Hong Kong’s PLA garrison held a drill last week on ‘emergency dispatches’
- But the Chinese army’s official newspaper waited until the day after violent protests rocked the city to report on the patrol exercises
- Analyst sees it as a ‘blatant message about the use of force’
The People’s Liberation Army’s Hong Kong garrison carried out a patrol exercise last week to improve readiness for “emergency dispatches”, official newspaper PLA Daily reported on Tuesday.
“On June 26, the army, navy and air force of the PLA garrison in Hong Kong took part in a joint naval and air patrol exercise in areas near Hong Kong,” the report said. “The focus [of the exercise] was on reviewing and raising the units’ combat abilities in emergency dispatches, ad hoc deployment and joint operations.”
The report, which was posted on the newspaper’s account on microblog site Weibo, did not give details such as how many troops were involved, but it included photographs of Chinese soldiers with automatic rifles, a PLA helicopter and warships.
After the chaotic and violent scenes of Monday – the day the city marked the anniversary of its return to Chinese rule – the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, the central government’s liaison office and the foreign ministry all issued statements saying that Beijing supported Hong Kong police in handling “the incidents in accordance with the law”.