China Installs Hardline Team to Enforce Hong Kong Security Law

China’s establishment of national security office in Hong Kong last week -- staffed by officials accountable to Beijing -- represents the culmination of a unprecedented push to take more hands-on control over the former British colony.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, while still nominally the top decision-maker on most local issues, will from now on be more closely supervised by several officials who have come up through the Communist Party ranks on the mainland. The new appointees have hardline credentials, including a former aide to President Xi Jinping known for removing crosses from churches and a former party official who once joked that if the foreign media could be trusted, pigs could climb trees.