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China and Hong Kong: Forget about "one country, two systems"

It is well known that the Chinese authorities take steps, many of them drastic, to curb free and unfettered speech.    It's "rule" of Hong Kong has always been slightly different.      Such rule has been on the basis of what the Chinese have dubbed "one country, two systems".   No longer it seems.    How this plays out could prove to be challenging for Beijing as the people of Hong Kong - such a bastion of capitalism and free-wheeling in almost every respect - will not take down Beijing's edict of how things are going to be in Hong Kong.

" China’s legislature laid down strict limits on Sunday to proposed voting reforms in Hong Kong, pushing back against months of rallies calling for free, democratic elections.

The decision by the National People’s Congress Standing Committee drew battle lines in what pro-democracy groups warned would be a deepening confrontation over the political future of the city and of China. The committee demanded procedural barriers for candidates for the city’s leader that would ensure Beijing remained the gatekeeper to that position — and to political power over the city.

Li Fei, a deputy secretary general of the committee, told a news conference in Beijing that the nominating guidelines — including a requirement that candidates “love the country, and love Hong Kong” — would “protect the broad stability of Hong Kong now and in the future.”

The move closes one of the few avenues left for gradual political liberalization in China after a sustained campaign against dissent on the mainland this year under President Xi Jinping. In pressing its offensive in Hong Kong, Beijing has chosen a showdown with a protest movement unlike any it has ever faced on the mainland.

Hong Kong’s opposition forces enjoy civil liberties denied in the rest of China and, capitalizing on those freedoms, have taken a more confrontational approach than seen before in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong opposition groups and politicians who have campaigned for unfettered voting for the city’s leader, the chief executive, said the limits set by Beijing made a mockery of the “one person, one vote” principle that had been promised to Hong Kong."

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