Silence after the storm: Beijing ponders next move after game-changing Hong Kong elections
The central government has been surprisingly quiet since six radical localist lawmakers won seats in the legislature and the pro-establishment camp lost support – so what will it do next?
Beijing’s silence since the results of the Legislative Council elections were announced three weeks ago has been conspicuous. It is particularly strange as Beijing has been increasingly assertive on Hong Kong affairs and has been keeping a watchful eye on the political situation in Hong Kong in recent years.
Yet behind its apparent reticence, advisers to the central government have been doing some soul-searching over the outcome of the elections, the first Legco polls since the Occupy protests in 2014.
Vote slipped
While pro-Beijing newspapers put a positive spin by claiming that the pro-establishment camp had achieved good results, prominent mainland experts on Hong Kong affairs who have the ears of top Beijing officials admitted that the camp’s performance was by no means rosy.
The pro-establishment camp’s share of the popular vote slipped to about 40.3 per cent from 44.1 per cent in the 2012 elections. The number of seats it got in the legislature dropped from 43 in the 2012 election to 40.
