Hong Kong is increasingly under the thumb of the Chinese government For the first time since Hong Kong was brought back into China’s orbit in 1997, the city’s annual candlelight vigil in Victoria Park commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre is being silenced by the state, officially designated as an unauthorized assembly. Suspected organizers and demonstrators are being arrested. [CNN / James Griffiths] For years, the vigil stood as a barometer of public interest in government, and also in the government’s capacity to sanction democratic activity. Mass unrest in 2019 compelled the Chinese government to ban attendance this year and last, officially citing coronavirus concerns. [NYT / Vivian Wang] Police have already arrested top Democracy activist Chow Hang Tung, vice chair of the Hong Kong Alliance, for promoting the vigil on social media despite its ban. [The Hill / Lexi Lonas] A security law passed last year furthered a state crackdown over dissent in Hong Kong, making it easier to punish protesters and reducing the influence of local leaders. [BBC]

An end to "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong

China passed a draconian new national security law for Hong Kong on Tuesday, a move which will dramatically erode the city’s freedom’s under the “one country, two systems” agreement and whittle away at Hong Kong’s relative autonomy from mainland China. [NPR / Emily Feng] According to Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, the law criminalizes “acts of secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities, and collusion with foreign or external forces to endanger national security.” [CNN / Helen Regan] Pro-democracy advocates, however, say the law will be used to crack down on protests and activism in Hong Kong. It was passed just a day before the anniversary of Hong Kong’s July 1, 1997, handover to China from the UK. [NYT / Chris Buckley, Keith Bradsher, and Tiffany May] As Emily Rauhala, a foreign affairs correspondent for the Washington Post, pointed out on Twitter Tuesday, the law “seems to effectively criminalize *ordinary* life in Hong Kong: saying what you please, communicating as you please, gathering as you please, protesting as you please.” [Twitter / Emily Rauhala] And the law’s effects are already apparent: At least one pro-democracy party in Hong Kong disbanded on Tuesday as activists worry about what comes next for the city. [Washington Post / Shibani Mahtani] Nonetheless, some activists say they plan to march on Wednesday in protest of the new law, despite a ban by police. “The aim is to show people that even with the national security law, we must exercise our right to protest,” one Hong Kong district council member said. [South China Morning Post / Sum Lok-kei and Clifford Lo]

The tally of coronavirus deaths in the U.S. has surpassed 100,000. UPDATES

Just over four months after the government confirmed the first known case, more than 100,000 people who had the coronavirus have died in the United States, according to a New York Times tally.

The toll exceeds the number of U.S. military combat fatalities in every conflict since the Korean War. It matches the toll in the United States of the 1968 flu pandemic, and it is approaching the 116,000 killed in another flu outbreak a decade before that.

The pandemic is on track to be the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the 1918 flu pandemic, in which about 675,000 Americans died.

As the nation neared the milestone, President Trump flew to Florida on Wednesday in the hopes of watching the first launch of NASA astronauts into orbit from the United States in nearly a decade. But threatening weather led the launch to be postponed until Saturday at the earliest.

 Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, released a video on Wednesday in which he expressed grief and charged that “this is a fateful milestone we should have never reached.” He faulted the administration for not enacting social-distancing measures sooner, which researchers said would have saved thousands of lives.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump had taken aim on Twitter at those who would question his response. “The Radical Left Lamestream Media, together with their partner, the Do Nothing Democrats, are trying to spread a new narrative that President Trump was slow in reacting to Covid 19,” he wrote, referring to himself in the third person. “Wrong, I was very fast, even doing the Ban on China long before anybody thought necessary!”

Though the numbers of new cases and deaths have begun trending downward, health experts warn of a possible resurgence as lockdowns are lifted.

The daily death toll in New York, the hardest-hit state, fell this week to levels not seen since March.
Most statisticians and public health experts, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, say the death toll is probably far higher than official counts. People who haven’t been tested are dying at home and at nursing homes, and early this year some coronavirus deaths were probably misidentified.

  Riot police officers clashed with protesters in Hong Kong on Wednesday.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

China Approves Plan to Rein In Hong Kong, Defying Worldwide Outcry

Beijing ordered that a new law be written to extend many of mainland China’s security practices to Hong Kong, creating broad powers to quash unrest.

