China’s annual parliamentary “two sessions” have been framed as a show of resilience in a turbulent world. That framing is not wrong but it is incomplete. Beijing’s deliberately lower 2026 economic growth target is less an admission of weakness than a signal that the growth playbook is being rewritten. For Hong Kong, this is not background noise. It is a test of whether policy alignment can be converted into institutional credibility.
When Premier Li Qiang delivered the government work report…