(Reuters) – Hong Kong Financial Services Secretary Christopher Hui is planning to visit Britain in April in the first ministerial-level visit from the territory to the UK in three years, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
The Hong Kong government said in a response to Reuters that Hui would visit Europe “to contact key stakeholders and promote Hong Kong’s edges in financial industry” this year, but declined to confirm his specific itinerary.
Relations between the UK and Hong Kong have been fraught in the past few years after China imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, as a response to mass pro-democracy protests sweeping the city the year before.
The UK criticised the law as a means for authorities to curb freedoms and crack down on dissent, and offered a path to British citizenship for many Hong Kongers.
Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers have since relocated to the UK.
(Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru and Hong Kong newsroom; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Raju Gopalakrishnan)