Xi Zinping praises Hong Kong's one country two systems policy! Ho ho.

President Xi Zinping, China's leader for life, is in Hong Kong to celebrate the former British colony's 25 years of Beijing rule since the sovereignty handover in 1997. He actually praised the so-called one country two systems policy under which Hong Kong is supposed to have the right to enjoy free speech and maintain a high degree of autonomy, neither of which are evident in mainland China. It's ho ho time. As we all know, ever since Beijing took back the colony from the British, China has imposed huge security restrictions, clamped down on free speech and generally tried to turn Hong Kong into a Beijing-obedient satellite. The mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020 over Beijing's plans to extradite "criminals" to the mainland were suppressed with such brutality that no one living in the colony was in any doubt that the one country two systems policy had gone for ever. Thousands of Hong Kong people with British residency rights have applied to live in the UK. But Xi calmly told the former British colony that all was well with the system which was at the core of the handover agrement signed by China and Britain in 1997. I was diplomatic correspondent on the Daily Express in the years leading up to the 1997 handover and went to Beijing with Sir Geoffrey Howe, then Maggie Thatcher's foreign secretary, to report on the negotiations which were challenging to say the least. I never thought then that China would be happy to let Hong Kong just carry on as if it was still a British coloney enjoying all the rights of western countries. Whatever dear Geoffrey Howe said after the negotiations, indicating that he had been successful in safeguarding Hong Kong's rights in the future after handover, it just didn't seem likely that Beijing would let Hong Kong do what it wished. The suppression of the protests in 2019 and 2020 was proof enough. So Xi's comments during his visit to Hong Kong - his first trip out of China for two years - were full of ho ho smugness and satisfaction, surrounded as he was by 100 per cent loyal pro-Beijing Hong Kong political leaders.