NY TIMES

China officially has the broad power to quash unrest in Hong Kong, as the country’s legislature on Thursday nearly unanimously approved a plan to suppress subversion, secession, terrorism and seemingly any acts that might threaten national security in the semiautonomous city.

As Beijing hashes out the specifics of the national security legislation in the coming weeks, the final rules will help determine the fate of Hong Kong, including how much of the city’s autonomy will be preserved or how much Beijing will tighten its grip.

Early signals from the Chinese authorities point to a crackdown once the law takes effect, which is expected by September.

Activist groups could be banned. Courts could impose long jail sentences for national security violations. China’s feared security agencies could operate openly in the city.

Even Hong Kong’s chief executive appeared to hint this week that certain civil liberties might not be an enduring feature of Hong Kong life. “We are a very free society, so for the time being, people have the freedom to say whatever they want to say,” said the chief executive, Carrie Lam, noting, “Rights and freedoms are not absolute.”

The prospect of a national security law has prompted an immediate pushback in Hong Kong, where protesters are once again taking to the streets. The international community, too, has warned against infringing on the city’s civil liberties.

The Trump administration signaled Wednesday that it was likely to end some or all of the U.S. government’s special trade and economic relations with Hong Kong because of China’s move. The State Department no longer considers Hong Kong to have significant autonomy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, a condition for maintaining the trade status.

Larry Kramer, Playwright and Outspoken AIDS Activist, Dies at 84

He sought to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency and foresaw that it could kill millions regardless of sexual orientation.

Larry Kramer, the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and ’90s, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan. He was 84.

His husband, David Webster, said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Kramer had weathered illness for much of his adult life. Among other things he had been infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, contracted liver disease and underwent a successful liver transplant.

An author, essayist and playwright — notably hailed for his autobiographical 1985 play, “The Normal Heart” — Mr. Kramer had feet in both the world of letters and the public sphere. In 1981 he was a founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first service organization for H.I.V.-positive people, though his fellow directors effectively kicked him out a year later for his aggressive approach. (He returned the compliment by calling them “a sad organization of sissies.”)

He was then a founder of a more militant group, Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), whose street actions demanding a speedup in AIDS drugs research and an end to discrimination against gay men and lesbians severely disrupted the operations of government offices, Wall Street and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Even some of the officials Mr. Kramer accused of “murder” and “genocide” recognized that his outbursts were part of a strategy to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency. “One of America’s most valuable troublemakers,” Susan Sontag called him.

 Voters are unimpressed with Cuomo’s oversight of nursing homes.

Governor Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the coronavirus crisis appears to be damaging his standing among New York voters.

In a Siena College poll released Wednesday morning, a plurality of registered voters (48 percent) said he did only a “fair” or “poor” job addressing the needs of nursing homes. 44 percent of voters rated his nursing home management “good” or “excellent.”

Mr. Cuomo’s administration had come under withering criticism for sending more than 4,500 convalescing coronavirus patients into nursing homes filled with vulnerable people, according to a tally by The Associated Press. At the time, the administration thought it prudent to free up as many hospital beds as possible for an anticipated tsunami of acute coronavirus cases.

Covid-19 has killed more than 6,000 residents in nursing home and adult care facilities, including deaths presumed to be linked to the virus. On May 10, Mr. Cuomo reversed the administration’s policy.

The governor has blamed nursing homes for failing to raise their concerns. 

Mr. Cuomo’s overall favorability ratings also fell this month, from a high of 77 in April to 66. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percent.

“Cuomo’s stratospheric ratings from New Yorkers in April have fallen from their record highs but remain very strong as two-thirds of voters still view him favorably, nearly two-thirds give him a positive job performance rating and more than three-quarters still approve of the job he’s doing to address the pandemic,” said Steven Greenberg, a Siena College pollster.

Pollsters interviewed 796 registered voters in New York State between May 17 and May 21. They found that 37 percent of voters — and nearly half of downstate voters — know someone who was killed by Covid-19.

‘Ugly Even for Him’: Trump’s Usual Allies Recoil at His Smear of MSNBC Host

The Wall Street Journal and Washington Examiner chastised the president as a top House Republican, Liz Cheney, urged him to “stop” his attacks on Joe Scarborough.

