TIL Desk/World/Beijing/ An army-linked newspaper in China has run photos of a week-old military drill in Hong Kong, a move analysts described as a warning to Beijing’s critics as the city grapples with a wave of anti-government protests.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has maintained a garrison in Hong Kong since the former British colony was returned to Beijing in 1997, but its troops generally keep a low profile and are rarely seen in uniform in public. The unit’s routine military exercises have not attracted much attention in the past.
But a PLA-affiliated newspaper posted photos of the week-old military drill on Tuesday — a day after pro-democracy protesters ransacked Hong Kong’s legislature and left anti-Beijing messages on its walls in an unprecedented show of anger.
Huge rallies have shaken the semi-autonomous territory since last month, sparked by opposition to a bill that would allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland. The PLA Daily said on its verified account on the Twitter-like Weibo platform that the joint exercise last Wednesday — which involved ground forces, the navy and the air force — were aimed at “reviewing and raising the units’ combat abilities in emergency dispatches”
