Xi to visit Hong Kong to mark 25th anniversary of handover
On efforts to revive the 2015 Iran
nuclear deal
BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Hong Kong next week to mark the 25th anniversary of the former British colony’s 1997 return to China, state news agency Xinhua announced on Saturday, in what would be his first publicised trip outside the mainland since January 2020, weeks after the Covid-19 virus was detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
The handover of Hong Kong took place on July 1, 1997.
“President Xi Jinping will attend a meeting celebrating the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to the motherland,” Xinhua reported on Saturday.
“Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) central committee and the chairman of the Central Military Commission will also attend the inaugural ceremony of the sixth-term government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ( SAR),” it added.
It gave no indication when Xi will go to Hong Kong or how long he would stay in the city.
The last time Xi went outside the mainland was in January, 2020, to Myanmar.
China declared Covid-19 to be transmissible between humans within a day of Xi’s return, locked down Wuhan in five days and gradually closed international borders in the coming weeks.
Xi’s visit to Hong Kong for the anniversary - considered a big event for the ruling CPC - had been in doubt due to the surge in Covid-19 cases this year.
The confirmation of Xi’s visit comes days after two top Hong Kong officials tested positive for the infection as well as the rising number of new Covid-19 infections in the city.
As many as 1,000 people, including the city’s incumbent leader chief executive Carrie Lam and dozens of lawmakers are said to be in quarantine for the visit, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported earlier citing unnamed sources.
China monitors flight of US reconnaissance plane
China deployed “aerial and ground forces” to monitor a US P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, which flew over the Taiwan Strait on Friday in the backdrop of large scale Chinese armed forces’ military drills around the self-ruled island of Taiwan earlier this week.
The US Navy’s reconnaissance aircraft flew over the Taiwan Strait on Friday in what the US Indo- Pacific Command described as a demonstration of the US’s “commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
“A US Navy P-8A Poseidon transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace on June 24. The US will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows including within the Taiwan Strait,” the statement read.
China claims Taiwan, a selfruled democracy, as its own territory and has not ruled out using force to merge it with the mainland. “The air and ground forces of the Eastern Theatre Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) tracked and monitored the US aircraft’s passage and remained alert in the whole course,” Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theatre Command, said in a written statement released on Saturday.