Some of President Trump’s most stalwart media defenders broke ranks with him on Wednesday, aghast at his baseless smears against the MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, whom Mr. Trump has all but accused of killing a former staff member two decades ago despite a total lack of evidence.

The backlash even spread to the senior levels of Mr. Trump’s party on Capitol Hill, where the No. 3 House Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, said the president should drop the matter and focus on leading the country through the coronavirus pandemic. “I would urge him to stop it,” she told reporters, referring to the false allegations.

The vast majority of Republican officials have kept silent about the president’s Twitter barrage against Mr. Scarborough, and the most prominent conservative voices on Fox News, like Sean Hannity,  Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson.let the subject go unmentioned on recent broadcasts.

But Ms. Cheney’s criticism was a sign of stepped-up pressure on Mr. Trump from the right, reflected in this week’s unusual chorus of reproach from the conservative media platforms the president often turns to for comfort.

The New York Post, Mr. Trump’s first read in the morning, lamented in Wednesday’s paper that the president “decided to suggest that a TV morning-show host committed murder. That is a depressing sentence to type.” In a staff editorial, The Post addressed its most powerful reader directly: “Trust us, you did not look like the bigger man.”

The Washington Examiner, a popular conservative news site, published a scathing article calling Mr. Trump’s attacks “incompatible with leadership” and “vile.” Mr. Trump is usually enamored of The Examiner, one of the few news sites to which he routinely grants interviews, including one this month.

And the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, a bellwether of establishment conservatism, called Mr. Trump’s unfounded accusation against Mr. Scarborough “ugly even for him.”

“We don’t write this with any expectation that Mr. Trump will stop,” The Journal wrote in its editorial. “Perhaps he even thinks this helps him politically, though we can’t imagine how. But Mr. Trump is debasing his office, and he’s hurting the country in doing so.”

If the blowback affected Mr. Trump, the president has not shown it. He taunted Mr. Scarborough — a former Republican congressman and one-time social acquaintance of Mr. Trump who is now one of his harshest TV critics — again on Wednesday in a tweet that referred to a “Cold Case.”

The president’s attacks have caused anguish to the family of Lori Klausutis, the staff member in Mr. Scarborough’s former congressional office who died in 2001 when a heart condition caused her to fall and hit her head on a desk. Mr. Scarborough was not present and the police ruled her death an accident. Ms. Klausutis’s relatives have said that the president’s evocation of her death and his unfounded insinuation that she had an affair with Mr. Scarborough have caused them deep distress.

Senator Mitt Romney, the Utah Republican and a frequent Trump critic, tweeted on Wednesday in support of her widower, T.J. Klausutis. “His heart is breaking,” Mr. Romney wrote. “Enough already.” Representative Peter King, Republican of New York, told reporters on Wednesday that the president’s claims were “out of bounds,” adding, “there’s no evidence.”

“Trump opening up this front with Joe Scarborough is another thing in the news cycle, another thing for people to talk about,” Mr. Polskin said. “It occupies time on the talk shows. It gets people away from that 100,000 figure,” referring to the estimated number of Americans who have died from coronavirus. “Trump’s a master at that,” he added. “Throwing out these bright, shiny diversions.”

Why the Protests in Hong Kong May Have No End in Sight

NY TIMES




HONG KONG — Resolving the increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong will most likely fall to an influential group of Beijing’s local allies.

The trouble: They don’t agree on much.

The fissures raise the likelihood that unrest in Hong Kong could fester for months or even years. That could further hurt the city’s economy, create a constant headache for Beijing and aggravate an already sore point between the United States and China.

Some of Beijing’s local allies are populists who want to break up local monopolies, seize private land and build public housing. Some are tycoons who are happy to support the local government and Beijing as long as no one touches their businesses.

The differences within the pro-Beijing camp are even deeper on the protesters’ biggest demand, for greater democracy.

A moderate camp led by the city’s embattled chief executive, Carrie Lam, would like to see gradual progress toward freer elections, at least within Beijing’s predefined limits. The city’s hard-liners loathe the idea, and are deeply frustrated by what they perceive as Mrs. Lam’s desire to negotiate with democracy advocates and her wariness of ordering a harsher police crackdown.

