Climbdown of the Week

Residents of Hong Kong may not be able to "recall" their top government leader as Californians can. (And that's probably a good thing.) But they were stunned last week to find they had accomplished something previously unheard of in China: making a Mandarin back down because he was afraid of losing upcoming elections.

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Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa announced on Friday that he was shelving a proposed set of statutes on subversion, secession and sedition that he had tried railroading through earlier this yearuntil 500,000 Hong Kongers took to the streets on July 1 to protest. Tung...