Who is Zheng Yanxiong, the new security chief in Hong Kong?

Text by: RFI Follow

In Hong Kong, the new security law passed by the Chinese parliament provides in particular for the establishment of a national security office headed by a Chinese official. At the head of this pharmacy: Zheng Yanxiong, a supporter of the hard line.

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Zheng Yanxiong became known in 2011. He then led the Communist Party in Guangdong province, very close to Hong Kong. That year, when a village revolt broke out in a small fishing village, he used the strong way: the police besieged the town, cut the supply routes, the leaders of the protest were arrested and one of them they die in detention. 

Of this episode, Zheng Yanxiong will say only one thing: the residents who rose up against the authorities were manipulated by the foreign press. And chickens will have teeth before we can trust these publications which incite our popultions to the insurrection.

Today he arrives in Hong Kong as chief of security to enforce a security law that gives him all the power, without real safeguards and without the local government having a say. He will be free to apply this controversial text in the strongest possible terms in the event, for example, of new pro-democracy demonstrations, such as those that Hong Kong experienced last year.

► Read also: [Chronicle] The end of democratic hopes in Hong Kong

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• Hong Kong
• China