The divisions were visible on Wednesday when Mrs. Lam gave her annual policy address, Hong Kong’s equivalent of the State of the Union speech in the United States. After months of internal meetings, she delivered a fairly narrow set of initiatives on issues like housing and did not even try to address broad political tensions.

Mrs. Lam said at a news conference afterward that avoiding the question of democracy in her annual address was “not a responsible act.” But she said she couldn’t tackle the subject, criticizing opposition lawmakers for having blocked the last election proposal from Beijing in 2014.

For the pro-Beijing camp, the disagreements add to the growing weakness among the various political parties. The pro-Beijing coalition has slumped to record-low support in independent opinion surveys in recent weeks, and such parties face the potential for heavy losses in neighborhood district elections in November and again in legislative elections next September.


‘I’m Worried That I Will Die:’ Hong Kong Protesters Write Final Goodbyes
As violence escalates between demonstrators and the police in Hong Kong, protesters have started writing “last letters” to their loved ones, in case they don’t return. These notes chronicle the mental and emotional state of frontliners coming to terms with risking death for their beliefs.

[gun shots] Street battles are the new normal in Hong Kong, and they are getting more violent by the day. Police have fired live rounds on protesters and they have ramped up arrests. [sirens] Hardline protesters have become emboldened by the crackdown. They return week after week, ready to fight. They come armed with petrol bombs, masks and letters — farewell notes — in case they don’t return from the streets. [sniffles] [shouting] [crying] [glass shattering] [shouting]


Politicians in the pro-Beijing coalition in Hong Kong are “like birds in a forest — when things are good, they stay together, but when things are bad, they fly in all directions,” said Jasper Tsang Yok-sing, the main founder of the biggest pro-Beijing political party in Hong Kong, who was the president of the legislature until 2016.

“Our biggest worry now is Nov. 24; we are thinking how we can minimize our loss,” he added.

Mrs. Lam has tried repeatedly, if ineffectively, to reach what she sees as compromises with the pro-democracy opposition, most notably by first suspending and then agreeing to withdraw the extradition bill that sparked the protests. She has tried to set up public and private dialogues with her opponents, only to have an unflattering audio recording leak from one event and democracy advocates picket at another.

To the pro-democracy side, she is a figurehead for a government increasingly beholden to Beijing. She had to release her policy address on Wednesday as a video after pro-democracy lawmakers shouted her down in the legislative chamber.

Any effort by Mrs. Lam to begin a dialogue with democracy activists, though, has just intensified criticism among Beijing’s most outspoken allies.

“The Carrie Lam government is still trying to curry favor with the opposition, thinking that she has the support of the pro-Beijing people,” said Lau Siu-kai, who was a top Hong Kong official until 2012 and is now one of Beijing’s top advisers on Hong Kong policy. Beijing sees the opposition “as hard-line opponents and as a die-hard, anti-communist element willing to collude with foreign forces, above all the United States.”

About all that Beijing’s allies agree on these days is their strong support for the Hong Kong police.

“The government ought to have gotten tougher, taking firmer action sooner,” said Regina Ip, a member of Mrs. Lam’s cabinet and a lawmaker who leads a pro-Beijing political party that supports strict adherence to law and order.

Yet such an approach could trigger further protests. Demonstrators have already complained of police brutality, calling for an amnesty for those accused of rioting and for the creation of a commission of inquiry into the actions of the police force.

The chance of compromise on the issue of democracy seems remote — from all sides.

Moderates in the pro-Beijing camp want to revive a plan offered by the Chinese government to protesters in 2014 and rejected as inadequate. Mrs. Lam reminisced about the plan on Wednesday. But hard-liners say that recent turbulence in the streets of Hong Kong shows that further steps toward democracy are too risky, and oppose making the plan available again.




ImageResolving the increasingly violent protests in Hong Kong will most likely fall to an influential group of Beijing’s local allies.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times


The proposal would have allowed all Hong Kong adults to vote. But the names on the ballot would have been selected by a 1,200-member committee. The same committee currently chooses chief executives without putting them to a general vote of the population.

