Hong Kong's district councillors have little political power and mainly deal with local issues such as bus routes and rubbish collection, so the district elections don't normally generate such interest.
But these polls were the first time people could express at the ballot box their opinion on embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam's handling of the crisis, which was sparked by a now withdrawn extradition law.
Will China allow all of them to take their seats, or will China find excuses to keep the protest candidates in the minority? Will the municipal office holders be more than symbolic or will they be able to do their jobs? And what are the limits of their public statements? Will China tolerate them only as a friendly face of getting protesters to declare victory and go home?
China has quite the dilemma after voters defied the threat of massive force that looms behind the police campaign thus far:
For a week, [Chinese Communist Party] commentators wrote brassy pieces saying the Hong Kong public would go to the polls to “end social chaos and violence,” a vote against what they saw as rogues and radicals. Editors at state-run news outlets prepared stories that predicted withering losses for the protest movement.
When it became clear early Monday that democracy advocates in the semiautonomous territory had won in a landslide, Beijing turned silent. The news media, for the most part, did not even report the election results. And Chinese officials directed their ire at a familiar foe: the United States.
China counted on months of portraying the protesters as thugs and still the people voted--for people in politically meaningless jobs--just to send a message of opposition to China. Will China decide brutality on a wide scale is the only answer after this failure?
And what would the effects of a big military and police operation be on the mainland, assuming mainlanders hear of the results of the vote? And how will Lech Walesa's visit to Hong Kong in support of the protesters play out?
Lech Walesa faced down an “evil empire” and freed his country from the yoke of Communist domination. Now, three decades later, the former Solidarity leader, Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner says he is ready to go to Hong Kong and stand with protesters there who are trying win a similar victory for freedom.
Of course, the USSR had a problem in that when they contemplated sending in the Red Army to crush the Poles, the Soviets figured they had to keep their best forces in East Germany facing NATO as a shield. And when they looked at the problems of mobilizing lower category divisions in the western USSR, they found that the need to mobilize civilian assets to support the invasion would seriously hurt their economy.
Keep in mind that the whole USSR collapsed anyway. So maybe China takes the lesson that no economic hit is too great to risk to avoid going down the USSR path.
Sometimes I think the only way for Hong Kongers to win is if China collapses and splinters, as I wrote a dozen years ago (with bonus hopes expressed that Hong Kong could have a real democracy in that event).
My hopes for that exceed the evidence for it. But it isn't impossible.
UPDATE: China is unhappy:
China threatened retaliation against Washington on Thursday after US President Donald Trump signed legislation supporting Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, just as the world's top two economies edge towards a trade truce.
China isn't ready to take America and our allies on in a war. But they are close enough that they might not realize that.
UPDATE: Via Instapundit, Hong Kongers celebrate US law signed in support of the protests. I say we offer to trade our pro-socialism students so eager for the joys of that system for the protesters on a 1:1 basis. Okay fine, we'll give up our people 2:1. But not much more than that!
UPDATE: The support for the protesters has expanded despite the effort by the Chinese government to discredit them:
Hundreds of silver-haired activists joined young Hong Kong protesters for a unity rally Saturday, vowing that their monthslong movement will not fade away until there is greater democracy in the Chinese territory.
What will China do now?
