{"id":12479,"date":"2014-01-02T13:49:33","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T13:49:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12479"},"modified":"2014-01-02T13:49:33","modified_gmt":"2014-01-02T13:49:33","slug":"battle-for-hong-kong-intensifies-as-thousands-take-to-the-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12479","title":{"rendered":"Battle for Hong Kong intensifies as thousands take to the streets"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_12481\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12481\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/occupyhk.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12481\" alt=\"Leading the pack against Beijing, \" src=\"http:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/occupyhk.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"186\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-12481\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leading the pack against Beijing<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thousands protested in Hong Kong on Wednesday pressing China to allow full democracy in the city as a battle intensifies over Beijing&#8217;s attempts to control the outcome of a planned direct election for the city&#8217;s leader in 2017.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Beijing had promised direct elections in the former British colony as the goal for 2017, but the devil is in the details of the rules governing who can run.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Pressure has been building between democratic forces in the financial hub, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997, and China&#8217;s stability-obsessed Communist Party leaders who fear a rival democrat being voted into office.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Protesters at the annual New Year&#8217;s Day democracy rally shouted slogans demanding full democracy in 2017, with a key condition being the open nominations of candidates so that anyone, including China critics, can run for office.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In March 2013 organisers of the &#8220;Occupy Central&#8221; movement, Benny Tai, Reverend Chu Yiu-ming and Chinese University&#8217;s Sociology professor Chan Kin-man officially announced at a news conference that they will start promoting the protest in 2014 if the government&#8217;s proposals for universal suffrage fail to meet international standards<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But Chinese officials and leftist newspapers have rejected that, citing the city&#8217;s mini-constitution that states all nominees must be endorsed by a 1,200-strong election committee, which is stacked with Beijing loyalists. &#8211; Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thousands protested in Hong Kong on Wednesday pressing China to allow full democracy in the city as a battle intensifies over Beijing&#8217;s attempts to control the outcome of a planned direct election for the city&#8217;s leader in 2017. Beijing had promised direct elections in the former British colony as the goal for 2017, but the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=12479\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Battle for Hong Kong intensifies as thousands take to the streets&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,123],"tags":[930,7917,7918],"class_list":["post-12479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-world","tag-democracy","tag-occupy-hong-kong","tag-prc"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/occupyhk.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12482,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12479\/revisions\/12482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}