Polls in an unofficial vote on electoral reform in Hong Kong closed Sunday with almost 800,000 taking part, organizers said, days before an expected major protest seeking greater democracy for the southern Chinese city.

Chief pollster Robert Chung said 787,000 had participated in the informal referendum, which has angered Beijing.

A Taiwanese rights activist and outspoken critic of his government's attempts to seek closer ties with Beijing criticized Chinese authorities after he was denied entry to Hong Kong Sunday.

Chen Wei-ting, a key figure in an unprecedented student-led protest occupation of Taiwan's parliament earlier this year, had planned to attend a mass rally Tuesday in Hong Kong in support of greater democracy there.

More than a thousand lawyers all dressed in black took to the streets of Hong Kong in a silent march Friday against "interference" by Beijing in the city's judiciary.

China issued its first ever policy document stipulating how Hong Kong should be governed earlier this month, in what was widely interpreted as a warning to the city not to overstep the boundaries of its autonomy.

A state-run Chinese newspaper on Monday slammed Hong Kong's unofficial referendum on democratic reform -- which has drawn more than 700,000 votes -- as an "illegal farce" that was "tinged with mincing ludicrousness".

The poll, which opened Friday, comes as tensions grow in the former British colony over the future of its electoral system, with increasingly vocal calls from residents to be able to choose who can run for the post of chief executive.

More than half a million Hong Kongers have cast ballot, including tens of thousands on Sunday, in the first three days of voting in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that Beijing has blasted as a farce.

Tensions have soared in Hong Kong over how much say residents of the former British colony can have in choosing their next leader, who's currently hand-picked by a 1,200-member committee of mostly pro-Beijing elites.

Police used pepper spray to scatter protesters at Hong Kong's government headquarters in an angry rally against plans for a new town development, with 21 arrested, officials said Saturday.

Around 900 people gathered at the city's harborfront government complex with some trying to force their way into the building to oppose the project, which they say will displace villagers and turn farmland into housing estates -- favoring property developers.

More than 50 people were injured when a Hong Kong ferry crashed into a seawall off the coast of the gambling enclave of Macau Friday, officials said, the latest accident to hit the cities' busy waterways.

The crash happened when the Macau-bound ferry -- reported to be a jetfoil boat -- was approaching the port at around 9.30 am (0130 GMT) and hit a concrete breakwater, a spokesman for Macau's marine department said.

Thirty-three people were injured when two boats collided late Wednesday in Hong Kong, authorities said, the latest accident to hit the city's busy waterways.

Authorities said the collision occurred just off the outlying island of Cheung Chau between a mainland Chinese vessel and a high speed ferry.

Three people have been killed and thousands evacuated in several days of rainstorms in southern China, flooding major cities and affecting air and rail transport, authorities said Monday.

Pictures showed widespread inundations in the boom town of Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, with the brown waters several inches deep. Cars were seen stranded in expanses of water, and pedestrians waded through ankle-deep floods.

An air and sea rescue mission scoured choppy waters near Hong Kong Tuesday in a desperate search for 11 crew still missing more than 24 hours after their Chinese cargo ship sank.

The Zhong Xing 2, which was laden with cement, went down after colliding with a container ship in the early hours of Monday just south of the island of Po Toi, on the edge of Hong Kong's maritime territory.