Hong Kong is a city of seven million people and it has just had an election to install the council that will run the city. Voting is optional and usually only a small number of people take the trouble to record a vote, but this time over three million queued for hours to have their voice heard. The vote went overwhelmingly to pro-democracy candidates.
The turnout was 71.2% of registered voters and that contrasts with the 45% that voted at the last election. It cements the opinion of the people who have rioted in the streets for the past five months in support of independence from Beijing. There has been an expectation that the Chinese Communist party would send PLA troops into the city to rule with an iron fist. This election has been a slap in the face for the president and the ruling elite in Beijing.
The big question is what happens now ? Beijing may question the credentials of many who won office but this was a de facto referendum and the result was crystal clear. Hong Kong wants to keep its independent status as an offshore trading entity, free of the restrictions the Communist party impose on residents of the mainland.
To allow that to happen contrasts sharply with the Communist party stance on that other independent island of Taiwan. When the Chinese civil war ended in a Communist victory the defeated Nationalists retreated to the island of Formosa and renamed it Taiwan. It conducts world trade with implied military support from America but Beijing regards it as an integral part of China and threatens to invade unless it agrees to unification under a similar arrangement in place with Hong Kong,. The rejection of that agreement in this Hong Kong election takes that option off the drawing board.
In the early years of Communist China, Hong Kong needed China, but China no longer needs Hong Kong. The majority of Chinese exports travelled through the port of Hong Kong but now mainland Chinese ports have established their own identity as Chinas heads towards becoming the world greatest economy. Hong Kong relies less on trade and more on its status as a world tourist destination.
What happens next depends on what is served out to the hundreds arrested during the street marches and the storming of the university citadel. If they are punished with a moderate fine and sent home it is likely that the unrest will subside now that a pro democracy element is running the city. If the Beijing leadership takes a heavy handed approach and imposes prison sentences to be served in the western gulags where millions of Muslims are interned to achieve a re-education programme it is likely the city will continue to erupt. Xi Jinping may continue to play the long game, knowing the rioters must soon return to earning a living and exercise further patience.
What is now clear is that the future of Hong Kong awaits the decision making that must take place in Beijing.
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