The members of the committee are selected mainly by sectors of the Hong Kong public that have traditionally aligned with Beijing. These include neighborhood district councilors, accountants and real estate lawyers.

The paradox of Hong Kong politics today is that the committee might not be so reliably under Beijing’s control. Cornerstones of mainland influence in Hong Kong are eroding.

Many solicitors — lawyers who mainly handle real estate transactions — and accountants have unexpectedly emerged as critics of the Hong Kong government and Beijing over the extradition issue. The largest bloc of committee members is chosen by Hong Kong’s district councils, which makes pro-Beijing parties even more nervous about losing council seats in next month’s elections.


Democracy activists have been cautious about their chances of gaining seats in the coming elections, since the city government has the legal power to disqualify candidates who have advocated independence.

There have also been worries about violent attacks on candidates and voters, and possibly even the postponement of the elections. Jimmy Sham, the leader of the main pro-democracy protest group, the Civil Human Rights Front, was hospitalized on Wednesday after men beat him with hammers.

Regardless of the outcome of the elections, democracy advocates say they cannot endorse the democracy plan now, having rejected it in 2014. “No one ever dares to say ‘think about it’ or ‘accept it’ — anyone who does so will be severely attacked,” said Joseph Cheng, who led a broad coalition of pro-democracy groups in 2014. “We come to a consensus, we stick to that position and we cannot shift.”

The main wild card in all of this is Beijing. The pro-Beijing parties have a history of quashing disagreements and coming together when the Chinese government issues instructions.

Some pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong argued bitterly in 2005 that the next chief executive should not be Donald Tsang, a longtime civil servant who had been knighted by Prince Charles for his service to Britain. But when Beijing ordered support for Mr. Tsang, he was quickly endorsed even by vehement critics like Ma Lik, the chairman then of the biggest pro-Beijing party.

“He won the trust of Beijing, and we support whoever Beijing trusts,” Mr. Ma said in a telephone interview at the time. “That’s why we are called pro-Beijing.”

Hong Kong Election Results Give Democracy Backers Big Win A surge in voting, especially by young people,

NY TIMES




HONG KONG — Pro-democracy candidates buoyed by months of street protests in Hong Kong won a stunning victory in local elections on Sunday, as record numbers voted in a vivid expression of the city’s aspirations and its anger with the Chinese government.

It was a pointed rebuke of Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong, and the turnout — seven in 10 eligible voters — suggested that the public continues to back the democracy movement, even as the protests grow increasingly violent. Young Hong Kongers, a major force behind the demonstrations of the past six months, played a leading role in the voting surge.

With three million voters casting ballots, pro-democracy candidates captured at least 389 of 452 elected seats, up from only 124 and far surpassing the previous high of 198 set in 2003. With one race undecided, the government’s allies held just 57 seats, down from 300, and independents held five.

To many democracy advocates, Sunday was a turning point.

“There has been a very deep awakening of the Hong Kong people,” said Alan Leong, chairman of the Civic Party, one of the largest pro-democracy parties.

The elections were for district councils, one of the lowest elected offices in Hong Kong, and they are typically a subdued affair focused on community issues. The job mostly entails pushing for neighborhood needs like bus stops and traffic lights.

But this election took on outsize significance, and was viewed as a referendum on the unrest that has created the city’s worst political crisis in decades. In a semiautonomous part of China where greater democracy is one of the protesters’ biggest demands, it gave residents a rare chance to vote.

The gains at the ballot box are likely to embolden a democracy movement that has struggled with how to balance peaceful and violent protests to achieve its goals.

They are also likely to deepen the challenges for China’s central government, which wants to curb the unrest in Hong Kong. And they might exacerbate Beijing’s fears about giving the city’s residents even greater say in choosing their government.




The district councils are among the most democratic bodies in Hong Kong. Almost all the seats are directly elected, unlike the legislature, where the proportion is just over half. The territory’s chief executive is also not chosen directly by voters, but is instead selected by a committee stacked in favor of Beijing.

The election results will give democracy forces considerably more influence on that committee, which is scheduled to choose a new chief executive in 2022.

The district councils name about a tenth of the group's 1,200 members, and now all of these will flip from pro-Beijing to pro-democracy seats. Democracy advocates already control about a quarter of the seats, while other previously pro-Beijing sectors of the committee are now starting to lean toward democracy, most notably accountants and real estate lawyers.

