Radical opposition is splitting Hong Kong

24 June 2014 | Global Times

Many people believed that the pan-democratic camp in Hong Kong upholds the rule of law and respects civilization, and at the very least performs much better than the protesters in Ukraine. Nonetheless, the “referendum” carried out by the radical opposition members that launched the Occupy Central movement, as well as their recent behavior and the future plans they have announced, reveal that they are no more qualified than those who initiated the color revolutions.

The most radical opposition groups of Hong Kong have already pushed themselves to the opposite of the rule of law. The so-called referendum lacks any constitutional basis and therefore engaging in a fierce political struggle with its results runs counter to the Basic Law and the existing legal system in Hong Kong.
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Rare disagreement as CY Leung takes issue with Global Times editorial on Occupy poll

Tony Cheung | 24 June 2014 | South China Morning Post

In a rare diversion from Beijing’s script, city’s leader says it is wrong to pit the people of Hong Kong and the rest of China against each other

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China State Media Calls Hong Kong Vote ‘Mincing Ludicrousness’

Didi Kirsten Tatlow | 23 June 2014 | New York Times

“However many people take part in Hong Kong’s illegal public vote, there will never be as many as 1.3 billion,” the headline in the state-run newspaper Global Times declared on Monday.

That defiant line toward “Occupy Central with Peace and Love,” a movement that is holding an informal referendum on how the next leader of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory should be chosen, was comparing the number of votes cast, now surging past 700,000, to the size of China’s population. It suggested that no matter what Hong Kong people want, the Chinese mainland will always trump them. And it was contained in one of very few online posts about the democratic movement in Hong Kong that made it past heavy censorship in the rest of China.

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Hong Kong democracy poll an ‘illegal farce’

Tom Phillips | 23 June 2014 | The Telegraph

An unofficial poll designed to measure support for democracy in Hong Kong is an “illegal farce”, one of China’s bestselling newspapers claimed on Monday in an indication of Beijing’s extreme discomfort with the former colony’s increasingly vocal protest movement.

More than 700,000 people have voted – either online or at polling stations – since the referendum was launched on Friday, according to Occupy Central, the protest group organising it.

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State mouthpiece invokes ‘defeat of Iron Lady’ in editorial denouncing Occupy’s public poll

Joyce Ng | 23 June 2014 | South China Morning Post

Unofficial referendum of more than 700,000 Hongkongers an ‘illegal farce’ that is ‘tinged with mincing ludicrousness’, says Global Times

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Ludicrous to let online poll decide HK fate

23 June 2014 | Global Times

The so-called June 22 electronic voting of electoral reform launched by Hong Kong’s opposition groups started Friday. It was reported yesterday that more than 600,000 people took part in the unofficial referendum, a larger vote than public opinion had predicted. Opposition members are entranced, and Western media outlets are scrambling to reporting the news, holding without exception that this vote has succeeded in wielding mountainous pressure on Beijing and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government.

The opposition groups and their overseas supporters have overestimated the effect of an illegal farce. Neither China’s central government nor the Hong Kong government will admit the results of the poll. It would be ridiculous to determine the direction of Hong Kong’s political reform with this informal referendum.

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