Sébastien Le Belzic (in Beijing), edited by Romain Rouillard 09:29, July 01, 2022, modified at 09:30, July 01, 2022

The city-state of Hong Kong celebrates this Friday the 25th anniversary of its handover to China in 1997. The opportunity for Chinese President Xi Jinping to praise the merits of the communist system in Beijing, three years after the major pro- democracy that set the city ablaze.

In Hong Kong, the atmosphere is not really festive.

For the 25th anniversary of the handover to China, any dissident presence or demonstration has been carefully muzzled.

The ceremony took place in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which is also an event.

This is Xi Jinping's first visit outside mainland China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The opportunity for him to bury the major pro-democracy demonstrations that set the city ablaze in 2019 and to promote the victory of the communist system in China.

"It's a good system that guarantees the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and defends the well-being of Hong Kong people," he said.

200 Hong Kong Democrats Jailed

The Democrats do not share this opinion and nearly 200 of them have been imprisoned, the others having fled abroad.

This is the case of Nathan Law, the youngest member of the Hong Kong Parliament, now exiled in London.

For him, Western democracies, and in particular France, are largely responsible: "A country that adheres to the values ​​of human rights and democracy could have done more. And I think that is also what want the French."

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Under the principle "one country, two systems" Hong Kong benefits, in theory, until 2047 from freedoms unknown on the rest of the continent.

But Xi Jinping's Communist China will not have waited so long to put an end to it.