AP PHOTOS: Beijing, Hong Kong mark Communist Party centenary

BEIJING -- Cannons roared, bands played and fighter jets soared overhead as thousands of carefully selected participants gathered in Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Square Thursday for a ceremony marking the centenary of the ruling Communist Party. Meanwhile, Hong Kong held its own annual commemorations of its 1997 handover from British to Chinese rule, given added significance this year by the party centenary and the arrests of political activists and journalists following Beijing's imposition of a sweeping national security law on the city last year. Chinese President and party leader Xi Jinping delivered a lengthy address to the Beijing crowd from atop Tiananmen Gate, where Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, praising the party’s successes and warning of dire consequences for any foreign force that sought to “bully, oppress or enslave” the country. Dressed in a grey, high-buttoned suit of the type worn by Mao, Xi didn’t identify whom he was referring to, but the party centenary comes amid rising tensions with the U.S., Britain, the European Union and China's Asian neighbors with whom it has territorial disputes.