Don’t forget Hong Kong – the only place in China with anything like genuine elections
“On 4th September, sandwiched between the Brexit vote and the US elections, Hong Kongers have the opportunity to vote in the four yearly LegCo [Legislative Council] elections.
Hong Kong’s democratic processes are a hangover from its colonial days – the first election took place in 1995 two years before handover. UK graciously offering HK a tantalising taste of democracy, after having denied it to for the preceding 150 years.
HK’s legislature currently has 70 members, half of them are elected from five geographic constituencies, and most of the rest either by business sectors (like industry) or professional bodies (like accountants), so-called “functional” constituencies.
A myriad of different political parties are fielding candidates – with seemingly more parties than there are constituencies seats. The parties loosely fall into the pro-Beijing “Establishment” camp which controls LegCo and the pan-democrat “Opposition” camp.”
This is the opening of an interesting blog posting by a friend of mine who is currently working in Hong Kong. You can read the full posting here.