Hong Kong's new chief executive shakes the hand of China's president.
Hong Kong's new leader, Leung Chun-ying, was sworn into office Sunday morning in a ceremony presided over by Chinese President Hu Jintao, as protesters burned pictures of Leung outside the venue.
Hu was making a rare three-day visit to the city to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty and inaugurate the third chief executive, replacing the recently scandal-plagued Donald Tsang.
Hu's speech in front of some 2,300 of the party faithful had the usual platitudes about Hong Kong people administering Hong Kong with a high degree of autonomy.
"We must stay committed to keeping a balance between adhering to the 'one country' principle and respecting the differences of the 'two systems', between upholding the authority of the central government and ensuring a high degree of autonomy of the Hong Kong S.A.R. (Special Administrative Region), between safeguarding the overall national interests and protecting the interests of various social sectors of Hong Kong, and between supporting Hong Kong in actively conducting exchanges with the outside world and opposing interference by external forces in Hong Kong affairs," he said.
Security guards overwhelm a lone protestor, in blue shirt, during Hu Jintao's address.
slogans calling for an end to one-party rule on the mainland and for people to remember June 4th (date of Tiananmen massacre in 1989). About ten security guards wrestled him out of the venue after snatching his placard. Tsang told RTHK afterward the guards had placed their hands in his mouth to stifle his shouting.
In Leung's speech, he said his "goal is to develop the economy, improve people's livelihood, promote democracy and build a more prosperous, progressive and righteous society."
Leung had won a bitterly contested election campaign that allows only 1,200 voters to take part from a population of seven million. Recently, the former property surveyor has been embroiled in a scandal for allegedly having numerous illegal structures on his luxury home on The Peak.
In spite of the government's carefully scripted plan, heavy-handed tactics by Hong Kong's police force in dealing with both the media and protesters have been attracting the most attention.
Yesterday, a reporter from Apple Daily newspaper was detained by police for about 15 minutes after asking Hu about June 4th. The incident, shown on local television, was sparked when Hon Yiu-ting called out to ask if Hu had heard Hong Kong people's hope to reverse the verdict of June 4th. Hu did not respond. When confronted by other journalists at the scene, a plain-clothes police sergeant reluctantly said Hon was detained for causing a disturbance, although other reporters had been shouting questions to Hu in the same manner earlier. The difference between Hon's question and the others was that it touched upon one of the so-called "sensitive" issues.
On the same day, the police used pepper spray on another group of pro-democracy protesters trying to break through police barricades to get closer to an event Hu was attending. Organizers of the demonstration had been complaining that "protest zones" set up by police were too far away for their voices to be heard. They were calling for an investigation into the suspicious death of mainland dissident Li Wangyang and to overturn Beijing's condemnation of the June 4th protests in Tiananmen.
Although Hong Kong had been promised the right to select their leader before 1997, 15 years after the handover, they still haven’t been given that right. Many fear that with Beijing’s interference future elections will almost certainly be rigged.