Global Times Cautions Mobs To Not Misread Hong Kong Election Results as Excuse for Violence

Nov. 26, 2019 (EIRNS)—While the liberal media internationally is celebrating the “stunning landslide victory” of the so-called pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong (the London Guardian goes so far as to spin the vote as “one of the most serious challenges to its [China’s] autocratic President, Xi Jinping, since he took power in 2012”), China’s semi-official media has a different reading.

Global Times published an editorial Nov. 25 that said:

“We want to say that the pro-democracy camp winning more seats doesn’t mean Hong Kong voters support violent demonstrations.... It is inconceivable and impossible that the majority of Hongkongers would encourage violence, support political confrontation against the mainland, and back the city to become a bridgehead for U.S. political forces to pressure China.... It is crucial to rationally interpret the result of Hong Kong’s district council elections, lest mobs should be emboldened by misreading them.”

China Daily also had an op-ed by a research fellow at the Communication University of China on the Hong Kong elections, which suggested that the danger of violence is not over: “Certain rioters even claimed that the election is another battlefront of the radicals and gave a call to ‘vote in the morning and hold violent demonstrations later.’ ”