An internet platform for this weekend’s vote on political reform has been paralysed following a large scale attack by hackers. The University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme, which is helping Occupy Central organisers to conduct the unofficial referendum, said their servers were bombarded by more than ten-billion system inquiries within 20 hours.
Although he brought success to his once-dying business, money is not the only thing driving Gao Haiyan. The young Chinese entrepreneur was moved by the sight of day laborers drawing rickshaws and being turned away at a local government office. Gao, 35, is now attempting to spread electronic voting systems to a populace long distrustful of politics. China remains governed under the one-party rule of the Communist Party and always ranks low on the Democracy Index, which measures the state of democracy in 167 countries. The Chinese government has not moved forward with political reform to realize free, democratic elections. But Gao, founder of a Shanghai-based company that develops and sells electronic voting systems using mark sense cards under the Quan Hui Tong brand, noted that many elections are held in China. “More than 100 million people are estimated to vote in residents’ committee elections each year across China,” he told a planning meeting of a major appliance maker.
Parents, students, hunger strikers, pop stars and other public figures camped out around Hong Kong government offices last week demanding that the government scrap a requirement that state-funded schools teach children to love the motherland and respect the Communist Party. The confrontation took on a nastier tone, and the crowds swelled, after pro-Beijing media suggested that the protesters were pawns of the American and British governments. This showdown put the current Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying in an awkward position, since Beijing’s local representatives insisted that the education plan go ahead. He capitulated on the eve of the weekend election of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and announced instead that the classes would no longer be mandatory. (Legco will soon negotiate the system under which the next chief executive will be elected by universal suffrage in 2017). That probably saved pro-Beijing candidates from a disastrous showing, but the controversy still helped pro-democracy candidates win 27 out of 70 seats in the legislature. That’s not as many as they hoped for, but then the convoluted electoral system is rigged against pro-democracy candidates. They garnered almost 60% of the popular vote, up from 57% in 2008, and won 39% of the seats. Most importantly, they have enough votes to block any plans from Beijing to curtail civil liberties. Many of the new lawmakers are more radical than their predecessors.
Hong Kong voters cast ballots in legislative elections Sunday that will help determine the eventual shape of the full democracy that Beijing has promised the former British colony. The amount of support voters give to pro-democracy and pro-Beijing camps will indicate the level of desire for political reform in Hong Kong. Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kong’s residents to choose their leader by 2017 and all lawmakers by 2020, but no road map has been laid out. Lawmakers elected in Sunday’s polls will help shape the arrangements for those future elections.
Hong Kong voters go to the polls Sunday with their government mired in controversy, not least for the attempt this week to force “national education classes” on school children. With more seats in the legislature being decided on the basis of one-person-one-vote, the city’s pro-Beijing administration faces a challenging future as democrats look to make electoral gains before the anticipated introduction of universal suffrage in 2017. Sunday’s election in Hong Kong will see over half of the legislature’s 70 seats returned by universal suffrage, the remainder by generally pro-Beijing groups. The vote is likely to prove a defining moment for the city’s new leader, chief executive Leung Chun-ying.
On November 6 or 7, two American men in suits will appear on television. Even with the sound off you will be able to tell, by the expression on their faces, which of them has been elected president and which has not. And, on an unspecified date between now and the end of the year, an unspecified number of Chinese men in dark matching suits will applaud themselves on to the stage of the Great Hall of the People. From the order in which they appear, experienced onlookers will be able to tell who is president, who is premier and who has which of the other jobs on the Politburo’s standing committee, China’s pre-eminent ruling body. My colleague Richard McGregor, in his enthralling book The Party , says the spectacle provides “something rare in modern China, a live and public moment of genuine political drama”.
The battle lines are drawn and the parties lined up for fierce fights in Hong Kong’s geographical constituencies where 69 teams of candidates will battle it out for 35 seats. In sharp contrast, 16 out of the 30 original functional seats will be won uncontested. Analysts caution that the sheer immensity of the candidate lists in the city-wide ballot will make it difficult for any team’s second candidate to win the election to the Legislative Council (LegCo). There are five new seats up for grabs, one in each of the five geographical constituencies, increasing the tally to 35. But even with the increase in the number of seats, the field looks distinctly overcrowded as the two-week nomination period ended on Tuesday. In comparison to this year’s 69 candidate lists for 35 seats, only 55 lists competed in the 2008 election in which there were 30 seats available.
