Beijing-backed election proposals defeated in Hong Kong

Pro-democracy Hong Kong MPs have defeated the government's controversial Beijing-backed plan for changes to election law.

Twenty-eight voted against the proposal after a lengthy debate ended today.

The government needed at least 47 of the 70 MPs to vote in favour of the proposals, which sparked huge street protests in the former British colony last year.

At the last moment, most of the MPs from parties that support Beijing walked out of the legislature chamber and did not cast any votes.

They later blamed it on miscommunication, explaining that they were waiting for a fellow politician who was ill to return to the chamber and had asked for a 15-minute break.

The government needed at least 47 of the 70 MPs to vote in favour of the proposals.

The Bill's defeat comes at the end of Hong Kong's most tumultuous year since Beijing took control in 1997 after a century and a half of British colonial rule.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets last year to protest at the central government's election screening requirement.

For 11 weeks, activists camped out on major routes in three neighbourhoods to demand greater electoral freedom but eventually left the streets after exhaustion set in and Hong Kong's unpopular leader, Leung Chun-ying, refused to offer any concessions.

The government had offered direct elections for the first time starting in 2017, but wanted all candidates to be screened by a 1,200-member panel of Beijing-friendly elites like the one that currently handpicks the leader.

Pro-democracy leaders said that meant Beijing was breaking its promise to eventually grant genuine universal suffrage to the city, a special administrative region of China with its own legal and financial system and civil liberties such as freedom of speech not seen on the mainland.