China's famed Palace Museum opened a branch in Hong Kong Sunday amid a drive to build loyalty to Beijing in the former British colony that reverted to Chinese rule 25 years ago.
Works of calligraphy and paintings on silk dating back more than 1,000 years featured heavily in the exhibition, housed in a seven-story building in a newly developed harbourside arts district.
The opening of the exhibition came just two days after China's leader Xi Jinping marked the anniversary of Hong Kong's return with a visit to what is officially called the special autonomous region and a speech emphasizing Beijing's control under its vision of "one country, two systems." The sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing has seen government critics who have not moved abroad being either jailed or intimidated into silence. That has aligned Hong Kong ever closely with the party's rigid controls exercised on the mainland and in the outer regions of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.
The building of the Palace Museum branch in Hong Kong was controversial because of the lack of public consultation, and came as a surprise to many Hong Kong citizens.