China’s anti-terror general Peng Jingtang to lead Hong Kong troops

The appointment is the latest sign of Beijing remoulding the international business hub in its own authoritarian image after the mass pro-democracy protests of 2019.

Major General Peng Jingtang was previously in charge of a specialist unit in Xinjiang, where over a million Uighur Muslims are believed to be incarcerated.

A general who led China’s anti-terrorism special forces in Xinjiang has been named the head of the People’s Liberation Army garrison in Hong Kong as Beijing further tightens its grip on the territory.

The appointment by President Xi of Major General Peng Jingtang, deputy chief of staff of the People’s Armed Police, is the latest sign of Beijing remoulding the international business hub in its own authoritarian image after the mass pro-democracy protests of 2019. The passing of a repressive national security law a year later empowered China’s security agents to operate openly in Hong Kong.

Under the city’s mini-constitution Hong Kong has its own police force, but Beijing has maintained military barracks there since the 1997 handover, when sovereignty was transferred from Britain to China.

During the protests in 2019 the Hong Kong garrison carried out frequent drills simulating crowd control and anti-terrorism operations.

China’s leadership condemned the demonstrations, claiming that they were the result of “local terrorism” and separatism, rhetoric similar to that used in relation to Xinjiang, where human rights advocates and witnesses say that more than a million Uighurs and other Turkic-speaking Muslims are incarcerated in camps in an effort to root out their cultural traditions. Washington has described the campaign as genocide. Beijing has rejected the allegations as “nothing but vicious lies concocted by anti-China forces”.

Police chase down a couple during the 2019 Hong Kong protests. Picture: AFP

Among the few details released on state media about Peng’s career was his former post as the chief of staff of the Armed Police Corps, part of China’s paramilitary police force, in Xinjiang. Chinese state media reported three years ago that a special force had been formed in Xinjiang “for the anti-terrorism needs in the region and across China”, with Peng as its chief.

The news came as the authorities in Hong Kong jailed an autistic man for 13 months for chanting slogans at a pro-democracy protest.

Jacky Su, 25, was found guilty of incitement and illegal assembly on July 1 last year, hours after Beijing imposed the national security law. Norton Pang, the magistrate, said that he had taken into consideration Su’s condition and the face that he had no prior convictions, but concluded that community service would not suffice because of the gravity of the case, according to local media. Hong Kong courts have jailed dozens of peaceful demonstrators over the past two years on the grounds of illegal assembly.

The Times