China urges Western countries to stop meddling in Hong Kong affairs

Some Western countries should face up to the reality that Hong Kong has returned to China for 24 years and immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs, China said on Tuesday.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian praised the just-concluded election for the seventh-term Legislative Council (LegCo) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) at a routine press briefing in Beijing.

“It is an important leap in the development of a democratic system in line with Hong Kong's actual conditions and has Hong Kong's characteristics,” he said. “The electoral process is fair, just, open, safe, and clean. The democratic rights of voters are fully respected and guaranteed.”

Foreign ministers of the Five Eyes Alliance, the Group of Seven and senior representatives of the European Union issued a joint statement on the election.

Zhao emphasized that under British colonial rule, Hong Kong had no democracy at all. “But while Hong Kong’s democratic forms have been enriched and developed, and the quality of democracy has continued to improve, a few Western countries have jumped out, brazenly expressing so-called concerns about democratic elections in a local administrative region in China, and aggressively attacking and condemning Hong Kong’s democracy and the rule of law,” he said.

This fully exposed their hypocrisy and their sinister intentions to mess up Hong Kong and contain China's development, Zhao said.

(Compiled by Lin Rui and Xie Runjia)