Prayer meetings are one of the few public gatherings, not sponsored by the government, that are still allowed on July 1.

China’s remaking of Hong Kong

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2022-07-04 22:00:12

Prayer meetings are one of the few public gatherings, not sponsored by the government, that are still allowed on July 1. WORLD photo

Red banners commemorating Hong Kong’s 1997 return from British to Chinese rule lined the streets of the city of 7.4 million on Friday. The banners, together with red Chinese and Hong Kong flags, whipped fiercely in the rainy gusts of a typhoon that swept across the region. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived on a high-speed train to join the 25th anniversary festivities that culminated in Friday’s inauguration of Hong Kong’s sixth chief executive.

Inside the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in Wan Chai, Xi swore in John Lee, a pro-Beijing former police officer, as the city’s top leader for the next five years. A flag-raising ceremony took place in Golden Bauhinia Square under an overcast sky as the Hong Kong police goose-stepped, having switched from the British march to the Chinese style.

Twenty-five years since Hong Kong transitioned from a British colony to a special administrative region of China, the Chinese Communist Party has accelerated the remaking of the former British colony in its image. Xi lauded the success of “one country, two systems,” but critics—including U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and EU foreign policy spokeswoman Nabila Massrali—have called China out for reneging on its promise to allow Hong Kong to keep much of its autonomy and for breaking an international treaty.