A not-so-local difficulty

AT LEAST for a few moments, China’s president, Xi Jinping, might have felt like king of the world on September 4th as, one by one, the leaders of the planet’s biggest economies walked into a cavernous room in the centre of which he stood motionless, waiting for each to approach him, shake his hand and then disappear, stage left. It was the first time that China had played host to a summit of the G20 (see ). The Communist Party’s propagandists milked the occasion for every drop of patriotic feel-goodery that it could produce. Mr Xi has promised a “great revival” of the Chinese nation; presiding over such a meeting of global grandees was a perfect opportunity to show the public that he was on target.How awkward, then, that as he was doing so voters in Hong Kong were sending Mr Xi a different—and, for the party, shocking—message. In elections for the territory’s Legislative Council, or Legco, six candidates who want Hong Kong to be more independent from China gained seats in the 70-member body (see ). Some lean towards Hong Kong’s outright separation. It is the first time since the party dismantled the Dalai Lama’s government in Tibet in 1959 that sympathisers of separatism have gained a foothold in a political institution in China. Mr Xi will see this as a threat to his nation-building.