There are upsets. There are watersheds. There are landslides. And then there is the Hong Kong election that happened on Sunday.

In a vote that showed the largest turnout in the territory's history, candidates who want a more democratic system won 85% of Hong Kong's 452 district council seats, flipping hundreds of those seats from incumbent council members who support the status quo.

Pro-democracy (or "pan-democracy" as they are locally called) officials will now control 17 of Hong Kong's 18 district councils. After the last election, in 2015, they controlled precisely zero of them.

And it's not just a shift in opinion: the results show Hong Kongers are energized and highly motivated. Voter turnout spiked from 1.4 million in 2015 to 2.9 million last weekend.

To be clear, these councils have limited political power: they deal mostly with hyper-local issues like potholes and trash collection (no small set of issues, from this New Yorker's perspective, but I digress). And they have only a sliver of influence over whom Beijing appoints as chief executive.

But the symbolism of the vote was clear: it undermined Beijing's message that the protests are the work of fringe "terrorists." Yes, there are some vandals and provocateurs in the streets, but a vast majority of Hong Kongers clearly support the protests' basic call for more democratic freedoms.

So, here's how some of the key players might be looking at all this now:

Protest movement: Why stop now? Our five demands – including the right to elect our leaders directly, investigations of police brutality, amnesty for those arrested – are as relevant, and well supported, as ever. We've delivered a message, but what was the point if we're not ready to build on this momentum? To the streets!

Beijing: Why give in now? If we do, it will only encourage more people to demand concessions, and firewall or not we can't be sure that Hong Kongers don't have sympathy elsewhere in China. But mainly, the risks of a military intervention against the protesters just got much more dangerous, since people around the world can now see the protests are popular with a vast majority of Hong Kongers. Let's just keep waiting. For now.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam: Dangling by a single phone line. I am going to "seriously reflect" on these results and continue to say conciliatory things – but I better not stray too far from the phone in case Beijing has something important to tell me.

Data is reshaping the 21^st century world order. Different approaches to technology are dividing the US and China in potentially dangerous ways. Before things go too far, we need a World Data Organization to set data standards and keep things in line, argues Ian Bremmer, president of our parent company Eurasia Group. Read his whole argument here, and let us know what you think.

The world's economy is set to grow at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis a decade ago, according to the OECD, a group of industrialized nations. The gloomy forecast notes that governments aren't doing enough to deal with big structural changes like US-China trade tensions, climate change, or the digital revolution. The last time the global economy nose-dived, countries were able to muster enough collaboration to coordinate a global response. But given the profound dysfunction of the international order these days, it's hard to imagine countries doing the same again if things take a turn for the worse. Here's a look at global GDP growth over the past decade as measured by the OECD.

More details about Xinjiang: The world already knew that China has imprisoned more than a million ethnic Uighur Muslims and other minorities in camps in the country's far-west Xinjiang province. Beijing says the prisoners are volunteers receiving job training. Rights groups say they're locked in mass incarceration "re-education camps" designed to indoctrinate ethnic minorities. But a classified blueprint of the system that's been leaked to the media now details life on the inside. The camps reportedly have watch towers, double-locked doors, and video surveillance "to prevent escapes." What's more, the Chinese state is evidently using the camps to train its artificial intelligence programs for use in mass surveillance. This is the largest incarceration of people based on an ethnic or religious identity since the Holocaust. We're watching for any sign the governments of predominantly Muslim countries, the US, or Europe will take meaningful action against the Chinese government.

Press crackdown in Egypt: Over the weekend, Egyptian authorities raided the offices of the digital publication Mada Masr, one of the country's last bastions of independent investigative journalism. Top editors were detained and arrested, and there's a decent chance it had to do with the site's publication, just days earlier, of a report that strongman President Abdul Fattah el-Sisi's son had been quietly removed from his senior role in the intelligence services due to poor performance. Though Mada Masr is well-accustomed to the security apparatus' techniques used to intimidate journalists, the clampdown has been more aggressive since anti-government protests broke out in September. Egypt ranks 163rd of 180 countries in the 2019 World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders.

A breakthrough in Bolivia? Supporters of ousted president Evo Morales have reached a deal with the new interim government to ease tensions and pave the way to new presidential elections. Under the pact, approved over the weekend by a Congress that Morales' MAS party still controls, lawmakers will appoint a new electoral board that will set the date for a vote early next year. Morales himself will not be permitted to run. Pro-Morales groups and unions have agreed to take down hundreds of road blockades that have strangled the Bolivian economy in recent weeks, and interim-president Jeanine Áñez has begun meeting with pro-Morales activists. But things aren't exactly going swimmingly: Morales' party wants to exempt him from prosecution for backing the blockades, while the new interior minister wants to jail him for the "rest of his life."

What We're Ignoring

The Pope's call to banish nuclear weapons. Look, it's not that we are opposed to eliminating the world's most dangerous weapons. It's just that only one of the nine nuclear powers has a majority of people who consider themselves Catholics—and just 15% of French adults say they are "practicing." Which leads us to the old line: "And how many divisions does the Pope have?"

Well, most Americans' minds are made up about impeachment, but what do mere humans know? Puppet Regime burrows deep into the White House to find out what some of humanity's most keenly-attuned observers are thinking. See the whole episode here.

79: Almost a decade since the Tunisian Revolution that marked the start of the Arab Spring, a majority of Tunisians remain disillusioned with the country's leadership: 79 percent of adults surveyed said that government corruption is widespread, according to a new Gallup poll. Many Tunisians doubt that the newly elected Ennahda party will improve living standards for everyday people.

98.5: Members of Ethiopia's Sidama ethnic group voted overwhelmingly to form their own self-governing region, with about 98.5 percent of voters backing the push for semi-autonomy. Since April 2018, Ethiopia has been plagued by ethnic violence that's caused some 3 million people to flee their homes.

200,000: The International Monetary Fund says inflation in Venezuela will hit 200,000 percent this year. Consider that a cup of coffee that cost 150 bolivars a year ago now costs 18,000 bolivars (see Bloomberg's cup-of-coffee inflation tracker here.) The silver lining? Things are better than a year ago, when inflation was 1 million percent.

63: A majority of Americans are deeply concerned about the privacy of their personal data. Sixty-three percent of adults surveyed believe that Uncle Sam is constantly collecting data about them and that they are powerless to prevent it, according to a recent Pew study.