Hong Kong votes in crucial legislative polls

Hong Kong holds legislative elections Sunday in a crucial test of the city's Beijing-backed government, as calls for full democracy grow and disenchantment with Chinese rule surges. The polls come after weeks of protests against a plan to introduce Chinese patriotism classes into schools forced the government into a last-minute backdown. Organisers said the protests outside the government headquarters swelled to 120,000 people, mainly students and parents, on Friday night, but police put the number at 36,000. Critics of the plan said it amounted to brainwashing, citing state-funded course materials praising the benefits of one-party rule. Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying held a news conference late Saturday to say the 2016 deadline for the curriculum to be taught in all primary and secondary schools had been dropped and the entire policy would be reviewed. "The schools are given the authority to decide when and how they would like to introduce the moral and national education," he said, blaming the policy on his predecessor after defending it for weeks in the face of the public outcry. The U-turn is a major victory for people-power in a city that was ruled as a colony of Britain until 1997, when it was handed back to China as a semi-autonomous territory with broad rights and freedoms. Tensions have also been brewing over corruption, the yawning gap between rich and poor, soaring property prices and the strains of coping with an influx of millions of mainland tourists. Nearly 3.5 million people, half of the city's population, will be eligible to cast ballots when polling begins at 7:30am (2330 GMT Saturday) at 574 polling stations across the Asian financial hub. Voting will close at 10:30pm and the results are not expected until Monday. Surveys show dissatisfaction with mainland rule is rising sharply, especially among the young, and analysts are expecting one of the highest turnouts of any election in the former British colony. The new 70-seat legislature will pave the way for full suffrage, which Beijing has promised in 2017 for Leung's job of chief executive and by 2020 for the parliament. Democracy activists fear Beijing will try to screen the candidates that people can vote for in the future, to ensure the city does not elect a government hostile to communist rule in the mainland. Pro-democracy parties were using the education furore to galvanise their supporters, hoping to boost their representation and maintain a veto over constitutional amendments required for the introduction of full suffrage.