China to oversee Hong Kong with new office reporting directly to CCP

Beijing, Jul 11 (EFE).- The head of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Xia Baolong is the new director of a new office to oversee the special administrative region that will answer directly to China’s Communist Party.

Xia chaired a meeting Tuesday of this new office, based in Beijing, which will oversee matters related to Hong Kong and Macao.

The new office will report directly to the party instead of the cabinet, as was done to date.

The party approved several institutional reforms in March, including that the Office for Hong Kong and Macao Affairs would report directly to the party’s Central Committee.

This new office will oversee that the city “protects national security and the principle of ‘one country, two systems'” or that it supports “the integration of Hong Kong and Macao into national development.”

Beijing has tightened its control over Hong Kong since mass protests in 2019, which it responded to with a controversial security law in 2020 that punishes with life imprisonment charges such as “terrorism,” “secession,” and “collusion with foreign forces.”

Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International warned of the rapid deterioration of freedoms in Hong Kong, the persecution of the press and the forced dismantling of civil society organizations promoted by this law.

Beijing said it has returned Hong Kong “to the correct democratic path” and that it has “saved it from chaos” after the 2019 protests through this law, to which an electoral reform aimed at “perfecting” the principle of autonomy was also added. EFE

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