Chinese President Xi Jinping praises Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam for election, Covid-19 work, but she comes away empty-handed on border reopening
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But Lam later conceded after their meeting there was still no good news about reopening the border with mainland China, a much-anticipated decision in the city even though the rapid global spread of the Omicron variant had dampened such expectations in recent days.
“I’ve reflected the hopes of the Hong Kong public to see a reopening of the border for personnel flow. Yet I don’t have any concrete details on that as of now,” she told a press briefing on Wednesday evening after wrapping up her meeting with Xi and Premier Li Keqiang earlier in the day.
“However, the two leaders have recognised the effectiveness of Covid-19 control policies in Hong Kong in the past year. Therefore we have to keep working hard for the border reopening to happen as soon as possible,” she said.
In acknowledging Lam’s work and that of the government over the past year, Xi noted that social stability had been restored in Hong Kong through the national security law imposed by Beijing in June last year following the anti-government protest chaos of 2019.
“In the past year, Hong Kong has consolidated the situation in which the city turned from chaos [during the 2019 social unrest] to peace, and has continued to develop in a positive direction,” he said.