BEIJING: Hong Kong’s Democracy in Peril as China Clamps Down
China’s top legislative body on Sunday struck a blow to democracy advocates in Hong Kong, ruling that Beijing can effectively veto candidates it deems undesirable from seeking the region’s top leadership job in a 2017 election.
The move, while hardly unexpected, makes it virtually certain that Hong Kong will soon be home to large-scale protests and acts of civil disobedience that will disrupt one of China’s crucial hubs for trade and banking.
“The democrats will simply have to go to the streets now,” said Michael Davis, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. Beijing’s leaders, he said are “offering the kind of democracy where they get to vet the candidates, and that is unacceptable to a lot of people here.”
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