Tue January, 2021, Age: 3 years
Last week, Beijing arrested 53 pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong in an effort to solidify its political control over the city. According to two Reuters sources (who are identified in the article as being ‘pro-Beijing’) China, far from being cowed by the international condemnation of the arrests, is planning other initiatives to prevent the pro-democracy movement from again gaining ground in Hong Kong. In 2019 and early 2020 a pro-democracy populist movement gripped Hong Kong in mass protests and calls for greater autonomy from China. According to the two Reuters sources, actions the Chinese government might take could entail the further postponement of planned elections and the augmentation of the voting electorate by allowing certain people in mainland China to cast votes in Hong Kong elections. These potential pro-Beijing recourses have a strong likelihood of being enacted by Hong Kong’s current pro-Beijing assembly.
