{"id":47946,"date":"2015-07-04T00:19:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=47946 "},"modified":"2015-07-04T00:19:00","modified_gmt":"2015-07-04T00:19:00","slug":"47946-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=47946","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong Democracy Activists Ponder Next Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2015\/27\/201574DDB508C8-F95D-4B3D-90D0-588516B16753_w640_r1_s.jpg\" alt=\"201574DDB508C8-F95D-4B3D-90D0-588516B16753_w640_r1_s.jpg (640&#215;360)\" \/><\/div><div>FILE &#8211; Pro-democracy protesters holding yellow umbrellas attend a rally outside the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, Wednesday, June 17, 2015.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>July 03, 2015 1:38 AM<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>This week, Hong Kong&#8217;s pro-democracy activists turned out in lower numbers than expected for marches marking the 18th anniversary for the territory&#8217;s handover to China.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>After almost a year of non-stop rallies, some 48,000 Hong Kongers took to the street on July 1, making it one of the annual protest&#8217;s lowest turnouts since 2003, according to the organizers. Police estimates say the number peaked at 20,000.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>That led Johnson Yeung of Civil Human Rights Front into admitting the city&#8217;s momentum for democracy has slightly slowed down. And a lack of clear goals and direction for the movement&#8217;s future has kept the numbers down, one of the key protest leaders, Joshua Huang of Scholarism, told local media.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>But Emily Lau Wai-hing, chairperson of Hong Kong&#8217;s Democratic Party, downplays the significance of the turnout, said the struggle will go on.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;And now that, the force, the universal [suffrage] package is voted down, there&#8217;s a sigh of relief, and of course, people will regroup and continue their struggle,&#8221; Lau said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Hong Kongers haven&#8217;t pulled away from their political engagement, she added.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Two weeks earlier, the city&#8217;s legislature voted down a China-backed electoral reform proposal by a 28 to 8 vote. The measure would have changed the way the Chinese-controlled territory chooses its next chief executive in 2017, but critics said it did little to alter a system that allows only pro-Beijing candidates.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>The rejection was widely viewed as a loss for the city&#8217;s pro-Beijing political parties.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>But Zhang Jian of the Shanghai Institute for International Studies said the vote has led Beijing to put the city&#8217;s electoral reform on hold, posing a problem for pro-democracy advocates.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;It&#8217;s actually not in the interest of the pan-democracy camp after it voted down the political reform proposal because they [pro-democracy activists] will now be excluded in the platform, which used to allow them to further take part in the political arena, and risk losing momentum,&#8221; Zhang said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/content\/hong-kong-democracy-activists-ponder-next-steps\/2847271.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;That led Johnson Yeung of Civil Human Rights Front into admitting the city&amp;#8217;s momentum for democracy has slightly slowed down. And a lack of clear goals and direction for the movement&amp;#8217;s future has kept the numbers down, one of the key protest leaders, Joshua Huang of Scholarism, told local media.&lt;\/div&gt;<\/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-47946","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\/47946","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=47946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}