Occupy Central thumbs nose at state media's use of 1.3b population to criticise unofficial vote

No basis for comparison between 720,000-strong turnout at reform 'referendum' and 1.3 billion national population, poll organisers say

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Occupy Central will give the government time to respond to its poll results before deciding whether to blockade streets. Photo: David Wong

Published: 12:00pm, 23 Jun 2014Updated: 3:48pm, 20 Jun 2018

The Occupy Central movement for democracy yesterday gave as good as it got from state media, describing as laughable an editorial that called its unofficial referendum on Hong Kong's electoral reform ludicrous.

Organisers of the ongoing citywide poll dismissed criticism from state-run tabloid Global Times that the voter turnout - 728,601 by midnight last night - was "no match" for the 1.3 billion population in the whole of China.

People queue up on Sunday to vote in the public poll on options for the 2017 chief executive election. Photo: Vincent Yu

That view was laughable, and disregarded the "one country, two systems" policy under which Hong Kong operates, Occupy co-organiser Dr Chan Kin-man said.

"If the 1.3 billion people really have a vote, I believe they will support democratic development in Hong Kong to serve as a model of demonstration for the rest of the country," Chan said.

On Sina.com's microblog service, Weibo, the editorial promptly triggered heated discussion. "Let the 1.3 billion people have a vote and see!" one person wrote, while another lamented: "I'm 47 years old and I have never seen a ballot before."

Occupy's 10-day "referendum" lists three reform plans, all of which allow the public to nominate candidates for the 2017 chief executive election in some form - an idea Beijing rejects. By making the population comparison and calling the exercise an "illegal farce", the Global Times is attempting to discredit the exercise.

The newspaper advises Hong Kong's opposition to "remember how the state defeated the Iron Lady's administration and took back Hong Kong", in a reference to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher that appeared in the Chinese version of the editorial but not the English one.