On August 19, a declaration of fraternal love gushed forth in the same spot where Presidents Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and their wives had a private dinner in 2017, deep in the heart of Beijing’s Forbidden City.Enshrouded within the serenity of Jianfu Palace, or the Palace of Established Happiness, the directors of Beijing’s Palace Museum and the Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM) said that the two institutions were like “brothers” and dropped hints of new loans that would arrive in Hong Kong in 2026.
The Hong Kong museum is run independently from its Beijing “big brother”, but the ties between them are well known.
In 2016, then Hong Kong Chief Secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor announced without any public consultation that the city’s West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) was to build a Hong Kong Palace Museum, a plan initiated by the Palace Museum in Beijing and funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC).
The Beijing Palace Museum (left) in the Forbidden City. Photo: Xinhua
Now, as Beijing’s Palace Museum celebrates its 100th anniversary, the three-year-old HKPM is thriving thanks to mainland China’s support, said its director, Louis Ng Chi-wa, in Beijing.