China Says Main Challenge in Hong Kong Is Opposition to Communist Party
“I think that Hong Kong’s main problem isn’t an economic problem,” said Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the Chinese government’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, specifically dismissing issues such as housing, employment and lack of social mobility for youth that some have fingered as fueling protests in the city. “Rather, it is a political problem,” he said.
In a nearly hourlong speech televised in Hong Kong, Mr. Zhang said the recent chaos and social conflict stemmed primarily from the “grave differences” over what the territory’s future should look like.
China wants to ensure a prosperous and stable Hong Kong, whereas opposition groups and foreign forces want to turn the city into “a bridgehead for opposing China and opposing the Communist Party,” said Mr. Zhang, who was addressing an online seminar marking 30 years since Beijing approved Hong Kong’s miniconstitution, known as the Basic Law.
Threats to national security must be dealt with decisively, he said, as China’s legislature did last month in passing a resolution to impose legislation on Hong Kong that would prevent and punish subversion, separatism, terrorism and foreign interference, and allow mainland Chinese state-security agencies to operate officially in the former British colony.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-s...ty-11591627540