For months, Mr. Xi has been expected to travel to Hong Kong to mark the 25th anniversary of the former British colony’s return to Chinese rule. Officials in Hong Kong have started looking at ways to condense his itinerary into a day trip on July 1, the anniversary date, instead of the customary multiday affair, the people said.
The Chinese leader hasn’t confirmed his trip and his office has been worried that the risk of coronavirus exposure may be too great, given that Hong Kong had recently endured a major Omicron outbreak, according to the people. Some mainland Chinese officials in Hong Kong have nonetheless started to prepare for the potential visit, limiting their interactions with visitors so as to avoid getting infected with Covid-19, they said.
Hong Kong officials and dignitaries due to meet Mr. Xi are likely to have to isolate themselves for seven days before he arrives, one of the people said.
The Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of China’s State Council didn’t respond to a request for comment. China’s representative office in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong government didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
If the visit does happen, Mr. Xi is expected to inaugurate Hong Kong’s next government and deliver a major speech, inspect People’s Liberation Army troops stationed in the city, and meet local dignitaries, some of the people said. He would likely return to the mainland later on the same day, they said.
Mr. Xi hasn’t traveled beyond the borders of mainland China since a state visit to Myanmar in January 2020, which took place days before Beijing acknowledged the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan.
Since then, Mr. Xi has spurned a meeting with other leaders from the Group of 20 nations in Europe last year, and missed global climate talks in Glasgow. He hasn’t met President Biden in person since the American leader took office and has been selective in meeting foreign visitors in Beijing.
On Wednesday, Mr. Xi held a video call with United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, who is in China for a six-day visit ending Saturday that includes stops in the southern city of Guangzhou and the northwestern region of Xinjiang, but not Beijing.
Such wariness underscores Mr. Xi’s cautious approach toward Covid-19, which has increasingly left China out of step with the rest of the world. China is the only major economy that is still adopting strict measures to suppress the spread of Covid and eradicate the virus as much as possible, a strategy that officials describe as “dynamic zero Covid."
Mainland officials have imposed a suite of costly containment measures in response to Mr. Xi’s repeated calls to double down on zero-Covid, as the Communist Party prepares for a congress later this year where Mr. Xi is expected to claim another five years as paramount leader. Harsher lockdowns in some major cities including Beijing and Shanghai have been imposed to keep infections from spreading, stifling economic activity and threatening jobs.
Hong Kong was hit by a major Omicron wave earlier this year that overwhelmed local hospitals and at one point saddled the city with the world’s worst Covid-19 death rate per capita. The outbreak alarmed Beijing, which sent mainland personnel to help the city fight the contagion and ordered Hong Kong officials to get the situation under control ahead of Mr. Xi’s planned visit in July.
Mr. Xi last traveled to Hong Kong in 2017 on the 20th anniversary of the city’s handover. That trip spanned three days, as did the equivalent visits that his predecessor, Hu Jintao, made to mark the 10th and 15th anniversaries.
A visit this year would be Mr. Xi’s first to Hong Kong since massive antigovernment protests rocked the city in 2019. Beijing has since moved decisively to quash dissent there, imposing a sweeping security law on the territory in June 2020. Hundreds of people have been arrested under the law, recently including 90-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen, the former Roman Catholic bishop of Hong Kong.
The July 1 anniversary is a public holiday in Hong Kong, and in the past, the occasion has been marked by large protests against Beijing’s growing influence over the city. Such unrest has grown muted over the past two years since the security law took effect.
