On the surface, the polls were about as local as elections could be, with candidates campaigning for faster traffic and cleaner streets. Monday's results, however, dealt a decided rebuff to China.
Sunday's elections - the second-to-last before Hong Kong reverts to Chinese rule in 1997 - showed gains for the party Beijing dislikes the most, the Democrats.The party won 23 of the 36 assembly seats it contested to remain Hong Kong's biggest party.
Its pro-China rival, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, won eight seats, less than half the 17 they contested, final results showed.
The result of Sunday's ballot suggests that despite the nearness of China's 1997 takeover of the British colony, Beijing has yet to generate a bandwagon effect that would marginalize the pro-democracy camp.
The Democrats took the lead in Hong Kong's huge protests against the bloody Chinese crackdown on protesters at Tiananmen Square in 1989, and have continued to rile China by campaigning for more democracy and human rights protection for post-1997 Hong Kong.
Their biggest triumph Sunday was to defeat 81-year-old Elsie Tu, a former missionary from England who was the colony's most popular politician until she aligned herself with the pro-China camp last year.
Tu was beaten 9,175 votes to 6,778, and to make things worse for China, her opponent was Szeto Wah, a school principal China regards as a "subversive."
Szeto enraged Beijing in 1989 by publicly burning a copy of the Basic Law, China's constitution for Hong Kong, and has since organized an annual public commemoration of the dead of Tiananmen Square.
Tu, a city councilor for 35 years, is admired as a crusader for social justice. But her luster began to fade when China appointed her to its handpicked body of advisers on the 1997 transition, and she joined China in attacking Gov. Chris Patten's democratic reforms.