Xi Jinping, in rare Hong Kong visit, hails change ‘from chaos to order’

July 1, 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to China

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday said Hong Kong was “in a new stage of transitioning from chaos to order” on a rare visit to the Special Administrative Region (SAR).

July 1, 2022 marked the 25th anniversary of the former British colony’s handover to China and also saw the swearing-in of new Chief Executive John Lee and his government.

Mr. Xi’s visit wasn’t certain until earlier this week, given Beijing’s concerns over the COVID-19 situation in Hong Kong, which has seen around 10,000 deaths this year and reported more than 2,000 cases on Friday. The Chinese mainland, by contrast, follows a strict “zero-COVID” policy and reported only a dozen cases on Friday. The capital Beijing, which reported no cases on Friday, like most Chinese cities requires all residents to undertake a PCR test every three days and continues to maintain strict restrictions on international travel.

Underlining this concern, Mr. Xi chose not to stay in Hong Kong having arrived there on Thursday, instead taking the bullet train back to Shenzhen on the mainland, and returning once again on Friday. The Hong Kong-mainland border, which was closed during his visit, is yet to open more than two years into the pandemic with a daily quota of only a few hundred travellers allowed every day, including with mandatory two weeks’ quarantine.

That Mr. Xi chose to leave the mainland for the first time in more than two years since the outbreak in Wuhan – his last visit abroad was in mid-January to Myanmar a few days before the lockdown of Wuhan – underlined the importance of the anniversary in signalling what Mr. Xi called “a new stage of transitioning from chaos to order”, apparently referring to the 2019 pro-democracy protests.

“Having gone through ups and downs, people have learned the hard way that Hong Kong must not be destabilised and cannot afford any chaos,” he said.

“Enforcing the central authorities’ overall jurisdiction and upholding the SAR’s high degree of autonomy are integral aspects of the same policy, and only by ensuring both can we run the SAR truly well,” he said, adding that Beijing would fully back the new Hong Kong leader, Mr. Lee and the “one country, two systems” model.