Legal moves aim to end HK chaos: China

Since 2019 pro-democracy protests, China has cracked down on the opposition and wiped out street protests with a draconian national security law.  On Thursday it moved to ensure only "patriots" run the city, when an annual rubber-stamp parliament voted for sweeping changes to Hong Kong's electoral system -- including powers to veto candidates.

The plan was swiftly pilloried by the US, EU and Britain, the city's former colonial ruler which handed control of the territory to Beijing in 1997 under a special "one country, two systems" arrangement.

Zhang Xiaoming, of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, yesterday said  the "chaos" of recent years showed that the city's electoral system has "clear loopholes and shortcomings" and it needed to be fixed.