Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) attends the oath of office of John Lee, the new chief executive of the former British colony, in Hong Kong on Friday, July 1. SELIM CHTAYTI/AP
To welcome the emissaries from mainland China, all partitions of Kowloon West Railway Station north of Hong Kong were decorated with mostly red and gold placards on Thursday June 30 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the handover of the former British colony China. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who left mainland China for the first time since the pandemic began, assured residents that “real democracy” had finally begun for them.
“After reunification with the motherland, Hong Kong people have become masters of their own city,” he said. A claim that is sure to make defenders of democracy cringe after three years of the territory’s takeover by Chinese authorities, which has severely curtailed civil liberties.
The Chinese number one left around noon Friday after inspecting Chinese troops stationed in Hong Kong and installing the 6th Hong Kong government led by John Lee, a police officer by trade who led the crackdown on the 2019 demonstrations. In his closing speech, he expressed his attachment to the principle of “one country, two systems”, “a system that has been tried and tested over the years and which there is no reason to change and which must be preserved in the long term”. . Words that confirm what many analysts and observers already thought: namely, that the 2047 deadline is unlikely, or no longer, to mark the end of this principle that sums up the spirit of Beijing-Hong Kong relations.
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And with good reason: the communist regime did not wait the fifty years promised before the 1997 handover to impose drastic changes on the former British colony. Xi Jinping also recalled Hong Kong’s role in the development of the “motherland” and praised “its strength stemming from its great freedom and its compatibility with international rules”. This means that Hong Kong must continue to fulfill its function as an international financial center. The “one country, two systems” concept pioneered by Deng Xiaoping was described as a “stroke of genius” by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during negotiations between the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China in the early 1980s over the handover of Hong Kong.
Virulent reconfiguration of institutions
The SAR is halfway through the fifty years in which Deng Xiaoping promised that “nothing would change, neither horse racing nor dance parties”. But Hong Kong’s uniqueness went beyond entertainment. In three years, the territory has suffered a virulent reconfiguration of its institutions by a unilateral Chinese decision. With the entry into force of the National Security Law exactly two years ago, civil society was “cleansed” of all potentially critical or protesting forces (press, trade unions, NGOs, etc.). The new electoral law imposed in spring 2021 purged the political scene of any pro-democracy opposition. Most of their most popular representatives are currently in prison. The parliament (Legislative Council, LegCo) consists only of patriots loyal to Beijing.
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