Beijing's vitriolic attacks on pro-democracy forces in Hong Kong to try to silence demands for more voting rights have dented residents' confidence in China's central government, a new survey shows.
About 43 percent of 1,045 people interviewed in the poll, conducted between Feb. 20 to 23, said they trusted Beijing, down from 50 percent at the end of December. Those who said they mistrust Beijing rose to 22 percent from 19 percent.
The poll coincided with an increasingly strident campaign by Beijing to muffle demands for more voting rights in the territory.
Researcher Robert Chung at the University of Hong Kong, which conducted the poll, said Beijing's rhetoric, including calling pro-democracy figures unpatriotic, could backfire.
"If our mainland authorities continue to equate patriotism with loving the Communist Party, it will have a very damaging effect on the image of the central government," Chung said.
Analysts say Beijing's increasingly hardline stance could prompt a sharp rise in votes for pro-democracy candidates in legislative elections in September.
If the pro-democracy candidates win more than half of the 60 legislative seats, they will be able for the first time to veto government policies and bring the administration to its knees.
The row is certain to escalate with three key pro-democracy lawmakers heading for Washington this week to address the Senate on the city's fight for more rights, a move which Beijing has condemned and which its supporters have labelled as treacherous.
Gao Siren (
A poll published by the Ming Pao newspaper found 49 percent of 502 people interviewed supported the lawmakers' visit to Washington.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS