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The nomination period for the 2021 Legislative Council general election ended Friday with 154 candidates getting enough endorsements to run, according to official statistics.  In the December election, 20 of the 90 seats will be directly elected by geographical constituencies. The Election Committee will appoint 40 seats. The remaining 30 are elected by functional constituencies. Though the overall number of lawmakers has increased from 70 in the city’s first Legco election since Beijing’s sweeping overhaul of the system earlier this year, the number of directly elected seats, chosen by residents from 10 geographic districts, decreased from 35. Motions in the Legislative Council need two-thirds consent to be passed, according to the Basic Law. Previously, many directly elected lawmakers were from pro-democracy parties.  Most have been disqualified. “Hong Kongers’ enthusiasm for participating in politics was quenched,” Francis Chau Yin-Ming, a former legislative council member and current district councillor, said. This year’s hopeful candidates vied for nominations from the city’s Election Committee, in which most members are from pro-establishment parties. “I started from scratch. I have to work very hard to promote my political platform to the public and the election committee,” said Wong Wing-Ho, a candidate from the moderate Path of Democracy party. “But now the atmosphere of discussion in the reformed electoral system is much more rational now.” This year, every constituency will be contested for the first time. Some non-pro-establishment candidates are confident in the new system. “Fortunately, there are no swing voters. So, there is no conflict between us and pro-establishment candidates,” another candidate from Path of Democracy, Chan Chun-Hung, said. “So, I am very confident that more normal Hong Kong people can vote.”   A handful of candidates are not from the pro-establishment camp, some with previous ties to the opposition or who define themselves as moderates. “In …

The Hong Kong government will assess the effectiveness of its four-year-old scheme to enrol more non-Chinese speaking students in local kindergartens, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said in this morning’s policy address.  But local experts and ethnic minorities have little hope anything will change. “It is encouraging that the minorities are part of the policy address, but for me, the challenging aspect is, where is the political will to truly enact all of this?” said Jeffrey Andrews, the first ethnic minority in Hong Kong to have run for the Legislative Council. “There’s so much money already given, but for me, I haven't really felt or seen any impact at all.” In the 2017-2018 school year, the government implemented the Kindergarten Education Scheme, through which eligible children are able to attend local non-profit kindergartens with a three-year subsidy, according to the Education Bureau.  As part of the government’s effort to integrate ethnic minorities into the community, kindergartens that admit more than eight non-Chinese speaking students are provided with additional funding. “Hong Kong actually does a good job in accepting non-Chinese, but one of the major things is the language barrier… I learned Chinese at a very young age. I found that very, very, very useful,” said Rubin Robert Fernie, a Scottish Filipino born and raised here. While the majority of the city’s population speak and write Chinese, less than one in five ethnic minorities are able to read Chinese, according to the Census and Statistics Department. In the 2016 Population By-census, 8% of the city’s population are non-Chinese ethnicities, an increase from 6.4% in 2011. “The policy is for sure important. But how do you implement them? In kindergarten education, how do you make sure ethnic minorities can learn Chinese in an equal environment?” said Leung Yuk-ming, associate director of …