Hong Kong deploys large safety as China’s Xi Jinping set to swear in new chief

Authorities deployed a large safety pressure round Hong Kong on Friday as Chinese President Xi Jinping ready to swear within the metropolis’s new chief and attend celebrations to mark the twenty fifth anniversary of the previous British colony’s handover to Beijing.

Red lanterns and posters declaring a “new era” of stability embellished foremost roads and walkways near the conference centre the place the final colonial governor, Chris Patten, tearfully handed Hong Kong again to China at a rain-drenched ceremony in 1997.

At 8 a.m. (0000 GMT), a gaggle of officers gathered subsequent to Victoria Harbour for a flag-raising ceremony in blustery situations as the town skilled its first storm this 12 months. Helicopters flew over the harbour dangling the flags of China and Hong Kong.

Xi didn’t attend the flag-rasing occasion, with media reporting he stayed in a single day throughout the border in Shenzhen after arriving in Hong Kong on Thursday. He is due again within the monetary hub early on Friday to swear within the metropolis’s new chief, John Lee.

Some analysts see Xi’s go to as a victory tour after Beijing tightened its management of Hong Kong with a sweeping nationwide safety regulation, following mass pro-democracy protests in 2019.

After arriving in Hong Kong on Thursday, Xi stated the town had overcome its challenges and “risen from the ashes”.

Former Hong Kong safety chief John Lee, who’s sanctioned by the United States over his function in implementing the brand new nationwide safety regulation, takes cost at a time when the worldwide monetary hub is going through an exodus of individuals and expertise amid a few of the hardest COVID-19 restrictions on this planet.

Xi’s journey to Hong Kong is his first since 2017, when he swore within the metropolis’s first feminine chief, Carrie Lam, who oversaw a few of the territory’s most tumultuous instances marked by anti-government protests in 2019 and the COVID epidemic.

Britain returned Hong Kong to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997, below a “one country, two systems” method which ensures wide-ranging autonomy and judicial independence not seen in mainland China.

Critics of the federal government, together with Western nations, accuse authorities of trampling on these freedoms, which Beijing and Hong Kong reject.