Chinese President Xi Jinping is pictured here speaking during the unveiling of the Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee on October 25, 2017 in Beijing, China.
Lintao Zhang | Getty Images News | Getty Images
BEIJING — Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived Thursday in the special administrative region of Hong Kong, state media said.
The trip is for the 25th anniversary on Friday of Hong Kong’s handover to China from British colonial rule.
The visit marks Xi’s first travel off mainland China since the pandemic began more than two years ago.
In a brief speech upon arriving in Hong Kong, Xi said Beijing would stick to the “one country, two systems” policy that he claimed would “ensure the long term prosperity and stability in Hong Kong,” according to an official English translation carried by state media.
The “one country, two systems” policy has allowed the Chinese city of Hong Kong to operate as a semi-autonomous region under Beijing’s rule.
Large-scale, violent protests in 2019 were initially triggered by a controversial extradition bill that many in Hong Kong claimed went against the principle of “one country, two systems.” The region’s retail sales contracted in 2019 and 2020 as protests disrupted the local economy, even before the pandemic shut Hong Kong off from foreign and mainland tourists.
Xi said Thursday that Hong Kong overcame “severe tasks” and “a number of risks and challenges” in the last few years, without going into detail.
— CNBC’s Su-Lin Tan contributed to this report.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/chinas-xi-arrives-in-hong-kong-in-first-trip-off-mainland-since-pandemic.html