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Opinion | Did Beijing’s echo chamber render it deaf to Hong Kong’s distress?
- Beijing’s shocked silence at Hong Kong’s election results suggests that it had succumbed to an echo chamber of its own making and completely misread the situation. The question is: is Beijing asking itself how it got it so wrong?
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Why you can trust SCMP
The pro-democracy camp’s landslide win at Hong Kong’s district elections on November 24 sent a shock wave through the Hong Kong and Beijing establishments. Despite Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s stated resolve to reflect on the result, will Beijing get the right message?
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Hong Kong’s government had counted on the so-called silent majority to side with the establishment and turn their back on the spiralling street violence. In the days leading up to the election, Chinese state media had expressed confidence that an election focusing on district-level affairs would bypass political dissonance.
In the run-up to the election, People’s Daily ran a series of articles with titles such as “Hong Kong citizens’ view: ‘District councillors should serve the people more, not just shout political slogans’”, “Hong Kong's political circles say: Community livelihoods the focus of district elections, votes should be used to say no to violence and rioters”, “Hong Kong communities want district elections to focus on improving people’s livelihood”.
In August, the Post reported that a Hongkonger approached by “mainland researchers” with questions on Hong Kong’s unrest could not help but ask them instead: “How could you have got things so wrong?” More than five months after the first mass anti-extradition law demonstration in June, we still have no answer. But now the question is whether Beijing is asking the same.
At the recent election, the pro-establishment camp collectively won 1.2 million votes, against 1.6 million accrued to the pro-democracy camp. As a result of the first-past-the-post electoral system, 17 of the 18 districts went to the pan-democrats. The 2.94 million turnout is a record, representing 71.2 per cent of registered voters, up from 47 per cent in 2015. While both camps garnered additional votes, the impact of young voters pushed pan-democrats’ vote share from 40.2 per cent in 2015 to 57 per cent.
China’s state media have downplayed the election results. They have failed to acknowledge that, contrary to their prediction, political identity, rather than livelihoods, determined the outcome.
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