Mr. Leong, the Civic Party chairman, called on the Chinese Communist Party to change its policies in Hong Kong.

“Unless the C.C.P. is doing something concrete to address the concerns of the Hong Kong people,” he said, “I think this movement cannot end.”

Regina Ip, a cabinet member and the leader of a pro-Beijing political party, said she was surprised to see so many young voters, many of whom tried to confront her with the protesters’ demands.

“Normally,” she said, “the young people do not come out to vote. But this time, the opposition managed to turn them out.”

Ahead of the election, the city’s leadership was concerned that the vote would be marred by the chaos of recent months. Some of the most violent clashes yet between protesters and the police took place last week, turning two university campuses into battlegrounds.

But the city remained relatively calm on Sunday as voters turned out in droves. Long lines formed at polling centers in the morning, snaking around skyscrapers and past small shops. Riot police officers were deployed near polling stations on Sunday.

Image
Campaign volunteers lined a street in Lok Fu on Sunday.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times


David Lee, a retired printer approaching his 90th birthday, was among the earliest voters on Hong Kong Island and said he had come because he wanted democracy.

“This is important,” he said.

Some analysts had predicted that pro-democracy candidates would have difficulty making big gains. Pro-Beijing candidates are much better financed, and the district races have traditionally been won on purely local issues, not big questions like democracy, said Joseph Cheng, a retired professor at City University of Hong Kong.

But voter turnout soared to 71 percent, far surpassing expectations. Typically in district council elections, it is little more than 40 percent. Four years ago, after the 2014 Umbrella Movement increased public interest in politics, turnout climbed to 47 percent. This year, the number of registered voters hit a record.

On Sunday, several prominent pro-Beijing politicians lost their races, among them Michael Tien, a longtime establishment lawmaker. After his defeat, he said the increase in young voters signaled that they were becoming more politically engaged, adding that the government should listen to them.

In the district of Tuen Mun, about a hundred people celebrated with cheers and champagne the defeat of Junius Ho, a controversial lawmaker many protesters accused of supporting mob attacks against them.

The previous record for pro-democracy seats set in 2003 followed huge protests against national security legislation. But after that election Beijing began investing heavily in grass-roots mobilization efforts for local elections, including busing large numbers of older Hong Kong citizens from retirement homes in mainland China to polling places in Hong Kong.

Image
Polling officials counting votes on Sunday.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times


Instead of just focusing on local issues, many pro-democracy candidates ran on the broad themes of the protest movement, especially anger at police brutality, and the intensity of the demonstrations sometimes spilled into the race. Candidates on both sides were attacked while campaigning.

Mandy Lee, 53, a homemaker who voted at the Kowloon Bay neighborhood, showed up to vote for the pro-Beijing establishment and criticized the protests.

“It’s not that I have no sympathy toward young people, but I strongly believe that their efforts are futile,” she said. “We are a tiny island; it’s only a matter of time before China takes us over and integrates us.”

The outcome of the election could further complicate the position of Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive. Critics say that she has failed to engage with the community over the protests and that she has not listened to people’s concerns.
Image
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, casting her vote on Sunday.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times


In June, Mrs. Lam set off enormous protests by pushing ahead with a bill that would have allowed the extradition of Hong Kong residents to the opaque judicial system in mainland China. The issue played to deeper worries about Beijing’s encroachment on Hong Kong, which has maintained its own political and judicial system since the former British colony was reclaimed by China in 1997.

Mrs. Lam withdrew her proposal after months of protests, but many said she acted too late. The protesters are now demanding additional concessions, including the introduction of universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into police conduct, and now they can argue the public supports them by pointing to the pro-democracy camp’s overwhelming election win.

Many pro-Beijing political parties receive large donations from the Hong Kong subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises in mainland China, which they use to organize picnics and other campaign events. But the results on Sunday showed the limits of these efforts.

Matthew Cheung, the chief secretary and second-highest official of the Hong Kong government, said on Sunday during the voting that the city’s leadership would pay close attention to the results of the vote no matter how it turned out.

“The election is an important political thermometer,” he said. “We will definitely take it seriously.”