Hong Kong just had its new ‘chief executive officer’ — Leung Chun-ying — sworn in during a ceremony on Sunday, while on the island people took to the streets in protest. Leung Chun-ying, of course, was surely not on any ballot. According to Reuters and Agence France Presse reports on the ground in the former British colony of Hong Kong, tens of thousands of protestors filled the streets of the financial district Sunday, saying there was nothing to cheer in their new leader Leung Chun-ying, a millionaire property consultant seen as close to China’s communist rulers. During the swearing in ceremony with Chinese President Hu Jintao, protesters disrupted a speech with calls for a modern democracy.
A university website offering ordinary Hong Kongers a chance to vote for their next leader ahead of tomorrow’s election is under “systematic attack” from hackers, organisers said. Thousands of people who do not have the right to vote in the election are expressing their views through the unofficial poll organised by the University of Hong Kong. “The system has been very busy,” Robert Chung, director of the university’s respected Public Opinion Program, said yesterday. “We suspect it is under systematic attack as there are more than one million clicks on our system every second.” Mr Chung did not indicate who could be responsible for the disruption, but his team of pollsters has a history of aggravating mainland authorities with surveys indicating public opinion that is at odds with Beijing’s official line.
Two local men have been arrested after an online referendum organised by Hong Kong university to poll citizens on their choice of chief executive was disabled in an apparent denial of service attack. Broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) reported that the men, aged 17 and 28, were arrested at the weekend after the online poll was disrupted for a large part of Friday and some of Saturday. … The system has been very busy,” Robert Chung, director of the university’s program, apparently told reporters. “We suspect it is under systematic attack as there are more than one million clicks on our system every second.” Chung was reportedly reticent about the potential motive for the attack but it is well known that the Chinese authorities are not a massive fan of free speech and probably viewed the referendum as undermining the result of the real vote – the outcome of which Beijing basically controls.
A mock vote that aimed to give ordinary Hong Kong citizens a voice in today’s chief executive poll drew 223,000 votes despite an earlier cyber attack that hit the ambitious project. The Chinese territory’s top political job will be decided by a 1,200 person election committee Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped many of the city’s seven million residents taking part in the University of Hong Kong’s civil referendum project. Beijing has promised the city universal suffrage by 2017. Over half (54%) posted a blank vote, meaning they wanted neither Hong Kong’s former no. 2, Henry Tang, nor its former cabinet head, Leung Chun-ying, to win. Mr. Leung won 18% of the vote, followed by Mr. Tang at 16% and Albert Ho, who chairs the city’s Democracy Party, at 11%.
A cyber attack has hit an ambitious project that sought to give ordinary Hong Kong citizens a voice in this weekend’s chief executive poll, with organizers scrambling to provide paper ballots to the tens of thousands wishing to participate in the mock vote. The Chinese territory’s top political job will be decided by a 1,200 person election committee Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped many of the city’s seven million residents keen to take part in the University of Hong Kong’s civil referendum project. Beijing has promised the city universal suffrage by 2017. Thousands of users logged online Friday morning or used the smart phone apps created by Dr. Robert Chung’s group at the University of Hong Kong to cast their vote, but pages didn’t load properly. Dr. Chung said an early-morning cyber intrusion appeared to disable their servers, and that the site had also been experiencing abnormally high hit rates that had overloaded their system, up to a million requests a second.
Organisers of a mock chief executive election say a suspected hacking attack has halted online voting. The Director of the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme, Robert Chung, said the website became paralysed early this morning. Dr Chung said hackers had attacked it during tests a few days ago, and some of his colleagues’ passwords had been inexplicably changed. “We found incidents of abnormally high hit rates on March 21 … We registered about a million hits per second. We think there could not be another reason other than cyber attacks on us,” he said.
