Xi to visit Hong Kong for 25th anniversary of handover

HONG KONG • Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Hong Kong for the 25th anniversary of the city's handover from Britain to China, state news agency Xinhua reported yesterday.

The trip will be Mr Xi's first known visit outside mainland China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic more than two years ago. He will also attend the inaugural ceremony of the sixth-term government of Hong Kong, Xinhua added.

Mr John Lee will become the city's new leader on July 1, replacing Mrs Carrie Lam, who oversaw some of the territory's most tumultuous times with anti-government protests and the spread of Covid-19. Mr Xi also oversaw the swearing-in of Mrs Lam in 2017, when he was in Hong Kong to celebrate the handover anniversary at the time.

Mr Lee yesterday said he was delighted by the news of Mr Xi's attendance and thanked him for his support for Hong Kong. "Hong Kong is at the crucial stage of advancing from chaos to governance, and gradually towards prosperity," Mr Lee said in a statement.

Uncertainties over whether Mr Xi would visit Hong Kong had grown in the past weeks as new Covid-19 infections increased in the city, with two incoming senior officials among the latest cases.

Daily case numbers in Hong Kong have climbed to nearly 2,000, though hospitalisations have remained low, with Mrs Lam earlier reassuring the public that the situation was "not an alarm bell".

Hong Kong's incoming health secretary Lo Chung-mau has said he aims to cut the quarantine period to five days, but added the city would stick to its "dynamic zero" approach to eliminating the virus.

China adopts stringent Covid-19 policies and travel restrictions which aim to eradicate all outbreaks, at just about any cost, running counter to a global trend of trying to coexist with the virus.

Critics said Hong Kong's 25th handover anniversary is significant to China, which sees the city stabilising from the mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, after the implementation of a national security law and electoral reforms that ensure only "patriots" can work in the government and lawmaking body.

Britain took Hong Kong Island during the First Opium War (1839-42) and later signed a treaty that gave it control over the adjoining New Territories for 99 years. That agreement ended on July 1, 1997.

Meanwhile, Chinese capital Beijing said yesterday it would allow primary and secondary schools to resume in-person classes and Shanghai's top party boss declared victory over Covid-19 after the city reported no new local cases for the first time in two months.

The two major cities were among several places in China that implemented curbs to stop the spread of the Omicron wave during March to May with Shanghai imposing a city-wide lockdown that lasted two months and was lifted on June 1.

With case numbers trending lower in recent days, Beijing's education commission said all primary and secondary school students in the capital can return to in-person classes from tomorrow. Kindergartens will be allowed to reopen from July 4.

Shanghai reported no new local cases - both symptomatic and asymptomatic - for Friday, the first time that the economic hub had done so since Feb 23.

Shanghai Communist Party chief Li Qiang said at the opening at the city's party congress yesterday that authorities had "won the war to defend Shanghai" against Covid-19 by implementing the instructions of Mr Xi, and that Beijing's epidemic prevention decisions were "completely correct".

REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BLOOMBERG