year-old from the recently founded Demosisto party who was one of the leaders of the 2014 so-called umbrella movement protests.
...
At some polling stations there were long queues until until 2:30am on Monday morning – four hours later than the scheduled cut-off time – with a turnout of almost 60% of 3.7 million voters. That compares with 53% in the last LegCo elections in 2012.
...
It is almost impossible for the democracy camp to take a majority in Legco as 30 of its 70 seats are elected by special interest groups representing a range of businesses and social sectors. Those seats go predominantly to pro-Beijing candidates.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/05/hong-kong-poll-pro-independence-activists-poised-to-win-seats-in-record-turnout