The organisers of a mock poll for Hong Kong’s chief executive say their online system “is under cyber attack” to prevent voting. Residents can vote online or by mobile phone in the publicly funded poll organised by Hong Kong University. The actual vote on Sunday is to limited 1,200 election committee members, but the desire for universal suffrage is strong. Henry Tang, CY Leung and Albert Ho are standing for chief executive.
With less than two weeks to go, Hong Kong is gripped by an unusually colorful brawl for its top political job – but if you lived just across the border, you might not know it. Though Beijing finds both the city’s two frontrunners acceptable, it doesn’t like the unfolding battle of campaign smears, scandals and public criticism, and appears to be silencing reports on the mainland. Media outlets should refrain from “reporting, hyping or discussing” Hong Kong’s Chief Executive election, China’s Central Propaganda Department said last week during the National People’s Congress according to a directive posted (in Chinese) on University of California, Berkeley-based blog China Digital Times. Anything that needs reporting, the directive declared, “must be approved by the Office of Hong Kong and Macao Affairs.”
Villagers who rebelled against authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong went to the polls Saturday to elect a village council. Thousands of people lined up in Wukan to cast votes in what some reformers are calling one of China’s freest elections ever. Many villagers watched eagerly as the election committee and volunteers counted ballots before announcing Lin Zuluan had been elected village chief. Lin, who helped lead protests three months ago, said the newly elected officials would work for the people. “We will do the best job we can with the power given by your great support and help,” said Lin.
There was another winner in the election this weekend that handed President Ma Ying-jeou of Taiwan a second term in office — the faint but unmistakable clamor for democracy in China. Thanks in large part to an uncharacteristically hands-off approach by Chinese Internet censors, the campaign between Mr. Ma and his main challenger was avidly followed by millions of mainland Chinese, who consumed online tidbits of election news and biting commentary that they then spit out far and wide through social media outlets.
Taiwan’s democratic elections, widely watched in China, will spur the Chinese people to demand reforms and Chinese authorities will be “shocked” into changing their current practices, a mainland Chinese scholar said Saturday. Wang Weinan, a research fellow at Shanghai Academy of SocialScience, said mainland Chinese people are “envious” of Taiwan people’s right to choose their national leaders andparliamentarians. Given the increasing exchanges between the people across the Taiwan Strait and the multiple channels through which the Chinese people can obtain information about Taiwan, more and more Chinese are viewing Taiwan in a favorable light, Wang said.
The Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) has abruptly scrapped its proposal to regulate electioneering activities on websites. The announcement came a month after public consultation began, revealing the guideline was unpopular, unrealistic and hard to execute.
The EAC on Thursday published guidelines on subsector elections of the Election Committee to be held in December and the 2012 Legislative Council (LegCo) geographical constituency elections.
Grassroots democracy activists in China are challenging the ruling Communist Party in unprecedented numbers by harnessing Twitter and other online social media tools to campaign in elections.
More than 100 “independent” candidates including farmers, factory workers, university professors, students, journalist and writers have announced their intention to stand for election, rattling senior Party officials.
China’s network of district assemblies have traditionally been stuffed with candidates “elected” from a carefully preselected list of mostly Communist Party members, although according to the law anyone can stand if they have the support of 10 local voters.
Authorities in South China’s Guangdong Province recently reported 12 typical cases of voter fraud in local village elections since 2008. Candidates tried to rig the elections by buying votes, tampering ballots and even grabbing ballot boxes to prevent people from voting.
Differing from Western practice, China’s democratic experiment has adopted a bottom-up path. Village elections, first launched in 1987, have prevailed nationwide since the early 1990s.
Some liberal scholars simply describe China’s democratization as copying the Western model, and fail to observe the specific conditions of the nation. Just like other countries undergoing social transformation, China has seen its own problems in its experiments with democratization.
The Party’s top member-managing and discipline-inspecting departments have jointly sent supervisory teams to 14 provinces and autonomous regions to ensure there is no misconduct during the local leadership reshuffles as officials at various levels finish their five-year terms. The teams, comprising officials from the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee…