{"id":40837,"date":"2014-07-10T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=40837 "},"modified":"2014-07-10T14:55:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T14:55:00","slug":"40837-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=40837","title":{"rendered":"China dismisses planned Macau democracy vote as meaningless"},"content":{"rendered":"
HONG KONG Thu Jul 10, 2014 2:28am EDT<\/div>
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(Reuters) – China has dismissed as meaningless a proposed referendum on democracy in its southern gambling hub of Macau, a poll that would follow in the footsteps of a similar informal vote in nearby Hong Kong.<\/div>
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Three activist groups said on Monday they would stage a referendum among Macau’s 600,000 residents to coincide with the widely expected re-election by a local council of local leader Fernando Chui in August.<\/div>
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China denounced the June poll in Hong Kong, underscored by a march by hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the right to freely elect their local leader in 2017. Five student leaders were arrested after a later sit-in.<\/div>
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The former British colony of Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997, followed two years later by the Portuguese-run enclave of Macau, now the world’s biggest gambling center. Both enjoy wide-ranging autonomy and free speech not permitted on the mainland.<\/div>
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“An administrative region has no authority to establish a system of referendum or organize any activity relating to a referendum,” China’s Liaison Office, which oversees affairs in Macau, said in a statement posted on local media websites.<\/div>
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The statement, issued on Tuesday, said the office supported the position of Macau authorities, who are subservient to Beijing.<\/div>
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An official body of 400 elects Macau’s leader, similar to Hong Kong where a small committee of largely pro-Beijing loyalists chooses who gets on the ballot, effectively rendering the ability to vote meaningless.<\/div>
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 <\/div>Continue reading the <\/span>original article<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span>
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<div>"An administrative region has no authority to establish a system of referendum or organize any activity relating to a referendum," China's Liaison Office, which oversees affairs in Macau, said in a statement posted on local media websites.<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}