During last year’s campaign against amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, several Internet users recorded footage showing police officers present with Mandarin accents, but the Hong Kong government denied that any PLA or mainland Chinese law enforcement officers had been mixed in with the police force; however, the U.S. Department of Defense reported that when the PLA stationed troops in Hong Kong were rotated last August, armed police units may have come from Shenzhen at the same time, but no troops were withdrawn from Hong Kong.
However, the report does not mention whether the armed police have enforced the law in Hong Kong. According to the Basic Law, law and order in Hong Kong is the responsibility of the police force, and personnel of mainland departments, including the armed police, are not allowed to enforce the law in Hong Kong, even if the PLA is stationed in Hong Kong.
The report “China’s Military and Security Development in 2020” released by the U.S. Department of Defense on Monday pointed out that during the rotation of the troops in Hong Kong last August, there may be armed police units coming from Shenzhen to Hong Kong by land, sea and air at night, but no troops were withdrawn from Hong Kong; subsequently, the announcement of the rotation did not mention that the number of posts and equipment of the military garrison after the rotation was the same as before.
The report also notes that during the many months of demonstrations, Chinese media reported that the PLA and armed police had demonstrated anti-riot, anti-terrorism, and disaster prevention training. What the report does not point out is that the People’s Daily broadcast on Weibo on the evening of August 29th a clip of the joint anti-riot training of the armed police and public security officers in Shenzhen, during which the armed police raised a red flag that read “Stop the assault, or use force” and yelled “retreat” in Cantonese. The report also points out that the Chinese authorities have used what is commonly known as the “fifty-cent” Internet army to disseminate pro-Beijing arguments through social media in an attempt to influence public opinion.
In addition, the report notes that Chinese authorities have used the Internet army, commonly known as “Five Cao,” to try to influence public opinion by spreading pro-Beijing arguments through social media, and that both Facebook and Twitter deleted some China-related accounts last year, claiming that they were suspected of distributing fake news about Hong Kong demonstrations.
In last year’s anti-draft campaign, the first outbreak of the possible presence of mainland Chinese law enforcement officers in Hong Kong was an August 5 clip of riot police dispersing protesters in Tai Po, in which a suspected captain commands, “Come on, comrades, over there.” The first four words are called out in Mandarin, and the last two words are Cantonese, which means over there. Later on, footage of suspected mainlanders enforcing the law in Hong Kong, including frontline police officers who appeared to be confused by the instructions given by their bosses in Cantonese, was released. However, both the Hong Kong government and the police have denied that the PLA and mainland law enforcement agencies have been mixed into the police force.
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