Chinese President Xi Jinping has expressed a "high degree of trust" in Hong Kong's unpopular leader Carrie Lam as the two met after months of increasingly violent protests in the semi-autonomous city.

Xi's show of support follows speculation that Beijing was preparing to remove Lam as city authorities struggle to contain pro-democracy demonstrations that have rocked the financial hub.

Their meeting in Shanghai on Monday followed another weekend of violence in Hong Kong that was marked by a knife attack and the vandalising of an office of China's official Xinhua news agency.

Xi said Lam has "done a lot of hard work" and strived to stabilise the situation in Hong Kong, according to a Xinhua readout of their meeting.

"Xi voiced the central government's high degree of trust in Lam and full acknowledgement of the work of her and her governance team," the state news agency said.

"Ending violence and chaos and restoring order remain the most important task for Hong Kong at present," Xi said.

Xi also called for "effective efforts" to be made in improving people's lives and having dialogue with all sectors of society.

– Unscheduled Beijing talks –

China has run the city under a special "one country, two systems" model, which allows Hong Kong liberties not seen on the mainland, since its handover from the British in 1997.

But public anger has been building for years over fears that Beijing has begun eroding those freedoms, especially since Xi came to power.

Protesters have issued a list of demands, including universal suffrage and an investigation into abuses by police.

The Chinese Communist Party agreed at a leadership meeting last week to "improve" the way Hong Kong's chief executive and key officials are appointed and removed, but it provided no other details.

The party also warned it would "never tolerate" any challenge to "one country, two systems".

Lam was chosen in 2017 by a 1,200-strong committee stacked with Beijing supporters, a system that ensures Hong Kong's leader remains loyal the central government but one that saddles the position with a pronounced democratic deficit.

Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong's sole representative to China's top lawmaking body, said the meeting between Xi and Lam would help allay the seething rumours about Beijing seeking to replace her.

"Xi must be very busy in Shanghai, where there were so many countries' leaders he had to meet, but he still made time for Lam, so the message of his care is clear," Tam said.

"Xi gave Lam an appropriate recognition but there isn't much praise in the report because after all the situations are yet to calm," Tam added.

The Financial Times, quoting unnamed figures briefed on the deliberations, reported last month that Beijing is drawing up a plan to replace her with an interim chief executive.

Beijing rejected the report as "a political rumour with ulterior motives".

– 'Puppet show' –

Lam was originally supposed to return to Hong Kong after attending the second China International Import Expo in Shanghai this week, but on Sunday her office said she would meet with Chinese government officials in Beijing on Wednesday.

Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese politics, said the meeting will be publicly billed as discussing the protests and Hong Kong's involvement in China's huge Greater Bay Area economic zone.

"But I think the real reason has to do with whether they might discuss a replacement for Carrie Lam," he told AFP.

"Her performance has proven to be near disastrous and she has lost the confidence of Beijing."

Claudia Mo, an opposition lawmaker in Hong Kong, said many democracy supporters would be dismayed to see Xi embracing Lam despite her lack of popularity after five months of unrest.

"Beijing is now bound to further tighten its grip over Hong Kong and make things even worse here," she told AFP. "It's a puppet show."

China slams 'terroristic' Hong Kong attack on state media office
Beijing (AFP) Nov 4, 2019 –

Chinese state-run media on Monday called for a "tougher line" on democracy protesters in Hong Kong as it denounced a "terroristic" attack on a state news agency during another weekend of violence in the semi-autonomous city.

Hardcore demonstrators in the financial hub smashed the windows of the official Xinhua news agency's regional bureau on Saturday, capping another weekend of unrest that also saw scores of arrests and a gruesome attack on a pro-democracy lawmaker.

"Vandalizing a news agency is as terroristic as challenging the bottom line of civilization," Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily said in a Facebook post.

The post was accompanied by a video of a man being beaten and stripped of his clothing by people the publication called "rioters" in the Mong Kok area.

"Intensifying violence in Hong Kong calls for tougher line to restore order," the state-run China Daily, an English-language mainland newspaper, said in the headline of an editorial.

The protesters "court the indulgence extended to them by friendly local and Western media outlets, while seeking to silence those trying to put the protests in the spotlight of truth," the article said.

"They are doomed to fail simply because their violence will encounter the full weight of the law."

China has run Hong Kong under a special "one country, two systems" model, which allows the city liberties not seen on the mainland, since the financial hub's handover from the British in 1997.

But public anger has been building for years over fears that Beijing has begun eroding those freedoms, especially since President Xi Jinping came to power.

– Months of unrest –

The nationalist tabloid Global Times called in an editorial on Sunday for "Hong Kong's law enforcement agencies to bring the mob to justice as soon as possible" for vandalising Xinhua's office.

Neither the editorials nor People's Daily's Facebook post mentioned a knife attack on Sunday in Tai Koo Shing, a middle-class neighbourhood on Hong Kong's main island where a rally had been taking place, which left at least five people wounded.

Eyewitnesses told local media that a Mandarin-speaking man attacked people on Sunday shortly after shouting pro-Beijing slogans. In Hong Kong, the lingua franca is Cantonese.

Live footage showed Andrew Chiu, a local pro-democracy councillor, having his ear bitten off after trying to subdue the attacker, while a second man was seen unconscious in a growing pool of blood as bystanders desperately tried to stem wounds to his back.

Hong Kong has seen months of protests, initially sparked by opposition to a now-scrapped proposal to allow extraditions of criminal suspects to mainland China.

They quickly snowballed into a wider anti-government movement after Beijing and local leaders in Hong Kong took a hard line.

Beijing warned on Friday after a four-day meeting of Communist Party leaders that it would not tolerate any challenges to its authority over Hong Kong, while laying out plans to boost patriotism in the city and change how its leader is chosen or removed.

China Daily also noted that the party plans to strengthen Hong Kong's legal system to "safeguard national security".

"Those Hong Kong residents whose lives have been disrupted by the intensifying violence of intimidation — instigated and organized by those hoping to use Hong Kong as a means to destabilize the nation — will be glad when life returns to normal," the newspaper said.